President Trump is pushing for a major redrawing of Texas’s congressional districts to favor Republicans and shape the outcome of future elections, including next year’s midterms. Voting rights expert Ari Berman says this “unprecedented” Republican gerrymandering scheme manipulates an already-gerrymandered map that “limits democratic representation. It already limits representation for communities of color, and now that would be much worse.” The map was released this week, and a hearing is underway today as Republicans try to ram it through.

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

Steve Knievel, Public Citizen Access to Medicines advocate, issued the following statement in response to the announcement:

“Actions speak louder than words, and despite President Trump’s crocodile tears about high drug prices, so far he has signed one multi-billion dollar giveaway to drug corporations and called on Congress to give them $10 billion more out of the pockets of seniors and people with disabilities by undermining Medicare drug price negotiations.

“Instead of letters we need legislation. If President Trump was serious about lowering drug prices for Americans, instead of promising to help drug corporations profiteer in other countries, he would work with Congress to pass legislation to lower prices here so Big Pharma can no longer charge U.S. patients and taxpayers the highest prices in the world.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

President Donald Trump on July 4 signed into law an omnibus reconciliation bill, branded in MAGA propaganda (and much of corporate media) as the “Big Beautiful Bill.” The legislation scraped up just enough votes to narrowly pass in both chambers of the Republican-controlled Congress, with 51 to 50 votes in the Senate and 218 to 214 in the House.

The focal point of the bill is a $4.5 trillion tax cut, partly paid for by unprecedented slashes in funding for healthcare and food assistance. The wealthiest 10% will gain $12,000 a year from the legislation, while it will cost the lowest-earning 10% of families $1,600 annually. Media addressed the fiscal aspects of the bill, though more often through a fixation on the federal debt rather than looking at the effect of the budget on inequality (FAIR.org, 7/17/25).

But it’s not just a question of money. Many of the bill’s key provisions—including Medicaid, SNAP and clean energy cuts, as well as handouts to the fossil fuel, military and detention industries—will be literally deadly for people in the US and abroad, in both the near and long term.

FAIR’s Belén Fernandez (7/9/25) closely examined the dramatic lack of coverage of the vast expansion of the government’s anti-immigrant capacities. But the deadly consequences of the other aspects of the bill were also remarkably underexplained to the public.

To see how major media explained the contents and consequences of the reconciliation bill to the public before its enactment, FAIR surveyed New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and NPR news coverage from the Senate’s passage of the final version of the bill on July 1 through July 4, the day Trump signed the bill into law. This time frame, when the actual contents of the bill were known and the House was deliberating on giving it an up or down vote, was arguably the moment when media attention was most critical to the democratic process.

‘We all are going to die’

This USA Today article (7/1/25) was one of the more informative in detailing the impact of the bill, but it still fell short of detailing the projected cost in human lives.

While corporate media reported that the finalized bill with the Senate’s revisions would significantly cut healthcare funding to subsidize the tax breaks, they rarely explained the social consequences of such cuts. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the bill will reduce $1.04 trillion in funding for Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and the Children’s Health Insurance Program over the next decade. This will strip health insurance from 11.8 million people.

The New York Times (7/1/25), acknowledging these statistics, quoted Democrats who opposed the bill due to “the harmful impact it will have on Medicaid,” and who noted that people will soon “see the damage that is done as hospitals close, as people are laid off, as costs go up, as the debt increases.”

But the outlets in our sample, at this crucial time of heightened attention, failed to mention the most significant consequence of cutting Medicaid: death.

These outlets (New York Times, 5/30/25; NPR, 5/31/25; CNN, 5/31/25;  Washington Post, 6/1/25) had all earlier acknowledged what the Times called Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-IA) “morbid” response to her constituents’ concerns about deaths from Medicaid cuts: “Well, we all are going to die.”

But as the House deliberated on whether these cuts would become law, these outlets failed to reference credible research that projected that the large-scale loss of health insurance envisioned by the bill would have an annual death toll in the tens of thousands. One USA Today piece (7/1/25) did headline that “Trump’s Tax Bill Could Cut Medicaid for Millions of Americans,” but didn’t spell out the potential cost in human lives.

Before the Senate’s revisions, researchers from Yale’s School of Public Health and UPenn’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (Penn LDI, 6/3/25) projected that such massive cuts to healthcare would result in 51,000 deaths annually. That number is expected to be even higher now, as the calculation was based on an earlier CBO estimate of 7.7 million people losing coverage over the next decade (CBO, 5/11/25).

‘Harms to healthcare’—not to people

CNN (7/4/25) euphemized life-threatening withdrawal of care as “harm to the healthcare system.”

CNN (7/4/25), in a piece on “Who Stands to Gain From the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill.’ And Who May Struggle,” similarly failed to spell out the dire consequences of the Medicaid cuts. It wrote that low-income Americans would be “worse off” thanks to those cuts, yet it extensively described only the fiscal impacts, as opposed to the costs in life and health, on lower- and middle-class families.

Hospitals would also be “worse off” due to the bill, as it would “leave them with more uncompensated care costs for treating uninsured patients.” This rhetorically rendered the patient, made uninsured by legislation, a burden.

The article quoted American Hospital Association CEO Rick Pollack, who said that

the real-life consequences…will result in irreparable harm to our healthcare system, reducing access to care for all Americans and severely undermining the ability of hospitals and health systems to care for our most vulnerable patients.

But CNN refused to spell out to readers what that “harm to the healthcare system” would mean: beyond “reducing access,” it would cause people to die preventable deaths.

Outlets often seemed more concerned with the impact of the bill on lawmakers’ political survival than its impact on their low-income constituents’ actual survival. The Washington Post (7/4/25), though acknowledging that their poll revealed that “two-thirds [of Americans] said they had heard either little or nothing about [the bill],” made little or no effort to contribute to an informed public. Instead, it focused on analyzing the “Six Ways Trump’s Tax Bill Could Shape the Battle for Control of Congress.”

The New York Times (7/1/25) similarly observed that the Senate Republicans’ “hard-fought legislative win came at considerable risk to their party’s political futures and fiscal legacy.” In another article (7/1/25), they noticed that it was the “more moderate and politically vulnerable Republicans” who “repeated their opposition to [the bill’s] cuts to Medicaid.”

‘Winners and losers’

“Opponents of the bill say the proposed cuts will leave millions of adults and children hungry”; the New York Times (7/1/25) apparently doesn’t know whether that’s true or not.

The Medicaid cuts aren’t the only part of the bill that will result in unnecessary deaths. The bill will cut $186 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a program that helps low-income individuals and families buy food. CBO (5/22/25) estimated that 3.2 million people under the age of 65 will lose food assistance. This contraction is expected to be even more deadly than the healthcare cutbacks: The same researchers from UPenn (7/2/25), along with NYU Langone Health, projected that losing SNAP benefits will result in 93,000 premature deaths between now and 2039.

SNAP cuts were mostly only mentioned alongside Medicaid, if at all (Washington Post, 7/3/25; New York Times, 7/3/25; CNN, 7/4/25). And when they did decide to dedicate a whole article to the singular provision, they rarely ventured beyond the fiscal impacts of such cuts into real, tangible consequences, such as food insecurity, hunger and death. The New York Times (7/1/25) asked “how many people will be affected,” but didn’t bother to ask “how will people be affected?”

What’s more, according to the Center for American Progress (7/7/25), the bill’s repeal of incentives for energy efficiency and improved air quality “will likely lead to 430 avoidable deaths every year by 2030 and 930 by 2035.”

The New York Times (7/3/25), however, analyzed this outcome as a changing landscape with “energy winners and losers.” It described how the bill will eliminate tax credits that have encouraged the electrification of homes and alleviated energy costs for millions of families. Somehow, the “loser” here (and all throughout the article) is the abstract concept of “energy efficiency” and private companies, not actual US families.

Another little-discussed provision in the bill is the funding for the Golden Dome, an anti-missile system named for and modeled on Israel’s Iron Dome. The bill set aside $25 billion for its development, along with another $128 billion for military initiatives like expanding the naval fleet and nuclear arsenal.

Media, though, did little more than report these numbers, when they weren’t ignored entirely (CBS, 7/4/25; CNN, 7/4/25). The New York Times (7/1/25) characterized these measures to strengthen the military/industrial complex as “the least controversial in the legislative package”; they were “meant to entice Republicans to vote for it.” In utterly failing to challenge $153 billion in spending on a military that is currently being deployed to bomb other countries in wars of aggression and to suppress protests against authoritarianism at home, the media manufacture consent for militarism as a necessity and an inevitability.

Ignorance a journalistic fail

The Washington Post’s headline and article (7/3/25) perfectly exemplified the paradox with today’s media—calling out how “The Big Problem With Trump’s Bill [Is That] Many Voters Don’t Know What’s in It.” Yet it tosses in an unsubstantial explanation about how “it deals with tax policy, border security, restocking the military/industrial complex, slashing spending on health and food programs for the poor—as well as many, many other programs.”

By reducing sweeping legislative consequences to vague generalities and by positioning ignorance as a voter issue rather than journalistic failure, media outlets maintain a veneer of critique while sidestepping accountability.

Featured image: PBS  depiction (7/30/25) of President Donald Trump signing the reconciliation bill. (photo: Alex Brandon/Pool via Reuters.)

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Shirlynn Chan.

“In a bold move that clearly must be unrelated to Donald Trump’s sprawling crypto grifting, the White House is releasing a report that celebrates what is widely understood as the biggest Ponzi scheme in history.

“Trump is well known for scrupulously honoring anti-discrimination laws, his contracts, his debts, his marriages, and the Constitution, so we can rest assured that his most lucrative source of income ever, namely crypto, had no influence whatsoever on this report.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s EPA took a major step toward changing that. At a truck dealership in Indianapolis, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced a formal proposal to repeal the endangerment finding, which has been in the works since the beginning of Trump’s second presidency. At the same time, Zeldin announced a plan to repeal all federal greenhouse gas emissions regulations for motor vehicles. “If finalized, today’s announcement would amount to the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States,” he said at the press conference.

Zeldin accused his predecessors at the EPA of making “many, many, many mental leaps” in the 2009 declaration, and he argued that the “real threat” to people’s livelihoods is not carbon dioxide but instead the regulations themselves, which he claimed lead to higher prices and restrict people’s choices.

If the EPA succeeds in reversing the endangerment finding, it would “eviscerate the biggest regulatory tool the federal government has” to keep climate change in check, said Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Republicans in Congress have already repealed much of former President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law, which aimed to put the U.S. within reach of its Paris Agreement targets primarily by funneling money to renewable energy sources. Rescinding the endangerment finding targets the other main tool the U.S. government can use to address climate change: the executive branch’s power to limit emissions through regulatory action. In other words, Republicans have already eliminated many of the federal government’s proverbial climate carrots — now they’re going after the sticks. 

“We will not have a serious national climate policy if this goes through,” said Patrick Parenteau, an emeritus professor of climate policy and environmental law at Vermont Law School.

But that’s a big “if.” Experts say that the EPA’s plan is bound to be embroiled in years of lawsuits, perhaps one day making its way to the Supreme Court, which blessed the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases in 2007 and declined to hear a challenge to the endangerment finding as recently as December 2023. And even if the EPA does manage to overturn the endangerment finding after all court challenges have been exhausted, it would result in sweeping consequences — including some that the administration’s allies in the oil industry may not like. Indeed, the risk is serious enough that some fossil fuel industry groups have urged the Trump administration not to repeal the finding.

The tussle over the endangerment finding stems from differing interpretations of the Clean Air Act. When Congress expanded the law in 1970, it tasked the EPA with regulating air pollutants that threaten public health, but it kept the definition of “pollutant” broad. “They had the foresight to understand that they could not foresee every potential air pollutant that would endanger public health and welfare in the many decades to come,” said Zealan Hoover, who was a senior adviser to the EPA under Biden. That gave the EPA some leeway to determine exactly what it should be regulating — a question that presidents have approached very differently, with Democrats typically trying to expand the agency’s power and Republicans trying to limit it. With its 2009 endangerment finding, the Obama administration added carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases to the list.

Now that Zeldin has announced a plan to strike down the finding, the EPA will open a 45-day period for the public to weigh in on the proposal. The agency is supposed to take that feedback into account before moving to finalize the rule. At that point, states and environmental groups may sue the EPA in what’s expected to be a yearslong court battle.

“The lawyering that’s going to go on is going to make a lot of people rich,” Parenteau said. In the meantime, Zeldin would likely work to undo existing regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, unless the courts were convinced to pause the implementation of the new rule. 

Any lawsuit would probably end up in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases concerning federal policymaking. Law experts say the EPA’s argument may not fare well with those judges, as the circuit has upheld the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act in the past. On top of that, when Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, Democrats amended the Clean Air Act to explicitly declare carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases as air pollutants, bolstering the foundation for regulating them. Republicans did not repeal that language when they gutted much of the rest of the Biden-era law, and challengers are likely to invoke those amendments in court, Carlson said.

But that wouldn’t necessarily be the end of it, because such a case might go all the way to the Supreme Court. The court’s conservative majority could then choose to undermine Massachusetts v. EPA, the 2007 decision that gave the EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and led to the endangerment finding. “That may be the ultimate aim here,” Carlson said, “to get the Supreme Court to revisit Massachusetts v. EPA to make it basically impossible to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.”

Read Next

Trump’s EPA wants to demolish the bedrock of US climate regulation. It won’t be easy.

Naveena Sadasivam

Undoing the finding wouldn’t just dismantle the foundation of U.S. climate regulation — it might also weaken oil companies’ best legal defense in the flood of climate lawsuits brought against them by cities and states. For years, oil companies have relied on a different Supreme Court ruling to argue that federal law shields them from state lawsuits over climate change. In the 2011 ruling American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court found that because the EPA was already regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, states couldn’t separately sue polluters under federal “nuisance” law — a type of legal claim used when someone’s actions interfere with public rights, such as the right to a healthy environment.

The court’s reasoning was that Congress had delegated the task of regulating emissions to the EPA, leaving no room for federal courts to step in on making climate policy. But if the endangerment finding is revoked, and the EPA no longer regulates those emissions, that argument could fall apart, leaving fossil fuel companies vulnerable in courts across the country.

“There is great concern that reversing the finding would open the door to a lot more nuisance lawsuits against all types of energy companies,” Jeff Holmstead, a partner with energy law firm Bracewell, told E&E News earlier this year. The oil industry may then pursue a backup plan: Companies could ask Congress, which is currently controlled by a narrow Republican majority, to grant them legal protection from climate lawsuits, according to Parenteau.

Undoing the endangerment finding could leave fossil fuel companies navigating a patchwork of state laws instead of a single cohesive federal policy. If greenhouse gas emissions are no longer regulated under the Clean Air Act, states would presumably be free to make their own rules, Carlson added. Among other consequences, that could strengthen California’s case against the Trump administration over its right to place stricter-than-federal standards on vehicle emissions. “There’s potential for a lot of chaos,” she said. 

It’s possible that a more liberal presidential administration could one day reinstate the endangerment finding, even if Zeldin manages to revoke it. But it would be a while before that could translate to any meaningful action on climate change, according to Hoover.

“Unfortunately, for anyone who wants to see government solve a big problem, there’s very little you can achieve through regulations in four years,” he said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump’s EPA is attacking its own power to fight climate change on Jul 30, 2025.

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

In this new guide, Grist examines the impact these changes could have, and are already having, on the things you do every day. Flipping on your lights. Turning on your faucet. Paying household bills. Visiting a park. Checking the weather forecast. Feeding your family.

The decisions have left communities less safe from pollution, more vulnerable to climate disasters, and facing increasingly expensive energy bills, among other changes. Read on to see how.

— Katherine Bagley

Your Home

Flip on your lights:

Pulling back from renewable energy could make your electricity bills go up.

When Trump began his second term, it was with a vow to “unleash American energy.” But over the last six months, it’s become clear that this call to arms was meant strictly for fossil fuels, not the country’s booming renewable energy industry. Trump has issued a series of executive orders to revive coal production, and he has opened up millions of acres of public land to oil and gas drilling and issued a moratorium on offshore wind leases.

This commitment was deepened with the Republican-led One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law on July 4. It bolsters investment in fossil fuels while sunsetting Biden-era credits for electric vehicles, energy efficiency, and wind, solar, and green hydrogen. Climate and clean energy advocates described the bill as “historically ruinous” for renewables and a massive handout to the oil and gas industry. The problem: Power demand is rising sharply, and recent growth in renewable energy has been reliably and affordably meeting that demand.

All of this could soon impact Americans’ electricity bills: According to one analysis by the nonpartisan think tank Energy Innovation, by 2035 the One Big Beautiful Bill Act could spike wholesale electricity prices 74 percent by stifling renewable energy at a time when new capacity is needed, and raise consumer rates by 9 percent to 18 percent, or $170 annually.

— Rebecca Egan McCarthy

 

Turn on your faucet:

Regulatory delays will continue to allow PFAS to contaminate drinking water.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a class of manmade chemicals used to make everything from firefighting foam to nonstick cookware. Better known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down easily, the compounds have become ubiquitous in our lakes, soil, and even our own bodies. Roughly half the U.S. population consumes water tainted with PFAS. 

After years of mounting contamination and public outcry, the Environmental Protection Agency finally took steps to regulate the chemicals last year, establishing maximum levels for six PFAS types in drinking water. But in May, the Trump administration said it would rescind the existing rules and issue new ones for four of the chemicals, and delayed implementation of two others until 2031. 

Exposure to PFAS has been linked to decreased fertility, developmental delays in children, and reduced immune function.

— Naveena Sadasivam 

 

Check your weather forecast:

Funding and staff cuts are making it harder to track climate change and weather.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, provides critical scientific research on the Earth’s environment to U.S. communities and lawmakers. It houses the National Weather Service, which generates the data that makes weather forecasts possible, as well as the National Hurricane Center, which tracks tropical storms. 

In the first few months of Trump’s second term, his administration fired hundreds of NOAA employees, with plans to cut the agency’s workforce by a further 17 percent next year. NOAA has also taken steps to discontinue the collection of essential satellite data that forecasters use to track hurricanes once they form. 

Combined, these cuts could threaten lives: In June, John Morales, a longtime meteorologist in Miami, warned his viewers that “the quality of forecasts is becoming degraded” and that meteorologists may be “flying blind” with hurricane tracking this year due to the Trump administration’s “cuts, the gutting, the sledgehammer attack on science.”

— Matt Simon 

 

Run your appliances:

Disbanding energy-efficiency programs could increase your utility bills.

If you’re browsing for a new household appliance, like a dishwasher or washing machine, you might notice that some of them come equipped with a blue “Energy Star” label. The mark signifies that a machine meets a certain energy-efficiency standard, set by the federal government, and it allows consumers to choose appliances that can help keep utility bills low. Earlier this year, the EPA announced internally that it was planning to shut down the popular, voluntary program — though building and consumer advocates are now trying to save it.

If Energy Star is indeed over, it would mark the end of a program that saves American consumers some $40 billion annually in energy costs, or about $350 for every taxpayer dollar that goes into the program. 

The Department of Energy has also separately rolled back a slew of mandatory efficiency standards on appliances, ranging from microwaves to washers and dryers, dehumidifiers to ovens. Researchers estimate that the lower benchmarks could cost consumers $43 billion over 30 years of sales, due to increased electricity bills.

— Tik Root

 

Pay your bills:

Tariffs are disrupting supply chains and raising household costs.

Trump dubbed April 2 “Liberation Day” and imposed tariffs as high as 50 percent on nearly every country in the world, as well as several key commodities. Although he swiftly paused them for 90 days, the threat of reinstatement looms and some tariffs — on China, Canada, and aluminum — have already gone into effect, with higher prices on consumer goods like clothes, toys, and furniture. 

Companies generally pass the cost of tariffs on to their customers (even if Trump tells them not to). If Trump’s full, proposed tariffs ever do take effect, economists anticipate increased prices on everything from cars to electricity to building materials, the latter of which could also make natural disaster recovery and home insurance more expensive.

— Tik Root

 

Your Commute

Fill your gas tank:

Fuel-efficiency rollbacks could cost you more at the pump and worsen air quality.

Gas-powered cars have become more fuel efficient and less polluting over the years largely due to federal regulations. After the 2008 financial crash, the Obama administration used the bailout of the auto industry as leverage to impose stricter fuel-efficiency requirements, ensuring cars drive farther on less gas, thereby saving consumers money at the pump and reducing air pollution. The Biden administration later strengthened those rules, requiring that automakers sell passenger cars averaging 65 miles per gallon by 2031 — a one-third increase from 2024 standards. The threshold, which applies across an automaker’s product lines, was designed to gradually shift the industry toward electric vehicles, which do not release exhaust fumes or other tailpipe pollutants. 

In June, the Trump administration began the process of formally rescinding those rules. According to an estimate last year from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Biden-era rule would have saved $23 billion in fuel costs while also reducing emissions and pollution.

— Naveena Sadasivam

 

Drive your EV:

Loss of tax credits and cuts to federal program will make it harder to buy and drive an electric vehicle.

Under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, federal tax credits for the purchase or lease of an EV — of up to $7,500 for new cars and $4,000 for used — would run through 2032. But the One Big Beautiful Bill Act repealed those measures and cut the runway to only a few months. The erasure will likely make electric vehicles more expensive, which would put the technology further out of reach for many low- to moderate-income Americans. 

For those who still can buy an EV, finding a place to plug in could be difficult. In February, the Federal Highway Administration said it was suspending the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, or NEVI, program, which would have directed some $3 billion to states to expand the nation’s charging network. In June, a judge blocked that move and ordered the administration to unfreeze funds, but the court battle isn’t over.

— Tik Root

 

Take public transit:

A funding freeze is pausing certain train, bus, and bike lane projects.

For those who don’t exclusively rely on cars to get around, Trump’s second term has been none too kind on the buses, railways, and bike lanes that make up the country’s public transit system. Trump has relentlessly attacked New York City’s congestion pricing, designed to reduce traffic and raise funds for public transit, and threatened to cut public transit funding to major cities like New York and Chicago. 

In March, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy froze funds and ordered an investigation into any departmental grants that involve “equity analysis, green infrastructure, bicycle infrastructure, [and] EV and/or EV-charging infrastructure.” The directive also instructed employees to flag projects “that purposefully improve the condition for EJ [environmental justice] communities or actively reduce GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions.” The decision reverses Biden-era efforts to reduce the climate footprint of the transportation sector, which is America’s largest contributor to global warming, emitting over 1.8 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases per year. 

— Sophie Hurwitz

 

Your Food

Buy groceries:

New tariffs could raise your grocery bill.

The Trump administration’s whiplash approach to a wide swath of exorbitant tariffs on other countries has sowed confusion among consumers, manufacturers, and agricultural growers. 

Although Mexico and the U.S. briefly appeared to reach an agreement, Trump is now threatening a 30 percent tariff on all Mexican imports, and a 17 percent rate on Mexican tomato imports has already gone into effect. Other tariffs could drive costs up even higher: Trump’s 50 percent steel and aluminum imports could hike up the price of canned foods, for example. And country-specific tariffs could increase the prices of imported goods like coffee and chocolate.

— Frida Garza

 

Get food assistance:

Funding cuts are leaving people hungry.

Local food systems and national food safety nets have been decimated by recent federal cuts. In March, after freezing nearly two dozen streams of funding, the Department of Agriculture cancelled future rounds of the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program and the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program. The two initiatives were slated to dole out roughly a billion dollars to states, tribes, and territories to reduce food insecurity. As a result, the USDA’s Emergency Food Assistance Program’s deliveries to food banks and soup kitchens have been reduced or cancelled entirely; kids in schools and lower-income families have less access to affordable meals; and agricultural producers across the country have been forced to lay off employees, delay projects, or shut down entirely.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act made unprecedented cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, a federal program that helps nearly 42 million Americans afford groceries. The cuts are further poised to increase food insecurity across the country at a time when persistently high food costs, fueled in part by worsening climate disasters, are among most Americans’ biggest economic concerns.

— Ayurella Horn-Muller 

 

Eat safe food:

Federal job cuts are disrupting food safety programs.

The Trump administration cut 20,000 jobs from the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention— two agencies that monitor and respond to foodborne illness outbreaks. Although some employees were later reinstated, the FDA has paused multiple initiatives due to staff shortages, including a quality control program that keeps the agency’s network of food-testing laboratories running efficiently. The FDA also paused its quality-testing program for milk and suspended a program to test milk and cheese for bird flu just before the program launched. Meanwhile, the USDA axed a proposed Biden-era rule to reduce salmonella risk in poultry.

The U.S. food supply is one of the safest in the world, but experts say these cuts threaten to disrupt that system and undercut its ability to keep consumers safe in the long term.

— Frida Garza

 

Support local farmers:

Funding cuts are leaving small farmers in the lurch, threatening locally sourced food supplies. 

Federal agricultural policy has centered on two major priorities during the early months of the second Trump administration: First is the slashing of federal food and agriculture funding, which has left small producers struggling to stay afloat. Second is giving farmers who grow traditional commodities such as corn, cotton, and soybeans multibillion-dollar bailouts. This strategy first became clear when the USDA began freezing and cutting billions of dollars to programs that supported the purchasing of goods from small and midsize farms. Then, the agency expedited disaster subsidies — funds meant to help agricultural producers recover from extreme weather — for commodity farmers. The decision funneled economic aid away from small producers into the pockets of industrial-scale operations. 

With the strain of an agricultural recession looming over regions like the Midwest, experts see these moves by the administration ultimately leading to the loss of many more small American farms, which would disrupt local economies and limit access to fresh food.

— Ayurella Horn-Muller

 

Your Community

Take a breath:

Regulatory rollbacks could make air quality worse.

From rally stages to debate podiums, Trump repeatedly promised to deliver “clean air and clean water” if elected to a second term. He broke that promise almost from Day 1. Trump’s EPA is carrying out a massive deregulatory agenda, much of it focused on rolling back protections for the air we breathe. It rescinded billions of dollars in funding for a range of air quality initiatives, including clean energy projects and monitoring efforts in low-income and minority communities, though a judge ultimately ruled the latter unlawful. At the same time, the administration has also dramatically reduced the number of cases it brings against polluters. It even set up an email inbox soliciting requests from companies seeking exemptions from a range of clean air rules.

The agency has also taken steps to roll back limits on carbon dioxide and mercury emissions from power plants and methane emissions from oil and gas fields, which drive climate change and threaten human health. And in July, it repealed the “endangerment finding” — the landmark legal determination that classifies greenhouse gases as air pollutants and gives the EPA authority to regulate them.

— Naveena Sadasivam

 

Prepare for extreme weather:

Cancelled grant programs are making communities less resilient to natural disasters.

This spring, the Trump administration cancelled the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, program — an initiative that sends billions of dollars to communities, municipalities, and states proactively so that they can prepare for natural disasters before they hit. The program funds projects like burying power lines, building culverts, and upgrading power stations to make them more resilient to extreme weather. 

Trump canceled $750 million in new resilience funding and clawed back nearly $900 million in grant funding provided to BRIC by the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, money that was already approved but not yet disbursed. The abrupt move ultimately led to the disruption of $3.6 billion in planned resilience spending across the U.S. — the kinds of projects that help protect people from flooding, wildfires, hurricanes, and more at a time when climate change is increasing their severity and frequency. Under Trump, FEMA also cancelled $600 million in flood-mitigation assistance funding to communities this year.

— Zoya Teirstein

 

Go outdoors:

A defunding campaign is threatening our shared spaces.

The future of public lands, parks, and forests in the U.S. is in the midst of a dramatic reshaping by Republicans, risking permanent changes to the environment and how we experience the outdoors. The Trump administration has fired a thousand National Park Service workers, hindering conservation efforts and leaving parks unable to accommodate the millions of visitors they typically welcome each summer. The administration also stripped protections for nearly 60 million acres of national forest and identified millions of acres eligible for potential oil and gas development. And a growing movement among Republican lawmakers and the administration would sell off millions of acres of public lands for housing and energy development — a policy opposed by 74 percent of Americans. 

In June, the Department of Justice granted the president the authority to revoke national monument designations, a status that marks land as permanently protected. The move threatens sites such as Bears Ears in Utah and the Sáttítla Highlands in California — two monuments that Trump has singled out in particular — which are significant to tribes and illustrate the complex history of U.S. public lands as stolen land.

— Miacel Spotted Elk

 

Wildlife watching:

New definitions are weakening species protections.

For decades, the Endangered Species Act recognized that in order to protect animals, it was vital to save the habitats they live in. The policy has led to the rebound of iconic species like the bald eagle, grizzly bears, grey wolves, and panthers, and it has protected millions of acres from development. But in April, the Trump administration proposed a new definition of the word “harm” that scientists, legal experts, and conservationists warn will hamstring the act’s effectiveness. 

Instead of the Endangered Species Act regulating activities that indirectly impact endangered or threatened species, like drilling in the spawning grounds of Atlantic sturgeon or logging forests that are home to a rare owl, the law will now only consider direct, intentional harm to the animal itself — killing, hurting, or capturing it. The rule change comes at a time when climate change and land use decisions increasingly threaten ecosystems and the animals that rely on them.

— Katherine Bagley 

 

Protect your health:

An attack on science is hindering research on public health.

The federal government has hemorrhaged more than 50,000 employees since Trump was reelected in January, including many who play crucial roles in keeping American waters and air safe from pollutants and disease-causing organisms. A quarter of the staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention alone were fired, leaving gaping holes across an agency tasked with keeping tabs on the movement of pathogens across the nation. The EPA is in the midst of a defunding and deregulation campaign, including the elimination of its research division, all of which limits its ability to oversee polluters. And the National Institutes of Health is rebranding its research on the intersection of climate change and public health, now focusing solely on extreme weather and excluding any mental health work.

— Zoya Teirstein

 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump’s environmental policies are reshaping everyday life. Here’s how. on Jul 30, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Grist staff.

A new report authored by Public Citizen Health Care Policy Advocate Eagan Kemp highlights the dangers posed by the men and women whom Trump has put in charge of our health care agencies and the threat they pose to patients, providers and the programs on which they rely.

The report includes details on:

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s promotion of conspiracy theory and dangerous anti-science views before his confirmation and during his early months as head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
• Mehmet Oz’s dangerous views on privatization of Medicare and conflicts of interest, and his early efforts to undermine the programs he is supposed to protect as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
• Jim O’Neill’s fringe views and significant ties to for-profit biomedical companies and the dangers they could pose as he serves as Deputy Secretary of HHS.
• Casey Means’s lack of qualifications for Surgeon General and misinformed and conspiratorial thinking on public health issues.

“Trump has nominated unqualified and dangerous people to serve in the most important health positions in the country,” said Kemp “From massive cuts to Medicaid and the ACA, layoffs of key staff, and failures to adequately engage with real emergencies, like the ongoing measles outbreak, America is reaping the bitter fruit of Trump’s terrible cabal. It is clear the Trump Administration will continue to exacerbate existing gaps in our health care system and risk millions more lives. People across the country are already pushing back against their terrible actions, and this must continue if we are to correct course and take back our health care system.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Vietnam, the world’s second-largest exporter of coffee, is known for growing robusta beans. Earthier and more bitter than the arabica beans grown in Brazil, Colombia, and other coffee-growing regions near the Equator, robusta beans are often thought of as producing lower-quality coffee. 

In an effort to rebrand robusta, Mullin signed deals with coffee farming cooperatives in Vietnam and created smooth blends. Over the years, she helped a cohort of farmers convert their operations to organic. “We put in huge investments and were certified as the first organic specialty-grade coffee farms ever in Vietnam,” said the CEO and founder. In a few weeks, Copper Cow is planning to launch its first line of organic coffee at Whole Foods and Target.

But the second Trump administration has changed the calculus of her business. Mullin said she “was bullish” about her company’s prospects when President Donald Trump first took office, believing that Vietnam would likely be exempt from exorbitant tariffs since the president has many supporters in the coastal Southeast Asian country. Then, in April of this year, the White House announced a 46 percent tariff on goods from Vietnam. 

The shock left Mullin rethinking the very thesis she had set out to prove. “A big part of our mission is about how robusta beans, when treated better, can provide this really great cup of coffee at a lower price,” she said. “Once you put a 46 percent tariff on there, does this business model work anymore?”

Trump soon paused his country-specific tariffs for a few months, replacing them with a near-universal 10 percent tax. This month, Trump announced on social media that he would lower Vietnam’s eventual tariff from 46 to 20 percent — a sharp price hike that still worries Mullin. Meanwhile, Trump has threatened to impose an astounding 50 percent tariff on goods from Brazil, the nation’s largest importer of coffee, starting August 1. 

“I joke with my partner that I feel like I’m in a macroeconomics class,” said Mullin. In lieu of raising its prices, Copper Cow, which sells directly to consumers as well as to retailers, has scrambled to cut costs by reconsidering its quarterly team get-togethers and slowing down its timeline for helping more farmers go organic. The price of coffee hit an all-time high earlier this year, a dramatic rise due in part to ongoing climate-fueled droughts in the global coffee belt. As the U.S. considers fueling a trade war with coffee-producing countries, “it just feels like such an insult to an injury,” said Mullin. “It’s like, let’s have an earthquake hit a place that is in the middle of a hurricane.”

Economists like to say that demand for coffee is relatively inelastic — drinkers are so attached to their daily caffeine fix that they keep buying it even when prices increase. As the Trump administration mounts its retaliatory trade agenda, that theory will be put to the test. Coffee growers, as well as the roasters and sellers that purchase them in the U.S., are now facing unforeseen geopolitical and economic challenges. “We have not seen tariffs of this magnitude before,” said David Ortega, a professor of food and economics policy at Michigan State University. “There’s no playbook for this.” 

Should Trump’s threatened tariffs go into effect next month, it will likely hurt consumers, as many businesses will pass on the costs by raising prices. But it could also have ripple effects on coffee farms, as companies may cut costs by pulling back on investments in environmentally-conscientious practices like organic or regenerative agriculture. “Our goal was always to slowly convert the rest of our products to certified organic,” said Mullin. “And we feel like that is not an option anymore because of the tariffs.”

Even if the tariffs do not go into effect in August, the ongoing economic uncertainty will likely impact coffee growers in Brazil, which provided 35 percent of America’s unroasted coffee supply as of 2023. As U.S. coffee companies navigate the Trump administration’s evolving trade policies, they are likely to seek out new, cheaper markets for coffee beans. “Suddenly, they become less attached to where they source their coffee from,” said João Brites, director of growth and innovation at HowGood, a data platform that helps food companies measure and reduce carbon emissions along their supply chain. 

The problem with that, according to Ortega, is that other countries in the coffee belt, such as Colombia, do not have the production capacity to match Brazil’s and meet U.S. demand for coffee. If the threat of punitive tariffs on Brazil kickstarts an increase in demand for coffee from other countries, that will likely raise prices. For coffee drinkers, “there are very few substitutes,” said Ortega.

These pressures on coffee farmers and buyers are coming after a period of worsening climate impacts. A majority of coffee grown in Brazil — about 60 percent — comes from smallholder farms, grown on about 25 or fewer acres of land. “The current reality they’re operating in is that they’re already very stretched,” particularly because of weather disruptions, said Brites. Coffee grows best in tropical climates, but in recent years unprecedented droughts in Brazil have stunted growers’ yields, forcing exporters to dip into and almost deplete their coffee reserves. Vietnam has been rocked by drought and heat waves — and though robusta beans need less water to grow than arabica beans, making them a relatively climate-resilient crop, growers have also seen their yields decline. (Mullin said she is seeing early signs of harvests rebounding this year.)

Brites speculated that U.S. companies buying from smallholder farms in Brazil may be able to pressure growers into selling their beans at lower prices, adding to the economic precarity that these growers face. “For a lot of these coffee growers, the U.S. is such a big market,” he said, adding that it would take time for them to find new buyers in other markets.

Growers themselves are worried. Mariana Veloso, a Brazilian coffee producer and exporter, said producers are facing logistical challenges — and anticipating more. “If we want to ship a coffee in the next month, we will probably not be able to,” said Veloso, remarking that sometimes cargo ships holding coffee sit at Brazilian ports for weeks before setting out. Shipping companies seem to be delaying shipments from Brazil, said Veloso, perhaps in anticipation of the looming tariffs.

In the U.S., not every coffee company sources from Brazil or Vietnam. But the Trump administration’s existing 10 percent across-the-board tariffs are still rattling the coffee business. “We source coffees from all around the world. So we’re not immune to anything,” said Kevin Hartley, founder and CEO of Cambio Roasters, an aluminum K-cup coffee brand. He added, “You know, 10 percent here and 30 percent there, that’s not trivial.”

Hartley added that one of the impacts of droughts on coffee growers is that younger farmers worried about the future are considering leaving the business. “In coffee farming families around the world, it’s a tough life and the current generation is showing reticence to take off where their parents began,” he said. 

Regardless of whether the U.S. imposes prohibitive tariffs on individual coffee-growing countries, climate change is already taking a toll on this workforce. “Everyone’s looking for a solution for this,” said Mullin, who believes robusta beans can offer a drought-resistant alternative to the ever-popular arabica beans. 

Copper Cow has even started experimenting with a lesser-known varietal of coffee beans called liberica, which requires even less water to grow than robusta beans. “And it’s delicious,” Mullin said. It’s an extremely labor-intensive crop because the coffee plant grows so tall, but one of the farmer cooperatives she works with is starting to plant them now, thinking the investment will be worth it as temperatures keep rising. 

This new era of environmental, economic, and geopolitical challenges has shaken coffee brands. “Everybody’s wondering, in 50 years, will there be much coffee anymore? People are trying to be really realistic about what that world is going to look like,” said Mullin. In the midst of that broader uncertainty, the impact of Trump’s tariffs is another question only time can answer.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Climate change has sent coffee prices soaring. Trump’s tariffs will send them higher. on Jul 29, 2025.

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

Under Donald Trump’s FBI Director Kash Patel, federal attention to tracking far‑right groups has reportedly waned, enabling neo-Nazi, militia and accelerationist groups to mobilize and recruit new members more openly and easily. One of the most active of these  groups is The Base, a violent paramilitary network that promotes accelerationism; a doctrine calling on followers to hasten the collapse of society through acts of terrorism.

As the Guardian recently reported, “In its early history, part of what first piqued the interest of authorities was the Base’s courting of military veterans who could help drill its foot soldiers in a series of training camps across the US. Eventually implicated in an assassination plot, mass shootings and other actions in Europe, the Base went so far as to have a fortified compound and cell in Michigan, led by a US army dropout.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Berkowitz.

Under Donald Trump’s FBI Director Kash Patel, federal attention to tracking far‑right groups has reportedly waned, enabling neo-Nazi, militia and accelerationist groups to mobilize and recruit new members more openly and easily. One of the most active of these  groups is The Base, a violent paramilitary network that promotes accelerationism; a doctrine calling on followers to hasten the collapse of society through acts of terrorism.

As the Guardian recently reported, “In its early history, part of what first piqued the interest of authorities was the Base’s courting of military veterans who could help drill its foot soldiers in a series of training camps across the US. Eventually implicated in an assassination plot, mass shootings and other actions in Europe, the Base went so far as to have a fortified compound and cell in Michigan, led by a US army dropout.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Berkowitz.

Of the critical pieces, only three (one in the Times and two in USA Today) opposed the idea on legal or moral grounds, challenging the idea that the United States has a right to attack a country that had not attacked it.

This opposition rate of less than a fifth is in stark contrast to US public opinion on the matter, which showed that 56% of Americans opposed Trump’s bombing. Why wasn’t this reflected in the range of opinions presented by America’s top press outlets? These numbers highlight just how poorly represented the views of the public are in elite media.

‘Trump’s courageous and correct decision’

Bret Stephens (New York Times, 6/22/25) argued that bombing Iran without any evidence the country intended to build a nuclear weapon was “the essence of statesmanship.”

FAIR looked at all opinion pieces in the four papers that addressed Trump’s strikes on Iran, from June 21 through June 24. Forty-seven percent (17) explicitly praised Trump’s unauthorized act of war.

Many of these cheered the aggressive assertion of US power. The New York Times’ Bret Stephens (6/22/25) lauded “Trump’s Courageous and Correct Decision,” which “deserves respect, no matter how one feels about this president and the rest of his policies.” At the Washington Post, David Ignatius (6/22/25) offered similar praise under the headline, “Trump’s Iran Strike Was Clear and Bold,” and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board (6/22/25) declared, “Trump Meets the Moment on Iran.”

USA Today (6/22/25) published columnist Nicole Russell’s “Trump Warned Iran. Then He Acted Boldly to Protect America.” The headline was later changed to an even more laudatory: “Trump Was Right to Bomb Iran. Even Democrats Will Be Safer Because of It.”  In a Wall Street Journal guest column (6/24/25), Karen Elliott House celebrated the “restor[ation] of US deterrence and credibility.”

Some directly attempted to defend the strikes’ legality. In a Post guest column (6/23/25), Geoffrey Corn, Claire Finkelstein and Orde Kittrie claimed to explain “Why Trump Didn’t Have to Ask Congress Before Striking Iran.” The piece relied extensively on the playground rhetorical tool of if they did it, why can’t I?, confidently listing earlier US presidents’ attacks that defied constitutional law, as if past violations justify the current one.

They asserted that “the operation also derives support from international law as an exercise of collective self-defense in defense of Israel,” ignoring the fact that international law does not allow you to “defend” yourself against a country that hasn’t attacked you—let alone the illogical formulation of the US engaging in “self-defense” on behalf of another country.

For the Wall Street Journal‘s art department (6/24/25), war is peace.

USA Today columnist Dace Potas (6/22/25), who called the attacks “strategically the right move and a just action,” also defended the constitutionality of Trump’s strikes, attacking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s call to impeach Trump over the strikes:

If the president is not able to respond to a hostile regime building weapons that could destroy entire American cities, then I’m not sure what else, short of an actual invasion of the homeland, would allow for him to act.

That’s the thing about self-defense, though—it’s supposed to involve an attack.

Journal columnist Gerard Baker (6/23/25), who called the attack “judicious and pragmatic,” likewise pointed to Iran’s nuclear program, claiming that “no one seriously doubts the Iran nuclear threat”—despite both US intelligence and the International Agency for Atomic Energy concluding otherwise.

Yet another angle came from Times columnist Thomas Friedman (6/22/25), who argued that the “Attacks on Iran Are Part of a Much Bigger Global Struggle”—between the forces of “inclusion,” who believe in “more decent, if not democratic, governance,” and the forces of “resistance,” who “thrive on resisting those trends because conflict enables them to keep their people down.” Friedman called Trump’s strikes “necessary” for the right side to “triumph” in this good-vs-evil struggle.

Questions without criticism

The New York Times (6/22/25) figures you can’t go wrong by asserting total ignorance.

Of the remaining opinion pieces, ten accepted the strikes as a fait accompli and offered analysis that mostly speculated about the future and offered no anti-bombing pushback.

For instance, the Wall Street Journal published a commentary (6/23/25) asking “Can Iran Strike Back Effectively?” A New York Times op-ed (6/22/25) by security consultant Colin P. Clarke speculated about “How Iran Might Strike Back.”

The Times also published columnist W.J. Hennigan’s piece (6/22/25) that warned that “We Have No Idea Where This War Will Go.” Hennigan speculated: “It’s almost certain we haven’t seen the end of US military action in this war,” but he did not indicate whether this might be a good or bad thing.

Others were slightly more wary, such as a Times op-ed (6/23/25) headlined “What Bombs Can’t Do In Iran.” The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Karim Sadjadpour asked, “Will this extraordinary act of war strengthen Tehran’s authoritarians or hasten their demise?” Sadjadpour tells readers that “while military strikes may expose an authoritarian regime’s weaknesses, they rarely create the conditions necessary for lasting democratic change”—yet he offers support for both possible outcomes.

Similarly, the Washington Post (6/22/25) published a triple-bylined opinion piece debating the question: “Will the US/Iran Conflict Spin Out of Control?” Participant Jason Rezaian did not criticize the bombing itself, only the lack of strategy around it, judging that Trump’s idea of “decimating Iran’s defenses and then letting them stay in power to terrorize their citizens, dissidents and opponents around the world would be a massive failure” and concluding, “my concern is that there is no plan to speak of.”

Attacking Trump, supporting war

Criticizing Donald Trump’s decision-making process, USA Today‘s Rex Huppke (6/22/25) assures readers that “of course” he hopes the bombing of Iran is “successful.”

Of the seven articles that criticized Trump’s actions, more were critical of Trump and his personality or disregard of procedure than were opposed to the illegal and aggressive actions of an empire. Three of these came from USA Today’s Rex Huppke. His first column (6/21/25) argued that “Trump may have just hurled America into war because he was mad nobody liked his recent military parade.”

His second piece (6/22/25) accused Trump of starting the war based on “vibes,” and rightly attacked the credibility of the administration, citing the numerous contradictory or false statements from US and Israeli officials. However, that column made it clear that Huppke hoped for a successful strike on Iran, even as he acknowledged it could end in “disaster”:

If Trump’s bombing of Iran proves successful—and I, of course, hope it does—it’ll be dumb luck. But if it leads to disaster, it’ll be exactly what anyone paying attention to these reckless hucksters predicted.

At the New York Times, former Biden Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote a guest column (6/24/25) under the headline: “Trump’s Iran Strike Was a Mistake. I Hope It Succeeds.” Blinken’s primary issue with Trump’s attack was that Blinken deemed it ineffective; his secondary concern was that his own State Department achievements were being overlooked: “Mr. Trump’s actions were possible only because of the work of the Obama and Biden administrations.”

‘International authoritarianism’

It’s telling that a piece (New York Times, 6/23/25) arguing that Trump’s airstrikes were illegal has to go on to explain why that’s bad.

Of the 36 editorials and opinion pieces published by the top papers on the Iran bombing, only three (8%) explicitly opposed the bombing on legal or moral grounds. The New York Times and USA Today ran opinions grounded in legal arguments. USA Today also published human rights attorney Yasmin Z. Vafa on the human toll of this war on the citizens of Iran.

In her Times op-ed (6/23/25), Yale Law School professor Oona A. Hathaway points out that the attacks were not only unconstitutional, but in violation of international law, as Trump did not seek approval from either Congress or the UN Security Council. Hathaway was the sole opinion writer to describe Trump’s illegal actions with the same diction usually reserved for America’s enemies:

The seeming rise of authoritarianism at home is precipitating a kind of international authoritarianism, in which the American president can unleash the most powerful military the world has ever known on a whim.

USA Today‘s Chris Brennan (6/24/25) also emphasized Trump’s lack of congressional approval under the headline: “There’s a Legal Way to Go to War. Trump Flouting the Constitution Isn’t It.”

The same day in USA Today (6/24/25), Vafa—an Iranian refugee herself—brought a human angle to this conflict that is unfortunately hard to come by in the top papers’ pages. She wrote: “This kind of violence doesn’t happen in theory. It happens in living rooms. In kitchens. In schoolyards and in hospitals.”

Vafa not only raised the US’s history of destabilization in the Middle East, she also contextualized these kinds of attacks’ role in creating the refugee crises that right-wingers then use to create moral panics. “We are here because you were there,” she wrote.

The people speak 

The New York Times letters page (6/22/25) once again demonstrated that the paper is well to the right of its readership.

The New York Times (6/22/25) did publish a series of letters to the editor from their readers on “The Consequences of US Strikes in Iran.” Unlike the professional columnists, many of these readers were explicitly against the bombing. One letter began: “Once again our government has launched a war against a nation that has not attacked the United States.”

Another writer wrote:

Whether President Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities has postponed one danger or not, it has surely destroyed the effort to limit nuclear proliferation. The damage is incalculable.

Another wrote: “By crossing the line and attacking Iran, the United States should not be under the misconception that it has made a step toward peace.”

In fact, the only pro-bombing letter the Times published in the package was not written by an average citizen, but by Aviva Klompas, identified by the Times as “a former speechwriter for Israel.”

The Big Lie this time

Every big US aggression is sold by a Big Lie, told over and over again by policy makers and repeated ad nauseam in the press. US interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Ukraine have all been sold to the public based on Big Lies.

This time for US newspaper columnists, the Big Lie is twofold: firstly, that Iran was rejecting negotiations in favor of building a bomb; secondly, that Iran wants to build a bomb to destroy Israel. These lies rely not only on ignorance, but also on a media apparatus that repeats them until they’re accepted as an uncontested premise for all discussion.

As FAIR (10/17/17, 6/23/25) has described in the past, these claims have no basis in fact. Iran, which has long been in favor of a nuclear weapons–free Middle East, has  attempted to negotiate a stable deal with the West for over a decade. Hindering this are Israel’s insistence on its undeclared nuclear arsenal, as well as both Trump and Biden’s rejection of the deal negotiated under Obama. Even if that weren’t the case, there’s no indication whatsoever that Iran, should it produce a nuclear bomb, would commit national suicide by attacking Israel with it.

These misrepresentations are made all the more egregious by the fact that there is a Mideastern country that has rejected the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which occupies neighboring lands under military dictatorship, regularly attacks and violates treaties with its neighbors, has proven repeatedly to be a bad-faith negotiator, is currently committing an internationally recognized genocide, and does all this in the name of rights given to them by God. That country is Israel. If the columnists at leading US newspapers had any consistency, they would be calling for Trump to launch a surprise attack on Israel’s nuclear facilities and stockpiles.

But they don’t do this, because they either don’t know or don’t care about the relevant history. They’re all willing to uncritically manufacture consent for the US empire.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Bryce Greene.

The nature of that misconduct lay in foreign students supposedly engaged in any number of scurrilous acts vaguely described as “known illegal activity”, “known dangerous and violent activity”, “known threats to other students or university personnel”, “known deprivation of rights of other classmates or university personnel”, and whether those activities “occurred on campus”. Harvard had failed to provide any useful data on the “disciplinary records” of such students. (The information on the three miscreants supplied in the lists was not just inadequate but useless.) Just to make Trump foam further, Harvard had “also developed extensive entanglements with foreign countries, including our adversaries” and flouted “the civil rights of students and faculty, triggering multiple Federal investigations.” While the proclamation avoids explicitly mentioning it, the throbbing subtext here is the caricatured concern that the university has not adequately addressed antisemitism.

In various splenetic statements, the President has made no secret of his views on the university. On Truth Social, we find him berating the institution for “hiring almost all woke, Radical left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’”. The university was also hectored through April by the multi-agency Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism to alter its governance processes, admissions and hiring policies, and academic programs. The administration demanded via an April 11 letter to Harvard’s president that a third party be hired to “audit” the views of students, faculty, and staff to satisfy government notions of “viewpoint diversity” that would also include the expulsion of specific students and the review of “faculty hires”.  Extraordinarily, the administration demanded that the audit “proceed on a department-by-department, field-by-field, or teaching-unit-by-teaching-unit basis as appropriate.” Harvard’s refusal to accede to such demands led to a freezing of over $2.2 billion in federal funding.

On May 22, the Department of Homeland Security cancelled Harvard’s means of enrolling students through the SEVP program or employing J-1 non-immigrants under the Exchange Visitor Program (EVP). In its May 23 filing in the US District Court for Massachusetts, the university contended that such actions violated the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause, and the Administrative Procedure Act.  They were “in clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students.”

The June 4 proclamation proved to be another sledgehammer wielded by the executive, barring non-immigrants from pursuing “a course of study at Harvard University [under the SEVP program] or to participate in an exchange visitor program hosted by Harvard University”.  The university successfully secured a temporary restraining order on June 5, preventing the revocation from taking effect. On June 23, US District Judge Allison D. Burroughs granted the university’s request for a preliminary injunction, extending the temporary order. “The case,” wrote Burroughs, “is about core constitutional rights that must be safeguarded: freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of speech, each of which is a pillar of a functioning democracy and an essential hedge against authoritarianism.” The “misplaced efforts” by the government “to control a reputable academic institution and squelch diverse viewpoints seemingly because they are, in some instances, opposed to this Administration’s own views, threaten these rights.”

On July 21, the parties again clashed, this time over the issue of restoring the funds frozen in federal research grants. Burroughs made no immediate decision on the matter but barely hid her scepticism about the government’s actions and inclinations. “If you can make decisions for reasons oriented around free speech,” she put to Justice Department senior attorney Michael Velchik, “the consequences are staggering to me.”

Harvard’s attorney Steve Lehotsky also argued that the demands of the government impaired the university’s autonomy, going beyond even that of dealing with antisemitism. These included audits of viewpoint diversity among faculty and students, as well as changes to the admissions and hiring processes. The demands constituted “a blatant, unrepentant violation of the First Amendment.” The issue of withdrawing funding was also argued to be a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which requires an investigation, the holding of a hearing, and the release of findings before such a decision is made.

Velchik, very much in the mood for sophistry, made less of the antisemitism issue than that of contractual interpretation. Under government contracts with institutions, language always existed that permitted the withdrawal of funding at any time.

If Trump were serious about the MAGA brand, then attacking universities, notably those like Harvard, must count as an act of monumental self-harm. Such institutions are joined hip and all to the military-industrial-education complex, keeping America gorged with its complement of engineers, scientists, and imperial propagandists.

Harvard has also shown itself willing to march to the music of the Israel lobby, which happily provides funds for the institution. The extent of that influence was made clear by a decision by the university’s own Kennedy School to deny a fellowship to Kenneth Roth, the former head of Human Rights Watch, in early 2023. While the decision by the morally flabby dean, Douglas Elmendorf, was reversed following much outrage, the School had displayed its gaudy colours. Little wonder, given the presence of the Wexner Foundation, which is responsible for sponsoring the attendance of top-ranked Israeli generals and national security experts in a Master’s Degree program in public administration at the university.

Trump is partially right to claim that universities and their governance structures are in need of a severe dusting down. But he has shown no interest in identifying the actual problem. How wonderful, yet unlikely, it would be to see actual reforms in university policies that demilitarize funding in favor of an enlightened curriculum that abhors war.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Yet recent research from Food & Water Watch details the immense and potentially catastrophic impact on water and energy resources an unfettered AI industry could have on communities across the country – especially those in the West that are already suffering through a decade or more of extreme drought. Energy demand from AI servers and data centers in the U.S. is expected to increase up to threefold between 2023 and 2028. Among the report’s findings, by 2028 AI in the United States could consume:

• 720 billion gallons of water annually just to cool AI servers — equal to more than 1 million Olympic-size swimming pools, or enough water to meet the indoor needs of 18.5 million American households.
• 300 terawatt-hours (TWh) of energy annually — enough electricity to power over 28 million American households.

Meanwhile:

• As of 2024, ChatGPT used over half a million kilowatts of electricity each day, equivalent to the daily power use of 180,000 U.S. households.
• One Meta-owned data center consumes as much power as 7 million laptops running for eight hours each day.
• In Santa Clara Ca., 50 data centers account for 60 percent of the city’s electricity use, while receiving discounted rates on electricity compared to residential rates.

In response, Food & Water Watch’s managing director of policy and litigation, Mitch Jones, made the following statement:

“At its core, President Trump’s AI agenda is nothing more than a thinly-veiled invitation for the fossil fuel and corporate water industries to ramp up their exploitation of our environment and natural resources – all at the expense of everyday people. In communities across the country we are already seeing precious water and energy supplies being diverted to massive data centers, while homes and small businesses are paying ballooning costs for their regular utility needs.

“The expanding data center industry is being leveraged as an excuse to prolong the life of filthy, climate-killing fossil fuel power and dangerous nuclear plants, and even build new ones.

“America’s technological advancements must not come at the expense of everyday families’ water, energy and economic security – plain and simple.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Call it the “new cold war,” the “beginning of World War III,” or – in Trump’s words – “endless war,” this is the era that the world has entered. The US/Zionist war against Iran has paused, but no one has any illusions that it is over. And it won’t likely be resolved until one side decisively and totally prevails. Ditto for the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. Likely the same with Palestine, where the barbarity of war worsened to genocide. Meanwhile, since Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” the empire is building up for war with China.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the empire’s war on the world assumes a hybrid form. The carnage is less apparent because the weapons take the form of “soft power” – sanctions, tariffs, and deportations. These can have the same lethal consequences as bombs, only less overt.

Making the world unsafe for socialism

Some Western leftists vilify the defensive measures that Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua must take to protect themselves from the empire’s regime-change schemes. In contrast, Washington clearly understands that these countries pose “threats of a good example” to the empire. Each subsequent US president, from Obama on, has certified them as “extraordinary threats to US national security.” Accordingly, they are targeted with the harshest coercive measures.

In this war of attrition, historian Isaac Saney uses the example of Cuba to show how any misstep by the revolutionary government or societal deficiency is exaggerated and weaponized. The empire’s siege, he explains, is not merely an attempt to destabilize the economy but is a deliberate strategy of suffocation. The empire aims to instigate internal discontent, distort people’s perception of the government, and ultimately erode social gains.

While Cuba is affected the worst by the hybrid war, both Venezuela and Nicaragua have also been damaged. All three countries have seen the “humanitarian parole” for their migrants in the US come to an end. Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was also withdrawn for Venezuelans and Nicaraguans. The strain of returning migrants, along with cuts in the remittances they had sent (amounting to a quarter of Nicaragua’s GDP), further impacts their respective economies.

Higher-than-average tariffs are threatened on Venezuelan and Nicaraguan exports to the US, together with severe restrictions on Caracas’s oil exports. Meanwhile, the screws have been tightened on the six-decade US blockade of Cuba with disastrous humanitarian consequences.

However, all three countries are fighting back. They are forming new trade alliances with China and elsewhere. Providing relief to Cuba, Mexico has supplied oil, and China is installing solar panel farms to address the now-daily power outages. High levels of food security in Venezuela and Nicaragua have strengthened their ability to resist US sanctions, while Caracas successfully defeated one of Washington’s harshest migration measures by securing the release of 252 of its citizens who had been incarcerated in El Salvador’s torturous CECOT prison.

Venezuela’s US-backed far-right opposition is in disarray. The first Trump administration had recognized the “interim presidency” of Juan Guaidó, followed by the Biden administration declaring Edmundo González the winner of Venezuela’s last presidential election. But the current Trump administration has yet to back González, de facto recognizing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition is also reeling from a side-effect of Trump’s harsh treatment of migrants – many are returning voluntarily to a country claimed by the opposition to be “unsafe,” while US Homeland Security has even extolled their home country’s recent achievements. And some of Trump’s prominent Cuban-American supporters are now questioning his “maximum pressure” campaign for going too far.

Troubled waters for the Pink Tide

The current progressive wave, the so-called Pink Tide, was initiated by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s landslide victory in 2018. His MORENA Party successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, won by an even greater margin in 2024. Mexico’s first woman president has proven to be perhaps the world’s most dignified and capable sparring partner with the buffoon in the White House, who has threatened tariffs, deportations, military interdictions, and more on his southern neighbor.

Left-leaning presidents Gabriel Boric in Chile and Gustavo Petro in Colombia are limited to a single term. Both have faced opposition-aligned legislatures and deep-rooted reactionary power blocs. Chilean Communist Party candidate Jeanette Jara is favored to advance to the second-round presidential election in November 2025, but will face a challenging final round if the right unifies, as is likely, around an extremist candidate.

As the first non-rightist in Colombia’s history, Petro has had a tumultuous presidential tenure. He credibly accuses his former foreign minister of colluding with the US to overthrow him. However, the presidency could well revert to the right in the May 2026 elections.

Boric, Petro, Uruguay’s Yamandú Orsi, and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met in July as the region’s center-left presidents, with an agenda of dealing with Trump, promoting multilateralism, and (we can assume) keeping their distance from the region’s more left-wing governments.

With shaky popularity ratings, Lula will likely run for reelection in October 2026. As head of the region’s largest economy, Lula plays a world leadership role, chairing three global summits in a year. Yet, with less than a majority legislative backing, Lula has triangulated between Washington and the Global South, often capitulating to US interests (as in his veto of BRICS membership for Nicaragua and Venezuela). Regardless, Trump is threatening Brazil with a crippling 50% export tariff and is blatantly interfering in the trial of former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, accused of insurrection. So far, Trump’s actions have backfired, arousing anger among Brazilians. Lula commented that Trump was “not elected to be emperor of the world.”

In 2021, Honduran President Xiomara Castro took over a narcostate subservient to Washington and has tried to push the envelope to the left. Being constitutionally restricted to one term, Castro hands the Libre party candidacy in November’s election to former defense minister Rixi Moncada, who faces a tough contest with persistent US interference.

Bolivia’s ruling Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) Party is embroiled in a self-destructive internal conflict between former President Evo Morales and his former protégé and current President, Luis Arce. The energized Bolivian right wing is spoiling for the August 17^th presidential election.

Israeli infiltration accompanies US military penetration

Analyst Joe Emersberger notes: “Today, all geopolitics relates back to Gaza where the imperial order has been unmasked like never before.” Defying Washington, the Hague Group met in Colombia for an emergency summit on Gaza to “take collective action grounded in international law.” On July 16, regional states – Bolivia, Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – endorsed the pledge to take measures in support of Palestine, with others likely to follow. Brazil will join South Africa’s ICJ complaint against Israel.

At the other end of the political spectrum are self-described “world’s coolest dictator” Nayib Bukele of El Salvador and confederates Javier Milei of Argentina and Daniel Noboa of Ecuador. As well as cozying up to Trump, they devotedly support Israel, which has been instrumental in enabling the most brutal reactionaries in the region. Noboa duly tells Israel’s Netanyahu that they “share the same enemies.”

In February, the US Southern Command warned: “Time is not on our side.” The perceived danger is “methodical incursion” into our “neighborhood” by both Russia and China. Indeed, China has become the region’s second-largest trading partner after the US, and even right-wing governments are reluctant to jeopardize their relations with Beijing. The empire’s solution is to “redouble our efforts to nest military engagement,” using humanitarian assistance as “an essential soft power tool.”

Picking up where Biden left off, Trump has furthered US military penetration, notably in Ecuador, Guyana, Brazil, Panama, and Argentina. The pandemic of narcotics trafficking, itself a product of US-induced demand, has been a Trojan Horse for militarist US intervention in Haiti, Ecuador, Peru, and threatened in Mexico.

In Panama, President José Mulino’s obeisance to Trump’s ambitions to control the Panama Canal and reduce China’s influence provoked massive protests. Trump’s collaboration in the genocide of Palestinians motivated Petro to declare that Colombia must leave the NATO alliance and keep its distance from “militaries that drop bombs on children.” Colombia had been collaborating with NATO since 2013 and became the only Latin American global partner in 2017.

Despite Trump’s bluster – what the Financial Times calls “imperial incontinence” – his administration has produced mixed results. While rightist political movements have basked in Trump’s fitful praise, his escalating coercion provokes resentment against Yankee influence. Resistance is growing, with new alliances bypassing Washington. As the empire’s grip tightens, so too does the resolve of those determined to break free from it.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John Perry and Roger D. Harris.

“Federal officials have forgotten the lessons of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, because they’ve missed obvious threats to some of the Gulf’s most vulnerable critters,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This analysis falls far short of what the law and science demand, which is why we’re challenging it in court. Our government is required to protect manatees and sea turtles and other threatened animals Americans adore. Officials need to redo these assessments with a much larger dose of reality and much less deference to oil and gas interests.”

Monday’s lawsuit challenges two U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service analyses, issued in 2018 and 2025, because they fail to adequately consider a range of harms from oil extraction to several endangered species living in the Gulf. These include major oil spills, collisions with drilling rigs, light pollution and habitat degradation. The Service is required under the Endangered Species Act to complete a consultation on oil and gas operations that could harm threatened and endangered species.

In April 2024 the Center filed a lawsuit challenging the 2018 consultation, known as a biological opinion. That analysis claims to consider the effects of 50 years of Gulf oil and gas extraction on West Indian manatees, nesting Kemp’s ridley and loggerhead sea turtles, whooping cranes, Mississippi sandhill cranes, several other bird species and beach mice.

Monday’s filing seeks to amend the 2024 lawsuit to also challenge the 2025 consultation the Trump administration prepared. The purpose of the new consultation is to consider whether new information about the harms of Gulf oil drilling invalidates the 2018 biological opinion and to evaluate the potential harm from drilling to the newly listed black-capped petrel.

In the 2018 analysis, the Service ignored the potential harms from a major oil spill. Although the analysis admitted that up to one oil spill greater than 420,000 gallons in size “is likely to occur,” the agency claims no endangered species would be harmed. The 2025 addendum did not correct that claim, or evaluate the effects of a larger spill, despite evidence indicating a larger spill is likely to occur. Instead, the 2025 consultation reaffirms the conclusions in the 2018 analysis, despite a host of new science demonstrating its conclusions are invalid.

The Gulf contains a massive amount of federal oil and gas extraction, including more than 2,070 active oil and gas leases. Those leases enable thousands of platforms and rigs, tens of thousands of miles of pipelines, and tens of thousands of oil and gas wells.

In 2010 the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion killed 11 people and caused more than 200 million gallons of oil to spill into the ocean. Millions of marine mammals, sea turtles, birds, fish and other wildlife were killed, and the damage continues to this day.

The Center is part of a separate May 2025 lawsuit challenging a biological opinion conducted by the National Marine Fisheries Service regarding the effects of Gulf oil and gas activities on endangered sperm whales, Rice’s whales, corals and other species.

“History is a valuable guide, and it’s negligent to ignore the possibility of another disastrous Gulf oil spill,” Monsell said. “Sea turtles nesting on the shore and birds relying on Gulf coast marshes are depending on us to keep them safe from oil and gas extraction.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

A new report titled “You Feel Like Your Life Is Over” details the dangerous and abusive conditions faced by immigrants held at three ICE jails in Miami, Florida, since Trump returned to office. One testimony describes how detention officers made men eat while shackled with their hands behind their backs. One man said, “We had to bend over and eat off the chairs with our mouths, like dogs.” The report describes how detained immigrants are also routinely denied access to legal counsel and critical medical attention, while some have been held incommunicado in solitary confinement as an apparent punishment for seeking mental healthcare. Democracy Now! spoke with Belkis Wille, associate director in Human Rights Watch’s Crisis, Conflict and Arms Division. The immigration “system is abusive and is treating immigrants in detention in a dehumanizing manner,” she says.

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

A new audio series published by the group Federal Workers Against DOGE looks at the plight of fired federal workers whose jobs and careers were cut short by the Trump administration’s systematic defunding of government services in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy and the reallotment of resources to anti-immigration enforcement. I Do Solemnly Swear, co-created and directed by filmmaker Laura Nix, features interviews with current and former employees of federal agencies including the FAA, CDC, EPA, IRS and more. “I felt it was very important to focus on not just the illegality of the firings, but the impact on Americans,” says Nix. “We’ve depended for a very long time [on] these benefits, the safety of our highways, our water, our airspace, [but] we’re learning that these are all being taken away.”

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

Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.

This has real consequences for you people all over the country because one of their shadow docket decisions (without explanation or hearing) briefs just very recently said that Trump can fire all these people in the IRS or the Education Department or EPA and get away with it. And, in fact, paralyze the workings of his (statutorily-established-by-Congress) Cabinet Secretary and Department…So this is devastating to your health, economic safety, environment, workplace safety, education, all kinds of things that are being ridden into the ground.

Ralph Nader

In my judgment, the court has basically abandoned its role as a check on executive power…It's actually become an appendage of the executive branch. Nothing placing any kind of serious or material handcuff on what the President can do on his own. And the President is taking full advantage of that.

Bruce Fein

Lori Wallach is a 30-year veteran of international and U.S. congressional trade battles— starting with the 1990s fights over NAFTA and WTO when she founded the “Global Trade Watch” group at Public Citizen. She is now the director of the Rethink Trade program at the American Economic Liberties Project, and a Senior Advisor to the Citizens Trade Campaign.

What these guys are doing [with Trump’s tariff policy] it's basically trying to build a house with just a hammer—we are against saws; we are against screwdrivers; we do not actually believe in nails, no other tools; we will just hammer a bunch of wood. And as a result, we're going to make some noise and we're definitely going to break some things, but we're not actually building a new redistributed trade system—which we could.

Lori Wallach

Best that we can tell, the dynamic is something like: Trump is so engaged in the fun and chaos—fun (from his perspective) and chaos of throwing tariff news around like a lightning bolt that he really is not taking advice about it from people who know how you could use tariffs to try and ostensibly achieve the things he promised. He's just enjoying throwing around tariffs.

Lori Wallach

News 7/18/25

* Last week, Elon Musk’s pet AI program – Grok – began identifying itself as “MechaHitler,” and spitting out intricate rape threats and sexual fantasies directed at individuals like liberal pundit Will Stancil and now-ex X CEO Linda Yaccarino. This week, Musk rolled out Grok’s new “sexy mode” which includes a visual avatar feature depicting the artificial entity as a quasi-pornographic anime-esque character who can flirt with users, per the Standard. So, naturally, the Trump Defense Department awarded xAI, the parent company behind Grok, a $200 million contract. According to CNN, “The contracts will enable the DoD to develop agentic AI workflows and use them to address critical national security challenges.” It is unclear how exactly the entity calling itself MechaHitler will accomplish that.

* In local news, a special election was held in Washington DC’s Ward 8 this week, seeking to replace corrupt councilmember Trayon White. White was implicated in an FBI bribery investigation and was expelled from the council in February. Yet, because of the splintered opposition, White pulled out a narrow victory on Wednesday, winning with 29.7% of the vote compared to his opponents’ 24.3%, 23.7% and 22.3% respectively, per WTOP. In 2024, DC Voters approved a ballot measure to implement ranked-choice voting, which could have helped prevent this outcome, but it has yet to take effect. The DC Council could vote to expel White again more or less immediately; if not, they would likely wait for his trial to commence in January 2026.

* Turning to foreign affairs, Israel has bombed the Syrian capital of Damascus, killing three and wounding 34, in strikes primarily targeting the Syrian Defense Ministry headquarters, per NPR. Israel’s attack comes amid tensions between the new, post-Assad Syrian government and the Druze minority in the Southern Syrian city of Sweida. The government claims the Druze violated a ceasefire reached earlier in the week and Syrian troops responded; a new ceasefire deal has been reached and the office of interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa issued a statement reading, the “rights [of the citizens of Sweida] will always be protected and…we will not allow any party to tamper with their security or stability.” Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, said in a statement that the U.N. chief “condemns Israel's escalatory airstrikes,” as well as reports of the Israeli military's redeployment of forces in the Golan Heights. As journalist Séamus Malekafzali notes, “Damascus is now the 4th Middle Eastern capital to be bombed by Israel in the past 6 weeks, alongside Tehran, Beirut, and Sana'a.”

* In more news from Israel, the Knesset this week sought to expel Palestinian lawmaker Ayman Odeh, leader of the Hadash-Ta’al party. According to Haaretz, “The vote was triggered by a Likud lawmaker after Odeh published a social media post in January, saying that he ‘rejoices’ over the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.” However, the motion failed to reach the 90-vote threshold, meaning Odeh will remain in the legislature. Six members of Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid party voted for the motion, but not Lapid himself. The United Torah Judaism party did not back the motion. Haaretz quotes Hassan Jabareen, an attorney, director of the Adalah Legal Center and legal counsel for Odeh, who said, “The overwhelming support for this initiative – from both the coalition and the opposition – reveals the state's intent to crush Palestinian political representation...This was not a legitimate legal process, but rather a racist, fascist incitement campaign aimed at punishing Odeh for his principled stance against occupation, oppression and Israeli violence.” Senator Bernie Sanders celebrated the failure of the motion, writing “Israel’s far right tried to expel Ayman Odeh, an Arab Israeli opposition leader, from the Knesset because of his opposition to Netanyahu’s war. Today, they failed. If Israel is going to be considered a democracy, it cannot expel members of parliament for their political views.” This from the Middle East Eye.

* Sanders also made news this week by declaring that “Given the illegal and immoral war being waged against the Palestinian people by Netanyahu, NO Democrat should accept money from AIPAC – an organization that also helped deliver the presidency to Donald Trump,” per the Jerusalem Post. Sanders posted this statement in response to a video by Obama foreign policy advisor Ben Rhodes, who said “AIPAC is part of the constellation of forces that have delivered this country into the hands of Donald Trump…These are the wrong people to have under your tent...The kind of people that they are supporting, Bibi Netanyahu and Donald Trump, I don’t want my leaders and my political party cozying up to these people.” Bernie’s statement is perhaps the strongest stand taken by any American politician against AIPAC, Israel’s front group in American politics and one of the biggest special interest groups in the country. AIPAC throws around eye-popping sums of money to members of both parties; to name just one example, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has accepted over $1.6 million from the group, according to Track AIPAC’s Hall of Shame.

* In a similar vein, last week we discussed the National Education Association’s vote to suspend its ties with the Anti-Defamation League due to the ADL’s shift in focus from Jewish civil rights to laundering the reputation of Israel. Since then, the ADL has sought to mobilize their allies to demand the NEA reject the vote. To this end, the ADL has sought the support of J Street, a liberal Jewish group critical of Israel, per the Forward. J Street however has rebuffed the ADL, refusing to sign the group’s letter. Though they oppose the NEA resolution, J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami issued a statement reading in part, “charges of antisemitism must not be wielded to quash legitimate criticism of Israeli policy...the NEA vote can[not] be dismissed as being driven by fringe ‘pro-Hamas’ antisemitic activists.” Hopefully, more Jewish groups will follow the example of J Street and break with the Zionist orthodoxy of the ADL.

* In other foreign policy news, the Guardian reports French President Macron has reached a deal with the leadership of the French “overseas territory” New Caledonia to grant the island statehood and more autonomy within the French legal system. New Caledonia is one of several UN-designated ‘non-self-governing territories.’ France has exerted rule over the Pacific Island – over 10,000 miles from Paris – and its nearly 300,000 inhabitants since the 19th century. Last May, riots broke out over France’s decision to grant voting rights to thousands of non-indigenous residents. This violence “claimed the lives of 14 people, [and] is estimated to have cost the territory…$2.3 bn... shaving 10% off its gross domestic product.” However, the Times reports indigenous Kanak independence activists reject the deal outright. Brenda Wanabo-Ipeze, a leader of the Co-ordination Cell for Actions on the Ground, who is currently detained in France, said, “This text was signed without us. It does not bind us.” The Times adds that, “The conservative and hard-right French opposition accused Macron of failing to ensure security in the territory. The left accused the president of imposing colonial tactics on a people who should be allowed self-determination.” It remains to be seen whether this deal will prove durable enough to weather criticism from so many angles.

* Much has been made of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s decision last week to not release any more information related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. A Department of Justice memo reads, “it is the determination of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.” This has created a firestorm in the MAGA world, with many Trump supporters feeling betrayed as the president implied he would declassify these files if reelected. Now, Congressmen Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna have introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act which would “force the House of Representatives to vote on the complete release of the government's files related to Jeffrey Epstein,” according to a press release from Massie’s office. This resolution specifically states the files cannot “be withheld, delayed, or redacted” should they cause “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.” The resolution is attracting support from some Republicans, but it is unclear how far this will go under Speaker Johnson, who maintains there is “no daylight between his position and that of Trump,” per the Hill. The position of congressional Republicans has been further complicated by a bombshell report in the Wall Street Journal documenting previously unknown details of the intimate relationship between the late pedophile financier and the president.

* Meanwhile, the Trump administration is once again torching America’s reputation abroad – this time literally. The Atlantic reports “Five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign-aid programs, the Trump administration has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people abroad who need it. Nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food—enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week—are set to expire tomorrow, according to current and former government employees with direct knowledge of the rations. Within weeks…the food, meant for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, will be ash.” This cartoonishly evil decision paired with the “Big Beautiful Bill”’s provisions cutting food assistance for children in poverty, point to one inescapable conclusion: the Trump administration wants children to starve.

* Finally, on the opposite end of the spectrum, Mexico News Daily reports the administration of President Claudia Sheinbaum is debuting a healthy, domestically produced and affordable staple for Mexican consumers – chocolate bars. “This ‘Chocolate de Bienestar’ is part of the government’s ‘Food for Well-Being’ strategy, which aims to bring nutritious and affordable food options to consumers while supporting national producers, particularly those in the southern states of Tabasco and Chiapas — a region that has historically lagged behind other regions in several social and economic indicators.” The Sheinbaum administration is stressing the health benefits of chocolate, noting that, “Studies have shown that chocolate improves cardiovascular health via its antioxidants, provides energy, helps control blood pressure, improves cognitive capacity, satisfies hunger and lifts mood.” At the same time, the administration is seeking to minimize the sugar content “striking a supposedly healthier balance between natural cane sugar and the cacao itself.” This chocolate will be available in three forms:

“Chocolate bar containing 50% cacao, and priced at…less than $1.

Powdered chocolate with 30% cocoa, priced...$2

Chocolate de mesa or tablet chocolate, with 35% cacao, priced at …$5”

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

In the 1970s, during the height of the farmworker movement, United Farm Workers leader César Chávez often rallied supporters with the phrase “Sí se puede” (“Yes we can”)—a slogan coined by UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta in 1972 during Chávez’s 25-day fast in Phoenix, Arizona. Today, as undocumented farmworkers face aggressive immigration enforcement in California’s fields, a darker refrain might be more fitting: “Cuidado con ICE”—watch out for ICE.

Farmworkers say they feel like they are being “hunted like animals,” as they desperately try to avoid getting swept up by Donald Trump’s “crackdown on immigration,” the Guardian’s Michael Sainato recently reported.

During interviews with farm workers and farmworker organizers, Sainato pointed out that “Raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have caused workers to lose hours and income, and forced them into hiding at home.”

Trump has been all over the map in defining his policy toward undocumented farm workers. In April, according to Fruit Growers News, “Trump suggested that farmers could help retain key workers by submitting letters of recommendation to delay deportations and support legal re-entry.

“‘A farmer will come in with a letter concerning certain people saying, they’re great, they’re working hard, we’re going to slow it down a little bit for them and then we’re going to ultimately bring them back. They’ll go out, they’re going to come back as legal workers,’ Trump said during the Cabinet meeting.”

In late-June, CNBC reported that Trump told Fox News that “We’re working on [a plan] right now. We’re going to work it so that some kind of a temporary pass where people pay taxes, where the farmer can have a little control, as opposed to you walk in and take everybody away.”

Trump added: “What we’re going to do is we’re going to do something for farmers, where we can let the farmer sort of be in charge. The farmer knows. He’s not going to hire a murderer. When you go into a farm and he’s had somebody working with him for nine years doing this kind of work, which is hard work to do, and a lot of people aren’t going to do it, and you end up destroying a farmer because you took all the people away. It’s a problem.”

That plan, which would put farmers in charge of immigration enforcement, “alarmed workers’ rights advocates, who suggested they were being asked to surrender ‘their freedom to their employer’ just to stay in the country,” the Guardian noted.

“You can’t go out peacefully to do things, or go to work with any peace of mind anymore. We’re stressed out and our kids are stressed out. No one is the same since these raids started,” one farm worker told the Guardian. “We are stressed and worrying if it continues like this, what are we going to do because the rent here is very expensive and it has affected us a lot. How are we going to make ends meet if this continues?”

Of the more than 2.6 million farm workers in the US, most are Hispanic, non-citizen immigrants. According to the Department of Agriculture, around 40% of crop workers — roughly 500,000 individuals – are undocumented.

In a recent Iowa rally, Trump “claimed the administration is looking into legislation to defer immigration enforcement on farms to farmers. ‘Farmers, look, they know better. They work with them for years.’”

“They have really demonized us with the word ‘criminals’,” Lázaro Álvarez, a member of the Workers’ Center of Central New York and Alianza Agrícola, said. “Despite the fact we are undocumented, we pay taxes. We are invisible to the government until we pay taxes, and we don’t receive any benefits.”

Teresa Romero, president of United Farm Workers, said: “Everything that he’s doing to detain these workers is unconstitutional. They don’t have a document signed by a judge. They don’t have a court order. They want to just eliminate protections of farm workers who are currently here and have been working in the field for 20 to 30 years.

“These workers who have not committed any crime are being taken by people who are masked, are not wearing a uniform and don’t have a marked vehicle, so they are essentially being kidnapped.”

One undocumented farm worker told Sainato:  “We worked through Covid. We worked through the wildfires in Los Angeles. We get up at 4am every day. No one else is willing to work the eight-, 10-hour days the way we do. We’re not criminals. We’re hardworking people trying to give our kids a better life. And we contribute a lot to this country.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Berkowitz.

In the end, the industry breathed a small sigh of relief after the Senate reached a compromise that would, at least in principle, give new projects a slim window to go ahead. Under the final law, wind and solar projects that begin construction by July 4 of next year are eligible for the full federal tax credits. Halfway through that window, a new requirement kicks in: Projects that begin construction after January 1, 2026, can only keep the tax credits if they follow restrictions on the use of Chinese materials.

That could still upend New York’s renewable energy transition.

Federal tax credits have typically covered almost a third of the cost of building a solar or wind farm. That’s made them “critical to financing and ultimately building renewable energy projects,” said Carl Weatherley-White, interim chief financial officer at the development firm Greenbacker, which is currently building New York’s largest solar farm and has several smaller projects in the works. “It’s been a core part of the business for 20 years.”

The bill will also impact New York’s public power authority, NYPA, which this year issued a plan to put up more than three gigawatts’ worth of solar and batteries, and has been counting on federal tax credits to deliver.

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Developers now have less than a year to start digging if they want the subsidies. The impending deadline is lighting a fire under the industry — and, developers hope, under New York’s leaders, too.

“Now, the game is in the states,” said Marguerite Wells, executive director of the renewable energy lobbying group Alliance for Clean Energy New York. “I would say there’s many thousands of megawatts’ worth of wind and solar in upstate that would be eligible to fall into that start of construction if we played the cards right.”

For a start, there are 26 permitted but unbuilt wind and solar projects in the state, which in total could unlock about 3,000 megawatts’ worth of energy — enough to power some half a million homes. Only two of the large projects the state has approved in the last four years have even started construction; one of them was completed in late 2024, more than six years after filing its first paperwork. (The most recent permit was issued last week, but most of the permits date back to 2023 or earlier.)

The problem? The state doesn’t make it easy to move quickly. It normally takes years for wind and solar projects just to get permits to begin construction in New York, despite reforms intended to speed up the process. The rest of the approval process can take years, too. More environmental reviews are required even after the main permit is approved. And it’s just as complicated getting approval to connect to the grid.

All told, at least three different sets of regulators have to weigh in before a company can put shovels in the ground. That makes New York far more restrictive than other states in allowing developers to start building.

There are things the state could do to speed things up, like allowing developers to start construction even while they finalize certain details of their projects, but it’s largely in Governor Kathy Hochul’s hands.

Jolting the process forward would require a concerted push across her agencies. Besides permits, building a wind or solar farm in New York requires a contract with the state’s energy research and development arm, NYSERDA, guaranteeing that the developer will get paid for the energy the facility produces. Sometimes it requires the state Department of Environmental Conservation to weigh in on water quality plans, with additional input from the US Army Corps of Engineers. And it requires the state’s grid operator — which acts independently — to assess the impact and cost of connecting the facility to the grid.

Developers need answers from all of those entities before they can break ground, Wells said: “Every last whisper of detail of the project has to be finalized before they generally let you start construction.”

In her eyes, improving coordination between all of New York’s energy regulators is the single biggest thing the state could do to help move construction forward.

It’s not yet clear how committed Hochul is to the effort.

“The Governor has directed the state’s energy agencies to conduct a high-level review of the federal legislation and specific impacts to New Yorkers,” spokesperson Ken Lovett told New York Focus, when asked whether the Hochul administration shared developers’ goal of accelerating construction.

Before most developers even had a chance to fully digest the changes coming down from Congress, Trump threw in another gut punch. Last week, he issued an executive order directing the Treasury Department, which enforces tax credit rules, to revisit how it defines a project’s “start of construction.”

That throws even the megabill’s one-year deadline into doubt. Historically, developers have been allowed to qualify for tax credits by proving either that they’ve started physical construction or spent a certain amount of money. Now, Trump has given federal regulators 45 days to revise those definitions.

The specific definitions that the Treasury adopts could prove decisive in some cases. But whatever exact language the administration lands on, the bottom line is that Trump still has significant leeway to kill wind and solar projects if he’s committed to it, said Advait Arun, senior associate for energy finance at the think tank Center for Public Enterprise.

“Simply, I think Trump is trying to use control over the IRS to exercise his judgment about what projects should proceed and what shouldn’t,” he said.

Trump will have even more sway after the end of this calendar year, when additional requirements kick in. Starting in January 2026, developers hoping to claim tax credits will have to abide by restrictions on sourcing from “Foreign Entities of Concern,” including those connected to the Chinese government. The megabill tasks the Treasury with updating those rules, giving Trump another opportunity to crack down on what he’s called the “Green New Scam.”

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It all adds up to shaky terrain for renewable developers, even those who stand a chance of getting shovels in the ground within a year.

“The big concern … is that no matter what we do, someone in the Treasury is going to just say no,” said Weatherley-White, of Greenbacker, speaking to New York Focus a few hours before Trump issued his executive order last week. (Reporting earlier this month had already suggested that the construction rules could be in the crosshairs.)

Neither Weatherley-White nor Wells, of ACE NY, responded to follow-up inquiries about the order.

Unless the Trump administration completely upends what counts as the “start of construction,” there’s still a lot New York could do to help more projects get in under the one-year bar.

For example, in many states, wind and solar developers can begin construction on projects that don’t have all of their final approvals, but have the main elements of their design — like the location of roads and buildings — agreed upon, Wells said. But in New York, that initial green light is hard to get. It would make a big difference if the state were to adopt the practice more readily, she said.

New York could also jumpstart the contracting process for wind and solar projects. Close to half of the state’s permitted but unbuilt projects had contracts that were canceled after post-pandemic inflation upended their finances. Over the last year, the state has announced new contracts for dozens of projects in this situation, but others remain in limbo.

NYSERDA had plans to kick off a fresh round of wind and solar contracting by the end of June, but it’s behind schedule. A spokesperson said the agency would begin the process by the end of September.

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Those nitty-gritty steps are unlikely to change, though, unless Hochul makes it a priority. The governor could direct agencies to fast track permitting or contracts, as she did with offshore wind a couple of years ago. She has lately shown a keen interest in cutting red tape for other forms of energy — specifically, a nuclear plant that she has tasked NYPA to build by 2040. (There, though, the key approvals need to come from the Trump administration rather than her own.)

Her Department of Environmental Conservation also appears to be speeding along a revived pipeline project that would bring gas into New York City and Long Island. The agency said earlier this month that it had received a complete application from the pipeline company and opened a 30-day comment period with no public hearing. The notice came just five weeks after it was revealed that the state would reconsider the previously abandoned project — reportedly as part of a deal with the Trump administration to allow a major offshore wind project to move ahead, though Hochul’s office has denied a quid pro quo.

Renewable developers, by contrast, can spend years applying and reapplying for permits before they’re allowed to proceed to a mandatory, 60-day public comment period.

“If we’re cutting red tape for other forms of energy, we should cut red tape for renewable energy, too,” Wells said.

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Whether any wind or solar projects remain viable in New York after the federal tax credits expire remains an open question. Although Trump has framed his efforts as rolling back Biden-era policies, solar and wind tax credits date as far back as the 1970s, and have remained largely steady since 2005.

Some, like Weatherley-White, remain optimistic that the renewable industry can learn to live without them.

“The renewable energy industry has adapted to lots of changes over time,” he said, suggesting that developers could find ways to cut costs to cushion the blow from losing the tax credits.

“Unfortunately, there will be losers and winners,” Weatherley-White continued. “I think we’re going to see some short-term pain. But in the long run or medium term, let’s say, I think people will adapt and succeed.”

The labor coalition Climate Jobs NY struck a similarly bullish tone in a statement earlier this month. “With or without the support from our federal lawmakers, union workers in New York will find ways to build the pro-worker clean energy economy we need,” the group wrote.

Others see the glass half empty. Arun said that a key part of how the industry hoped to bring down costs was by using tax credits to build momentum and standardize the development process.

“If you can’t build, there’s no standardization or lowering costs through economies of scale,” he said. “And that’s what I’m really worried about.”

Hochul’s office, too, is striking a sober note.

“The federal budget bill slashes the very tools states need to achieve energy independence and economic growth,” Lovett said, “and no state will be able to backfill the massive cuts they face across so many key areas.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The race to build solar and wind in New York before Trump’s tax credit deadline on Jul 19, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Colin Kinniburgh.

The bill, essentially written by the crypto industry itself, will deregulate stablecoins, legalize anonymous crypto donations in U.S. elections, and allow elected officials, including Trump, to personally profit from speculative assets. Its passage comes just days before Trump is set to host a private gala for the top buyers of his $TRUMP meme coin, a cryptocurrency venture already making his family millions.

As one of the most vocal national organizations warning about the risks posed by the GENIUS Act, Our Revolution has mobilized thousands of grassroots members to sign petitions, attend town halls, join national organizing calls with Senators Warren and Merkley, and protest outside Trump’s meme coin gala at his Virginia golf club.

“The passage of the GENIUS Act is a stark escalation of kleptocracy and oligarchy in America,” said Joseph Geevarghese, Executive Director of Our Revolution “This bill wasn’t just influenced by crypto billionaires, it was written for them, and passed with bipartisan complicity. While politicians normalize self-dealing and financial elites consolidate power, we hear almost nothing from the media about how this corrupt system is steamrolling democracy and deepening inequality. It’s working-class people who pay the price, while anonymous speculators and political insiders get richer and more unaccountable by the day.”

As Our Revolution previously warned, the GENIUS Act amounts to a billionaire-backed power grab—crafted to benefit Trump’s inner circle and the crypto elite. Crypto speculators spent more than $200 million on the 2024 election, making the industry the largest lobbying force in U.S. politics today. Now, they’re cashing in.

Our Revolution mobilized its national network against the bill, with over 10,000 grassroots members signing a petition demanding Democrats vote no. Despite this outcry, 16 Democrats joined Republicans in the House to advance the legislation—just as Trump prepares to reward anonymous investors with access to political power.

The organization warns that this legislation sets a dangerous precedent: one where political influence is auctioned off to unregulated and untraceable financial actors, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle normalize profiteering from public office.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

• Justice Department seeks to unseal Epstein grand jury transcripts at Trump’s direction as controversy swirls.
• Gaza hospitals overwhelmed and under siege; Israel’s bombardments intensify as medical supplies dwindle.
• House narrowly approves Trump-backed rescission bill slashing foreign aid, public broadcasting.
• Republicans advance bill to push U.S. military spending above $1 trillion in fiscal 2026.
• Activists mark John Lewis Day of Action with rally for Black unity in Oakland.
• California presents $10 million state general fund check to California Indian Nations College to help with accreditation.
• San Francisco opens nation’s first publicly funded disability cultural center.
• Democratic Representative Licardo introduces bipartisan bill for ADUs.

The post Justice Department seeks to unseal Epstein grand jury transcripts at Trump’s direction – July 18, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

Bartlett Naylor, a financial policy advocate for Public Citizen, issued the following statement condemning the passage of the bill:

“Today, House members piled venality onto perversion onto corruption. In approving this crypto-enabling bill, Congress surrendered to the onslaught of crypto political spending and legitimized the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme.

“To add insult to injury, they also forfeited an opportunity to stop Trump’s massive crypto grift, some of the most heinous and flagrant corruption in American presidential history.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The bill will have a remarkably regressive distributional impact. While top incomes will balloon by thousands of dollars, lower-income Americans will actually see their incomes decline. One analysis from before the bill’s final passage found that its major provisions would reduce incomes for the bottom 20% by about 2%.

Tax cuts, after all, are only one part of the bill. More relevant to lower-income Americans is that this bill will deliver the largest cuts to Medicaid and food stamps in US history.

Such a historic weakening of the safety net—the programs that support the finances of lower-income Americans—should warrant not only major attention, but significant scrutiny from national media outlets. And yet, at the New York Times, the approach has been to distract and obscure above all else.

‘Defined by staggering debt’

As Trump slashed $1 trillion from healthcare, the New York Times (6/27/25) stressed the importance of reducing the deficit. 

One manifestation of this approach has been the Times’ insistence on elevating the bill’s effect on the debt as a foremost concern. In the week or so leading up to the bill’s passage, in fact, both an editorial (6/27/25) and an episode of the Times’ flagship podcast the Daily (7/2/25) were dedicated entirely to a discussion of the national debt.

The Daily episode went as far as claiming, “The legislation is defined by the staggering amount of debt that it’s creating.” It then warned of the potential for a debt “doom loop,” whereby rising debt raises borrowing costs and forces the government to issue more debt in order to pay for its existing debt load.

Meanwhile, the Times editorial board opted to focus more heavily on the costs already being imposed by high federal debt. In a piece titled “The National Debt Is Already Causing Bigger Problems Than People Realize,” the board highlighted the “staggering amount of money” the government puts towards interest payments each year. The board’s solution:

The government needs to raise taxes, especially on the wealthy, and it needs to make long-term changes in Social Security and Medicare, the major drivers of spending growth.

In other words, at a time when the Republican Party is gutting the safety net in epic fashion, the New York Times is coyly hinting that Social Security and Medicare will need to be cut.

‘Enough to repair every bridge’

The New York Times‘ own chart (6/27/25) indicates that Trump’s budget bill will have only a modest impact on US interest payments. What did cause interest costs to soar was the political decision to fight inflation through higher interest rates, a decision the Times applauded  (FAIR.org, 1/25/23, 6/27/23).

Across both the editorial and the podcast episode, the primary reason put forward by the Times for concern over the national debt was the borrowing costs associated with it. But is the bill’s effect on borrowing costs—the amount of money the federal government will have to spend to pay off the interest on its debts—genuinely that significant of a concern?

The Times editorial board seems to think so. Warning of the ill effects of increasing borrowing costs, the board observed:

The House version of Mr. Trump’s bill, already approved by that chamber, would increase interest payments on the debt by an average of $55 billion a year over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The increase alone is enough money to fully repair every bridge in the United States.

This comparison is useful to a degree. It exposes the priorities of the Trump administration, which seems to value tax cuts for the wealthy above delivering basic public goods.

But the comparison ultimately obscures more than it illuminates. The reality is that $55 billion is a relatively small sum for the US government. It represents only about 0.8% of the 2024 federal budget, and 0.2% of US GDP.

High cost of high interest rates

The interest rate on 10-year US Treasury bills has risen from 0.6% in 2020 to 4.5% today (chart: CNBC).

The total amount the federal government pays in interest—the amount it pays in excess of what it borrowed when it pays back loans—is of course much larger: The Times relays that interest payments are on pace to surpass $1 trillion this year, representing around 15% of last year’s federal budget. As the editorial board notes, this level of spending on interest payments crowds out other, more useful spending by the government. In other words, it does impose a not-insignificant cost.

What the board de-emphasizes or ignores, however, is that high interest payments are really just a symptom of other more fundamental policy choices.

On the one hand, they reflect the political decision to rely on the blunt instrument of interest rates to combat the pandemic-era spike in inflation. The result has been a rise in interest rates on ten-year government bonds, from under 1% in 2020 to above 4% today.

This was not an inevitable development. Other methods exist for combating inflation. But these methods were sidelined in favor of a regressive, debt-inflating approach. Would you know this by reading the Times editorial? Absolutely not.

The incredibly low tax rate

The United States has one of the lowest effective tax rates among wealthy countries (chart: Tax Policy Center).

On the other hand, high interest payments also reflect the political decision to run up the US debt load through tax cuts for the wealthy. This history of tax cuts is discussed by the editorial board, but it is framed as more of a secondary issue. Little would readers know that the crowding-out effect imposed by high interest payments, which the Times depicts climbing above the cost of Social Security in coming years, is dwarfed by the crowding-out effect of low tax revenue.

For such a rich country, the US collects incredibly little in taxes. Its tax revenue registers a meager 29% of GDP, compared to 42% in Canada, 52% in France and 62% in Norway.

Meanwhile, interest payments as a percentage of GDP are set to double over the next 30 years, reaching about 6% of GDP in the 2050s. That’s not even half the revenue deficit the US faces versus Canada—and Canada’s a low-tax country compared to France and Norway!

The Times nonetheless has run no editorial in recent months decrying the US for being such a low-tax country. Even in its editorial about interest payments, a breakdown of the pitiful state of US tax collection by international standards is nowhere to be found. Instead, we get a muddled denunciation of the bill’s irresponsible contribution to burdensome borrowing costs.

But, again, the bill’s contribution is tiny. Yes, interest payments are projected to reach 6% of GDP by the 2050s, but they will hit 5% even in the absence of this bill. With this single percentage of GDP boost in borrowing costs, the bill imposes a cost in 30 years that is a fraction of the cost of our tax deficit versus Canada today.

‘People benefit from working’

In its one editorial (5/23/25) on the reconciliation bill’s cuts to the safety net, the New York Times endorsed the idea “that some government benefits should be tied to employment.”

This is not to say that the Big Beautiful Bill will not impose Major Gratuitous Pain. But it is to say that such pain will not be found in an analysis of its impact on borrowing costs.

Rather, where we should look to see clear evidence of negative effects is the savings side of the bill, where Republicans have enacted brutal cuts to the social safety net, cuts that the economist James Galbraith calls “the direct result of bipartisan scaremongering over deficits and debt.”

The Times editorial board has run one editorial (5/23/25) on the bill’s cuts to the safety net. Published over a month before the bill’s passage, the piece was headlined “Republicans Can’t Hide Medicaid Cuts in a ‘Big, Beautiful’ Bill.” As it pointed out, the Republican bill would reverse the progress that has been made over the past decade or so in expanding health insurance access to more Americans.

Oddly, however, the editorial extended an olive branch to the GOP, conceding:

We are sympathetic to the idea that some government benefits should be tied to employment. People benefit from working, and society benefits when more people are working.

Explaining the decision to insert this concession into the piece, editorial director David Leonhardt (New York Times, 7/1/25) has since elaborated:

I actually understand why, at a top-line way, people would want to put work requirements on a federal program, and actually I do think there are federal programs that should have work requirements. I’m a pretty big skeptic of universal basic income, of the idea that we’re just going to have the federal government give people lots of money outright. I don’t think it’s worked very well. I think it’s hugely expensive.

This is a baffling explanation. As worded in the editorial, it appears that the board is expressing sympathy for work requirements for some existing government benefits, and justifying them with reference to the value of work, despite work requirements’ long history of doing nothing to increase employment. Yet Leonhardt gives no example of a current government program that should be saddled with a work requirement. Instead, he merely expresses his opposition to universal basic income, using conservative arguments against the policy in doing so. This level of clarity, however, may be all we can expect from the Times.

Unnoted cutbacks

At least as notable as the contents of the editorials published by the Times on the Big Beautiful Bill is what the Times has failed to highlight about the legislation. After all, the paper has run just two editorials on what is probably the most regressive major piece of legislation in at least a generation. What have these missed? A lot.

For one, the largest cuts to food stamps in history are entirely absent from the Times editorial board’s critiques of the bill. That millions would lose access to food stamps and tens of millions would see their benefits cut is apparently an afterthought for the board. It evidently does not warrant the denunciation that somewhat higher borrowing costs require.

Decimation of clean energy provisions and heavy new restrictions on student loans likewise appear a grand total of zero times in the Times’ editorials on the bill. This is the sort of resistance that the most prominent establishment newspaper in the country has to offer.

‘Big ugly battle’

The situation at the Daily has been better, though it had only a rather low bar to clear. Through the day the bill was signed into law, the show published three episodes on the legislation. The first (6/5/25), titled “The Big Ugly Battle Over the Big Beautiful Bill,” touched on the bill’s attacks on climate provisions in its first half, and devoted its second half to a conversation about cuts to Medicaid.

Food stamps, by contrast, were mentioned in just two sentences. And student loans didn’t make a single appearance.

The following episode (7/2/25), discussed above, centered on the debt, but the third episode (7/4/25) dedicated additional airtime to cuts to the safety net, again including a discussion of Medicaid cuts in the second half of the episode. Its first half also centered the serious negative impacts of the legislation, mostly focusing on the array of tax cuts in the bill, but framing the overall impact as wildly regressive:

The most important thing to know about this package is that it delivers its greatest benefits to the wealthy, and it extracts its greatest cuts on the poor.

The largest cuts to food stamps in American history, however, garnered no airtime. Same goes for the massive pullback in student loans.

A ripple in a tsunami

We found only two New York Times headlines like this one (6/5/25)—out of nearly 800 in its US politics section—that straightforwardly conveyed the impact of the budget bill’s cuts.

Unfortunately, this poor coverage is not limited to Times editorials and the Daily. As it turns out, the news section of the Times has been similarly lacking in serious coverage.

The paper’s US Politics section is case in point. From the start of June through July 4, when Trump signed his bill into law, this section of the Times featured a total of seven articles that mentioned “food stamp(s),” “SNAP” or “food aid” in either their headline or subhead. For “Medicaid,” “health cuts” and “Obamacare,” the number was ten.

But few of these articles bore headlines straightforwardly reporting the facts of what’s projected to happen to millions of Americans as a result of cuts to food stamps and healthcare spending. In total, only two headlines, both about healthcare, really fit this description:

• “GOP Bill Has $1.1 Trillion in Health Cuts and 11.8 Million Losing Care, CBO Says” (6/29/25)
• “Millions Would Lose Their Obamacare Coverage Under Trump’s Bill” (6/5/25)

Other headlines mentioned cuts, but some didn’t even reference that information. For instance, one headline (6/3/25) read, “Trump Administration Backs Off Effort to Collect Data on Food Stamp Recipients.”

Amazingly, at least in the US Politics section of the paper, zero headlines included the phrase “student loans,” despite substantial retrenchment in student loan policy. The term “safety net” appeared in the headline or subhead of only six articles.

With around 800 articles appearing in the Times’ US Politics section during this timeframe, coverage of historic cuts to crucial safety net programs resembled a ripple in a tsunami.

‘Fair to criticize Democrats’

The type sizes conveys the relative importance the New York Times (7/1/25) places on prices paid by politicians vs. those paid by the public.

Nonetheless, when Times editorial director David Leonhardt was asked whether he thinks “Americans who will be impacted by these cuts understand what’s happening,” given the lack of public outcry so far, he gave credit to Republicans for succeeding in minimizing public opposition, and blamed Democrats for failing to make a bigger deal out of the bill:

I also think it’s fair to criticize the Democratic Party and activists who are aligned with the Democratic Party for not figuring out ways to make a bigger deal out of these cuts. To some extent, they’ve allowed the Republican cynical strategy of staying away from town halls to work better than it might have.

The role of corporate media, and more particularly of the New York Times, may never have even crossed Leonhardt’s mind. But, of course, the Times is a critical player in US politics. With around 12 million subscribers and millions of daily listeners to the Daily, the outlet has incredible reach. If it wanted to, the Times could play a significant role in raising public awareness of this bill. The problem is that it seems completely uninterested in adopting this role.

I would argue, therefore, that the paltry public outcry is fundamentally a result of editorial decisions, not least those made at the Times. By refusing to cover cuts to the social safety net with more than minimal urgency, the Times has done a good deal to deprive the Democratic Party and other opponents of the legislation of the sort of informational environment in which public opposition to harmful policies can be effectively mobilized.

Through inaction, through poor coverage, the Times is making a political choice to undermine opposition to some of the Trump administration’s most damaging policies.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Conor Smyth.

Formerly Trump’s personal attorney, Emil Bove has created scandal after scandal at Trump’s Justice Department, including a whistleblower’s report that he told subordinates that he was “willing to ignore court orders” in order to further Trump’s agenda, dropping corruption charges against a Trump ally from whom the administration was seeking political cooperation, and firing dozens of career prosecutors who worked on January 6 cases.

In response, Demand Justice Interim Executive Director Maggie Jo Buchanan issued the following statement:

“Today’s Senate Judiciary Committee meeting was a clear indication of MAGA Republicans’ willingness to put blind loyalty to Trump before their oaths of office and duties to their constituents.

“Chair Grassley and other Republican members of the committee refused to even hear out their Democratic colleagues, let alone vote on a motion to hear from the whistleblower. Senator Booker correctly accused his colleagues across the aisle of abusing their power. We applaud his efforts to ensure the public could learn more about the serious allegations Bove faces, as well as the committee Democrats who walked out of the meeting in light of their Republican colleagues’ actions.

“Senators on both sides of the aisle must show their commitment to judicial independence and keep this extreme, Trump loyalist off the federal bench. Voting “no” should not be a difficult choice for any Senator with an ounce of self-respect or respect for the courts.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Later that day, President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law. The law gutted public food and healthcare safety nets, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid, while also codifying massive tax breaks for wealthier individuals and major corporations. The devastation in Texas, then, became the first major disaster to expose the grave effects of Trump’s extensive disinvestment from disaster resilience programs — and his administration’s newest food and hunger policies. 

Charitable groups such as food banks and pantries typically serve as frontline distributors of food and water in a time of a crisis, working in tandem with other responding national and global relief organizations and government agencies. Now, though, because of the policy and funding decisions enacted by the Trump administration over the last six months, the primary food banks that are responding to the needs of residents throughout central Texas have less food to distribute. 

Near the beginning of Trump’s second term, the Department of Agriculture stopped the flow of some of the money that pays for deliveries of products like meats, eggs, and vegetables known as “bonus commodities” through The Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP, to charitable organizations like food banks. TEFAP is one of the primary ways that state and federal governments have ensured food reaches communities in need in the aftermath of climate-fueled disasters like a hurricane or heatwave. 

In March, the USDA also moved to end future rounds of funding for the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program and the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program. These two programs, which are also designed to support emergency food providers such as food banks, were slated to distribute more than a billion dollars this fiscal year to states, tribes, and territories. 

In April, the funding cuts drove the Central Texas Food Bank to cancel 39 loads of food — the equivalent of 716,000 meals — scheduled to be delivered through September, said Beth Corbett, the organization’s vice president of government affairs and advocacy. The state of Texas lost more than $107 million for programs that allowed food banks and schools to buy food locally because of the administration’s funding cuts, the Austin Monitor and KUT reported. The San Antonio Food Bank also endured similar losses to its inventory. 

San Antonio Food Bank’s president and CEO Eric Cooper told Grist he is consumed by concern that they may not be able to meet the emergency food demand prompted by the flooding tragedy in central Texas. 

“Prior to this disaster, we just don’t have the volume of food in our warehouse that we need to have,” said Cooper, noting that they are “struggling to keep up” with the demand intensified by the deluge. “We have had to try to pivot a little bit to ration some of what we do have across the population we serve so that we can stretch [our supply],” he added. “USDA cuts have made it harder to keep up. The flood will make it even more difficult. Pending SNAP cuts feel like it will be impossible.”

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Over a week after the floods, more than 160 people remain unaccounted for, and on Sunday another round of heavy rains halted some rescue efforts. The food bank, which has pantries and distribution sites throughout 29 Texan counties, is now acting as the central community-based anti-hunger hub serving some of the hardest hit swaths of Hill Country. Throughout the last week, the bank distributed more than 160,000 pounds of food relief to households in affected counties — an amalgamation of heated and ready to eat meals, groceries, pallets of water, and snacks, that equates roughly $300,000 in value and provides up to 120,000 meals. In the period of recovery to come, they expect to distribute another 40,000 pounds or so worth of food every day, an amount which feeds anywhere between 300 and 500 families. 

That volume, according to Cooper, is far more than the bank normally distributes. They are already seeing a 10 percent increase in demand — a rapid uptick in the span of a little over a week. “We’re doing what we can to make sure that people don’t go hungry, but it has been tough,” he said. The biggest problem they are running up against, he noted, is how federal funding cuts have obstructed their ability to fully respond. 

“I feel like the parent whose child asked what’s for dinner tonight, and not knowing, not able to totally confirm, that I’ve got it.” 

With more than 5 million residents facing food insecurity, 17.6 percent of the state’s total population, Texas leads the rest of the nation in hunger rates. The region struck by floods is no exception. Among the six Hill Country counties most severely affected by the floods is Tom Green County, home to 120,000 or so residents. Preliminary estimates by Feeding America show that, based on location trends and new individuals registering for San Antonio Food Bank distributions, about 1,872 people in the area are now at further risk of hunger because of the expected economic impacts of the floods. About 20,080 residents living in Tom Green already confront food insecurity — nearly 17 percent of the population. 

But most of the destruction wrought by the floods was seen across neighboring Kerr County, where about 9,310 people already grapple with food insecurity, according to the latest public Feeding America data. With a total population of little more than 53,000 people, the towns found in this rural belt of south-central Texas include places like Hunt, an unincorporated community on the Guadalupe River, with a permanent population that sits at around 1,300. Roughly 876 residents in Hunt — more than half — now face a deeper food insecurity risk because of the floods, according to the Feeding America data shared with Grist.

Hunger typically intensifies in disaster zones because of the lasting economic repercussions of an extreme weather event. Poverty rates — and issues with food access — surge in areas significantly impacted by floods and storms because many Americans are less able to afford the mounting costs needed to best prepare for a disaster or recover from the damages they wreak. 

In the last week, the USDA has issued flood-related waivers for households already enrolled in SNAP but not yet announced broader food assistance through programs like D-SNAP, or the Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. In flood-ravaged places like Hunt, humanitarian organizations are stepping in to provide assistance where the government isn’t. 

The World Central Kitchen set up its main distribution site in Hunt. Their on-the-ground team of ten has handed out over 12,100 meals throughout Hill Country and has begun coordinating with local food banks to assess their longer-term resource needs.

“There is an influx of aid here because of this national tragedy,” said Samantha Elfmont, who leads emergency global food relief operations for World Central Kitchen. “We’re in that period now of ‘How do we support the community much longer than the month of July?’”

The latest round of torrential rainfall has complicated those efforts: Over the weekend, the Hunt site was flooded, so they are now also working to evacuate the team and food truck.

Getting a hot meal to those reeling from the floods is important for not just physical recovery from a disaster, but also for the emotional recovery process, said Elfmont. “People often think of health and shelter,” she said, but “emergency feeding helps people get through the trauma.” 

Grist has a comprehensive guide to help you stay ready and informed before, during, and after a disaster.

• Explore the full Disaster 101 resource guide for more on your rights and options when disaster hits.

• Are you affected by the flooding in Texas and North Carolina? Learn how to navigate disaster relief and response.

• Get prepared. Learn how to be ready for a disaster before you’re affected.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Texas food banks are rationing meals for flood survivors because of Trump’s cuts on Jul 14, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

Thousands on the streets of Brazil, Sao Paulo’s Paulista Avenue packed, angry and protesting US President Donald Trump and his imposition of 50% tariffs on Brazilian products. Trump’s new tariffs on Brazil are in response to the country’s trial against Trump ally, former far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. 

Bolsonaro is accused of leading a “criminal organization” that looked to stop his successor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from assuming the presidency after he won the 2022 elections. The Brazilian courts will decide. Trump has other plans. But Brazilian leaders say they won’t back down. 

“If there’s one thing a government cannot tolerate, it’s interference by one country in the sovereignty of another,” said Brazilian President Lula. “And even more seriously, interference by a president of another country in the Brazilian justice system.”

This is episode 57 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

Sign up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

Please consider supporting this podcast and Michael Fox’s reporting on his Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also see exclusive pictures, video, and interviews. 

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

RESOURCES

• Brazil on Fire podcast
• Episode: An autopsy of Bolsonaro’s failed coup

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Thousands on the streets of Brazil, Sao Paulo’s Paulista Avenue packed, angry and protesting US President Donald Trump and his imposition of 50% tariffs on Brazilian products. Trump’s new tariffs on Brazil are in response to the country’s trial against Trump ally, former far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. 

Bolsonaro is accused of leading a “criminal organization” that looked to stop his successor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from assuming the presidency after he won the 2022 elections. The Brazilian courts will decide. Trump has other plans. But Brazilian leaders say they won’t back down. 

“If there’s one thing a government cannot tolerate, it’s interference by one country in the sovereignty of another,” said Brazilian President Lula. “And even more seriously, interference by a president of another country in the Brazilian justice system.”

This is episode 57 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

Sign up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

Please consider supporting this podcast and Michael Fox’s reporting on his Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also see exclusive pictures, video, and interviews. 

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

RESOURCES

• Brazil on Fire podcast
• Episode: An autopsy of Bolsonaro’s failed coup

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Democracy Now! recently interviewed U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk in Geneva, Switzerland. The wide-ranging conversation touched on immigration policy in the United States, climate change around the world, the global fight to preserve human rights and more.

See Part 1 of our conversation with Türk, including his response to Israel’s brutal war on Gaza.

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

Brazilian filmmaker Petra Costa’s latest documentary, Apocalypse in the Tropics, explores the impact of evangelical Christianity on Brazil’s political landscape. Once a small minority, evangelicals now constitute about 30% of Brazil’s population and played a key role in the rise of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. “It’s one of the fastest-growing religious shifts in the history of mankind,” Costa tells Democracy Now! She says right-wing evangelicalism in Brazil is largely a U.S. import, after Washington sought to undermine the influence of left-wing Catholic teachings during the Cold War.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to impose 50% tariffs on Brazil, partly as retribution for what he calls the “witch hunt” against Bolsonaro, now facing trial in Brazil for an alleged coup attempt following his defeat in the 2022 presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Apocalypse in the Tropics is available on Netflix starting July 14. Costa’s previous film, The Edge of Democracy, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

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

Salon (7/3/25): “The funds going towards deportation would…be enough to fully fund the program to end world hunger for four years.”

And so it has come to pass: US President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” has set the stage for tax cuts for the rich, slashed services for the poor, and a host of other things that qualify as “beautiful” in the present dystopia. Some cuts, like those to Medicaid, have been heavily covered by the corporate media. But one key piece of the bill has gotten much less media scrutiny: The preposterous sum of $175 billion has been allocated to fund Trump’s signature mass deportation campaign, which, as a Salon article (7/3/25) points out, exceeds the military budget for every single country in the world aside from the US and China.

Approximately $30 billion of that is destined directly for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the goons who have recently made a name for themselves by going around in masks and kidnapping people. This constitutes a threefold increase over ICE’s previous budget, and propels the outfit to the position of the largest US federal law enforcement agency in history. $45 billion will go toward building new ICE detention centers, including family detention centers.

Prior to the signing into law of the sweeping bill on July 4, US Vice President JD Vance took to X to highlight what really mattered in the legislation:

Everything else—the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.

Scant attention to ICE expansion

“What happens if we spend more than the military budget of Russia on deportation?” was not a question the New York Times (7/3/25) thought needed answering.

And yet many US corporate media outlets have paid scant attention to this aspect of the bill and refrained from delving too deeply into the matter of what exactly this massive ramping up of ICE portends for American society. According to a search of the Nexis news database, while half (50%) of newspaper articles and news transcripts mentioning the reconciliation bill from its first passage in the House (May 20) to its signing into law (July 4) also mentioned Medicaid, less than 6% named Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE.

Even many of those that did mention ICE barely gave it any attention. On July 3, for example, the New York Times presented readers with “Nine Questions About the Republican Megabill, Answered,” which in response to the first question—“Why is it being called a megabill?”—did manage to mention “a 150% boost to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget over the next five years.” However, there was no further discussion in the article’s remaining 1,500-plus words of potential ramifications of this boost—although there was a section devoted to the “tax break for Native Alaskan subsistence whaling captains.”

That was more than CNN’s intervention managed, also published on July 3, and headlined “Here’s Who Stands to Gain From the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill.’ And Who May Struggle.” The article aced a couple of no-brainers, including that “corporate America” would be “better off” thanks to the bill, while “low-income Americans” would be “worse off.” But there was not a single reference to the ICE budget—or who might “struggle” because of it.

‘Detention blitz’

Washington Post (7/4/25): “Immigrant rights advocates are imploring the government not to award more contracts to…companies they say have failed to provide safe accommodations and adequate medical care to detainees.”

This is not to imply, of course, that there are no articles detailing what ICE has been up to in terms of persecuting refuge seekers, visa holders, legal US residents and even US citizens—who supposedly have greater protections under the law—and how all of this stands to get worse, in accordance with the impending deluge of anti-immigration funds.

In its report on ICE’s looming “detention blitz,” the Washington Post (7/4/25) noted that “at least 10 immigrants died while in ICE’s custody during the first half of this year,” and cited the finding that ICE is “now arresting people with no criminal charges at a higher rate than people charged with crimes.”

The Post article also contained sufficiently thought-provoking details to enable the conscientious reader to draw their own conclusions regarding the ultimate purpose of manic detention schemes. (Hint: it’s not to keep America “safe.”) For instance, we learn that the share prices of GEO Group and CoreCivic—the two largest detention companies contracted by ICE, which have notorious reputations for detainee mistreatment—“each rose about 3%… as investors cheered the passage of congressional funding likely to result in a flurry of new contracts.”

Lest there remain any doubt as to the centrality of profit flows to the immigration crackdown, the article specifies that GEO Group and CoreCivic “each gave $500,000 to President Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to Federal Election Commission data.”

This article, however, came after the legislation was passed.

A Post opinion piece (6/30/25), meanwhile, put a human face on some of ICE’s victims, such as Jermaine Thomas, born to a US soldier on a military base in Germany. Following an incident of “suspected trespassing” in Texas, Thomas was deported by ICE to Jamaica, a country he had never set foot in. Other victims spotlighted by the Post include 64-year-old Iranian immigrant Madonna Kashanian, nabbed while gardening at her house in New Orleans, and a six-year-old Honduran boy with leukemia who was arrested at an immigration court in California while pursuing his asylum case with his family.

It was also possible, if one sought it out, to find reporting on what the cash infusion entails from a logistical perspective: more agents, more arrests, more racial profiling, increased detention capacity, and a deportation system that runs “like Amazon, trying to get your product delivered in 24 hours,” as ICE’s acting director Todd Lyons charmingly put it.

‘Police state first’

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (Jacobin, 7/3/25): “Mass deportation wouldn’t only reshape American society and cause the economy to go into a tailspin. It would also lead to a very different relationship between the US populace and law enforcement.”

Gutting Medicaid is certainly an angle on the reconciliation bill that deserved the media attention it got, and will devastate millions in this country. But the massive infusion of money and power to ICE will likewise devastate millions with a ballooning police state that unleashes terror, rips apart families and creates a network of concentration camps across the country. Given ICE’s contemporary track record and de facto exemption from the constraints of due process, the public desperately needs a media that will connect the dots in order to convey a bigger-picture look of what America is up against.

In an interview with Jacobin magazine (7/3/25) on how “ICE Is About to Get More Money Than It Can Spend,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick—a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council—made the crucial observation: “You don’t build the mass deportation machine without building the police state first.”

This is precisely the analysis that is missing from corporate media coverage of the bill. Beyond making life hell for the undocumented workers on whose very labor the US economy depends, ICE has become a tool for political repression as well—as evidenced by a slew of recent episodes involving the abduction and disappearance of international scholars whose political opinions did not coincide with those of the commander in chief of our, um, democracy.

Take the case of 30-year-old Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish doctoral student and Fulbright scholar studying childhood development at Tufts University in Massachusetts. While walking to an iftar dinner in March, Öztürk was accosted by six plainclothes officers, some of them masked, and forced into an unmarked van, after which she was flown halfway across the country to an ICE detention center in Louisiana. Her crime, apparently, was to have co-written an opinion piece last year for the Tufts Daily (3/26/24), in which she and her co-authors encouraged the university to accede to demands by the Tufts Community Union Senate by recognizing the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip and divesting from companies with ties to Israel.

Öztürk’s case is hardly an isolated one. There’s Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral researcher at Georgetown University who was seized by masked agents outside his Virginia home and swept off to an ICE facility in Texas. There’s Momodou Taal, a British-Gambian former PhD student at Cornell who sued the Trump administration over the crackdown on Palestine solidarity and then self-deported, explaining that he had “lost faith [he] could walk the streets without being abducted.” And the list goes on (Al Jazeera, 5/15/25).

‘Homegrowns are next’

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor (NPR, 4/15/25): The Trump administration believes it “could deport and incarcerate any person, including US citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.”

In the twisted view of the US government, of course, opposing the US-backed genocide of Palestinians equals support for “terrorism”—and in Trump’s view, basically anything that goes against his own thinking and policies potentially constitutes a criminal offense. It follows that Öztürk-style politically motivated kidnappings by the state are presumably merely the top of a very slippery slope that US citizens, too, will soon find themselves careening down—especially as Trump has already exhibited enthusiasm at the prospect of outsourcing the incarceration of US citizens to El Salvador: “The homegrowns are next,” he told Salvadoran autocrat Nayib Bukele.

The line between citizens and residents has been intentionally blurred, with the Trump Justice Department announcing it was “Prioritizing Denaturalization”—that is, stripping citizenship from foreign-born citizens. This draconian punishment has been proposed for Trump’s political enemies, from New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani to former BFF Elon Musk. Trump has also taken aim at the constitutional right of birthright citizenship, potentially turning millions of other Americans into ICE targets.

Somehow, the elite media have not deemed it necessary to dwell even superficially on the implications of super-funding a rogue agency that has essentially been given carte blanche to indiscriminately round people up—be they undocumented workers, political dissidents, or just somebody who “looks like somebody we are looking for.” As for CNN’s write-up on “who stands to gain from the ‘big, beautiful bill,’” it’s definitely not all the folks currently living in a permanent state of fear, deprived of basic freedoms like movement, speech and thought.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Belén Fernández.

• Opening up federal lands and waters to fossil fuel exploration as official US policy and revoking several climate action policies;
• Establishing a new group to advise his office on how to accelerate the ‘permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, and transportation’ of oil and gas;
• Removing regulations on coal production to revive the flagging industry; and,
• Ordering the US Attorney General to quash state-level “polluters pay” laws that would push fossil fuel companies to pay their fair share of climate damages.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Having figured out how to parlay presidential authority in foreign affairs in order to sidestep the Constitution, President Trump is using his immigration enforcement powers to lock up—and lock down—the nation.

Under the guise of national security and public safety, the Trump administration is engineering the largest federal expansion of incarceration and detention powers in U.S. history.

At the center of this campaign is Alligator Alcatraz, a federal detention facility built in the Florida Everglades and hailed by the White House as a model for the future of federal incarceration. But this is more than a new prison—it is the architectural symbol of a carceral state being quietly constructed in plain sight.

With over $170 billion allocated through Trump’s megabill, we are witnessing the creation of a vast, permanent enforcement infrastructure aimed at turning the American police state into a prison state.

The scope of this expansion is staggering.

The bill allocates $45 billion just to expand immigrant detention—making ICE the best-funded federal law enforcement agency in American history.

Yet be warned: what begins with ICE rarely ends with ICE.

Trump’s initial promise to crack down on “violent illegal criminals” has evolved into a sweeping mandate: a mass, quota-driven roundup campaign that detains anyone the administration deems a threat, regardless of legal status and at significant expense to the American taxpayer.

Tellingly, the vast majority of those being detained have no criminal record. And like so many of the Trump administration’s grandiose plans, the math doesn’t add up.

Just as Trump’s tariffs have failed to revive American manufacturing and instead raised consumer prices, this detention-state spending spree will cost taxpayers far more than it saves. It’s estimated that undocumented workers contribute an estimated $96 billion in federal, state and local taxes each year, and billions more in Social Security and Medicare taxes that they can never claim.

Making matters worse, many of these detained immigrants are then exploited as a pool of cheap labor inside the very facilities where they’re held.

The implications for Trump’s detention empire are chilling.

At a time when the administration is promising mass deportations to appease anti-immigrant hardliners, it is simultaneously constructing a parallel economy in which detained migrants can be pressed into near-free labor to satisfy the needs of industries that depend on migrant work.

What Trump is building isn’t just a prison state—it’s a forced labor regime, where confinement and exploitation go hand in hand. And it’s a high price to pay for a policy that creates more problems than it solves.

As the enforcement dragnet expands, so does the definition of who qualifies as an enemy of the state—including legal U.S. residents arrested for their political views.

The Trump administration is now pushing to review and revoke the citizenship of Americans it deems national security risks—targeting them for arrest, detention, and deportation.

Unfortunately, the government’s definition of “national security threat” is so broad, vague, and unconstitutional that it could encompass anyone engaged in peaceful, nonviolent, constitutionally protected activities—including criticism of government policy or the policies of allied governments like Israel.

In Trump’s prison state, no one is beyond the government’s reach.

Critics of the post-9/11 security state—left, right, and libertarian alike—have long warned that the powers granted to fight terrorism and control immigration would eventually be turned inward, used against dissidents, protestors, and ordinary citizens.

That moment has arrived.

Yet Trump’s most vocal supporters remain dangerously convinced they have nothing to fear from this expanding enforcement machine. But history—and the Constitution—say otherwise.

Our founders understood that unchecked government power, particularly in the name of public safety, poses the most significant threat to liberty. That’s why they enshrined rights like due process, trial by jury, and protection from unreasonable searches.

Those safeguards are now being hollowed out.

Trump’s detention expansion—like the mass surveillance programs before it—is not about making America safe. It’s about following the blueprints for authoritarian control in order to lock down the country.

The government’s targets may be the vulnerable today—but the infrastructure is built for everyone: Trump’s administration is laying the legal groundwork for indefinite detention of citizens and noncitizens alike.

This is not just about building prisons. It’s about dismantling the constitutional protections that make us free.

A nation cannot remain free while operating as a security state. And a government that treats liberty as a threat will soon treat the people as enemies.

This is not a partisan warning. It is a constitutional one.

We are dangerously close to losing the constitutional guardrails that keep power in check.

The very people who once warned against Big Government—the ones who decried the surveillance state, the IRS, and federal overreach—are now cheering for the most dangerous part of it: the unchecked power to surveil, detain, and disappear citizens without full due process.

Limited government, not mass incarceration, is the backbone of liberty.

The Founders warned that the greatest threat to liberty was not a foreign enemy, but domestic power left unchecked. That’s exactly what we’re up against now. A nation cannot claim to defend freedom while building a surveillance-fueled, prison-industrial empire.

Trump’s prison state is not a defense of America. It’s the destruction of everything America was meant to defend.

We can pursue justice without abandoning the Constitution. We can secure our borders and our communities without turning every American into a suspect and building a federal gulag.

But we must act now.

History has shown us where this road leads. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, once the machinery of tyranny is built, it rarely stays idle.

If we continue down this path, cheering on bigger prisons, broader police powers, and unchecked executive authority—if we fail to reject the dangerous notion that more prisons, more power, and fewer rights will somehow make us safer—if we fail to restore the foundational limits that protect us from government overreach before those limits are gone for good—we may wake up to find that the prisons and concentration camps the police state is building won’t just hold others.

One day, they may hold us all.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Ukraine’s Air Force says Russia launched its largest aerial attack overnight since its 2022 full-scale invasion, firing a record 741 drones and missiles, most of them targeting the city of Lutsk in western Ukraine. The barrage prompted Poland to activate its air defenses and scramble fighter jets. Russia’s attack came after President Trump on Tuesday sharply criticized Vladimir Putin in his latest in a series of U-turns on Ukraine policy. We speak with Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, on the latest developments. Trump is “learning that it’s actually not that easy,” he says. “And it’s not that easy because Vladimir Putin is not interested in a peace deal.”

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

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Capital & Main, a 2022-2023 LRN partner. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.

In January, Katie Clark’s one-bedroom rental of more than 15 years, and nearly everything inside, was incinerated by Los Angeles County’s Eaton fire, one of the most destructive wildfires in California history. For her troubles, she received a one-time payment of $770 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which she used to replace clothes, food and a crate for her dog. While it was only a fraction of what she needed, the money was at least available while she waited for other funding.

As an organizer with the Altadena Tenants Union who has been helping renters with their FEMA applications, Clark knows just how common her experience has been for fire survivors. She believes federal and local agencies severely underestimated the need and cost of housing for the 150,000 people displaced by the fires, leaving many still struggling to recover. A FEMA spokesperson denied the accusation, saying the agency’s “ongoing assessments indicate that the current Rental Assistance program is effectively meeting the housing needs of survivors eligible for FEMA assistance.”

The disaster response “has been so shockingly bad,” Clark said, but she recognizes that without FEMA’s help in responding to fires that killed at least 30 people and destroyed more than 16,000 structures, “it could have been so, so, so much worse.”

“We would have seen a whole lot more people left to their own devices. And what that would mean is homelessness. It would mean people just abandoned,” Clark said.

Even before President Donald Trump and Gov. Gavin Newsom squared off over Trump’s decision to send National Guard troops to quell immigration protests, before Newsom likened Trump to a dictator and Trump endorsed the idea of arresting the governor, the question of how much California could continue to rely on FEMA was front and center.

It’s a critical question in a state — with its earthquakes, wildfires, floods, drought and extreme heat — that frequently suffers some of the costliest disasters in the country.

Since Trump’s inauguration, his administration has floated sweeping proposals that would slash FEMA dollars and make disasters harder to declare. This has left both blue and red states wrestling with scenarios in which they must pay for what FEMA will not. States have long counted on FEMA to cover at least 75% of declared major disaster response and recovery costs.

In just the past few months, FEMA has denied federal assistance for devastating floods in West Virginia and a destructive windstorm in Washington. The agency approved such funding for deadly tornadoes in Arkansas after Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders appealed an initial denial and personally begged the president for help.

Last month, ProPublica reported that FEMA missed a May deadline to open the application process for many grants, including funding that states rely on to pay for basic emergency management operations. The delay, which the agency has not explained, appears to have little precedent.

In California, Trump has cast doubt on whether he will approve the $40 billion Newsom has requested to help pay for recovery costs associated with the fires, including $16.8 billion from FEMA to rebuild property, infrastructure and remove debris. That’s on top of the almost $140 million the agency has already provided to individual survivors.

The president told reporters last month that states need to be weaned off FEMA and that the federal government will start distributing less federal aid after hurricane season ends in November.

The questions now are: How much will be approved? Will it be enough? And, if not, what then?

A FEMA spokesperson did not directly respond to questions from Capital & Main about anticipated funding cuts and potential impacts on state and local communities, but said the agency “asserts that disasters are best managed when they’re federally supported, state managed and locally executed.”

The uncertainty makes it “very hard” to plan, said Heather Gonzalez, principal fiscal and policy analyst for emergency services at California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office. “The little bean-counters in the back are stressing out right now trying to figure out ‘what are we going to have to work with?’”

The recent “dust-ups” between Newsom and Trump, she said, have only underscored the unpredictability. For his part, Newsom said he prefers the “open hand” of cooperation over the “closed fist” of fighting when it comes to disaster response.

“Emergency preparedness and emergency planning, recovery and renewal — period, full stop — that should be nonpolitical,” he said on Monday, which marked six months since the fires.

Since at least the 1980s, California has endured a rapidly growing number of billion-dollar disasters, with 18 occurring between 2015 and 2024 alone.

As the frequency and severity of California’s disasters increase, so too does its reliance on federal assistance to respond. In the aftermath of January’s Eaton and Palisades fires — the second and third most destructive wildfires in California history, respectively — FEMA has already provided $139 million for everything from home repair costs to medical expenses, and the agency “has allocated billions of dollars for debris removal,” according to a FEMA spokesperson. Over 5,000 properties have already been cleared of ash and fire debris.

Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management Communications Director Emily Montanez said recovery efforts for the fires likely won’t be complete for many years and are heavily dependent on FEMA.

“After the Northridge earthquake in 1994, FEMA had field offices here for 28 years,” Montanez said. “We see this as being no different. This was way more devastation, way more impact. So this could be years, definitely decades.”

While Montanez acknowledged that potential “gaps” in disaster response efforts leave some survivors without sufficient resources, she said that the recent operations coordinated between FEMA and local agencies in Los Angeles have mostly been efficient and successful.

FEMA’s federal assistance supplements California’s own disaster response and mitigation resources like those allocated to the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, which was allotted $4.4 billion in the May revision of the state’s 2025-26 budget. When the office’s funding does not cover all disaster costs, California can also pull from a number of its reserves, including the Budget Stabilization Account and Special Fund for Economic Uncertainties.

Newsom told Capital & Main on Monday that the state has increased its discretionary reserves as a direct consequence of Trump’s ongoing threats to FEMA, though he admitted that even that increased investment wouldn’t make up for the potential loss in federal funding.

California “can’t backfill the elimination of FEMA,” Newsom said. “There’s no state in America [that can], even the most endowed state — $4.1 trillion a year economy — largest in the nation, fourth largest in the world.”

And California’s $12 billion budget deficit will make backfilling the office’s shortfall especially difficult the next time a major disaster strikes, according to Laurie Schoeman, senior adviser on climate resilience to former President Joe Biden.

That will be made even harder if the still-unfinalized proposals outlined in an internal FEMA memo are implemented, according to Schoeman. One of the reforms floated in the memo caps the proportion of recovery costs covered by the federal government at the current baseline of 75%. Under current rules, the president can increase FEMA’s cost share up to 100%, as Biden did for the Los Angeles fires less than two weeks before he left office.

Another proposal quadruples the amount of damage that needs to be suffered in a disaster before FEMA awards any public assistance grants for infrastructure repair and debris removal. That would hike California’s damage threshold from roughly $75 million to nearly $300 million per disaster.

Had just that second reform been in place between 2008 and 2024, California would have received 26% less in public assistance funding from FEMA, a loss of nearly $2 billion, according to a May analysis by the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

Such reduced funding during future events would cause an “apocalyptic scenario” where California communities would struggle to afford the cost of running shelters and paying for emergency responders to rescue disaster victims, according to Sarah Labowitz, a senior fellow in the Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Yet already, significant damage has been done, Schoeman said.

In April, the Trump administration canceled the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, a FEMA initiative dedicated to funding disaster-preparedness projects. Over $880 million in federal funding was rescinded, including a $35 million grant in California’s Napa County largely dedicated to wildfire prevention work. The administration declined to respond to Capital & Main’s request for comment, referring questions to FEMA. An agency spokesperson said that its approach to disaster preparedness mirrors that of disaster response: FEMA will play a supporting role.

“All types of preparedness start with families, individuals and local and state officials ahead of any emergency and disaster,” a statement from the agency said.

The rescinded federal funding risks undermining communities’ abilities to protect against future disasters, Schoeman said, and undoes work accomplished under Trump’s first term.

“They’re just cutting these projects even though they have proven benefit cost analyses in place,” Schoeman said. “The BRIC program was started under the Trump administration … so it feels like the administration is going to cut their own leg off.”

Clark said she is already struggling to get help. She said her insurance provider has so far withheld over $25,000 due to disagreements over whether her transitional housing qualifies as temporary, and her applications for additional FEMA assistance have been denied due to her technically being insured. Some wealthier survivors had “the insulation and resiliency that economic resources give you,” while others had to depend on nonprofits or the kind of government assistance that is now at risk to afford transitional housing.

“If you don’t have those economic resources, your only option is to turn to either philanthropy or the state,” Clark said. “If neither of those are available, then tough luck.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Jeremy Lindenfeld, Capital & Main.

We speak with investigative journalist Antonia Juhasz about how President Trump’s major tax and spending bill hurts environmental justice efforts in Louisiana communities affected by the climate crisis and pollution from oil and gas facilities. The Trump administration had already canceled much of the funding for local environmental monitoring and advocacy, and the so-called Big, Beautiful Bill further entrenches the power of the fossil fuel industry. “It’s a frontal assault on environmental and climate justice, and it will set us back significantly unless we take action to confront the climate crisis,” says Juhasz, who wrote about the bill’s impact for Rolling Stone.

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

President Donald Trump and his allies are celebrating the passage of his sweeping tax and spending bill, which he signed into law on July 4 after a monthslong effort to shepherd it through Congress. Ultimately, just three Republicans in the Senate and two in the House voted against the legislation. The so-called Big, Beautiful Bill includes about $1 trillion in federal cuts to Medicaid and could kick 17 million people off their healthcare. It makes the largest-ever cuts to food assistance benefits, could cause the closure of nursing homes and rural hospitals across the country, raises housing and energy costs, and supercharges the Trump crackdown on immigrants — all while delivering massive tax benefits for the wealthiest people in the country. “This is the most massive transfer of wealth upward in American history,” says John Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation.

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

But while Republican governors in states that rely on those programs have largely remained silent about the bill’s effects, tribal leaders across the country are not mincing words about the upcoming fallout for their communities.

“These bills are an affront to our sovereignty, our lands, and our way of life. They would gut essential health and food security programs, roll back climate resilience funding, and allow the exploitation of our sacred homelands without even basic tribal consultation,” said Chalyee Éesh Richard Peterson, president of the Tlingit and Haida in Alaska, in a statement. “This is not just bad policy — it is a betrayal of the federal trust responsibility to tribal nations.”

Tribes across the country are particularly worried about the megabill’s hit to clean energy, complicating the development of critical wind and solar projects. According to the Department of Energy, tribal households face 6.5 times more electrical outages per year and a 28 percent higher energy burden compared to the average U.S. household. An estimated 54,000 people living on tribal lands have no electricity.

Under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, the Biden administration opened up new federal funding opportunities, increased the loan authority of the Tribal Energy Loan Guarantee Program, and created new tax credits for wind energy, battery storage, large-scale solar farms, and programs to repurpose lands harmed by environmental degradation for related energy projects. When signed into law, Trump’s new bill will largely dismantle these programs.

Historically, tribes have had limited access to capital to fund clean energy projects. Through the IRA, new projects were driven by tribes to address community and infrastructure needs on their terms. According to tribes and energy advocacy groups, these projects not only help build energy infrastructure for each tribal nation but also create jobs, boost local economies, and affirm sovereignty.

Crystal Miller, a member of the Walker River Paiute Tribe, heads government affairs and policy at the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy, underlined the existential outcomes for tribal communities. “It is extremely life or death if you’re talking about clean energy projects, in particular solar, which provide energy to homes, provide heat to homes that wouldn’t have it without because they don’t have lines run to their community,” she said.

Prior to the House vote, the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy was part of a broader group that sent letters to Congress warning of the bill’s consequences for tribes, treaties, and domestic energy priorities. These “are not only economic but also environmental and humanitarian,” they wrote after the Senate narrowly approved the bill 51-50 earlier this week, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. 

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Miller pointed out that tribes weren’t consulted on the terms of the bill headed to Trump’s desk, yet they will be forced to live with the consequences. Tribal leaders across the United States warned the legislation could jeopardize projects critical to their communities’ energy needs: A tribal village in Alaska’s attempt to curb high electricity costs by establishing a tribal utility; the Cheyenne River Sioux’s efforts to navigate long, harsh winters in South Dakota; and California tribes’ development of microgrids to offset power outages due to wildfires. The Hopi Tribe in Arizona said the sovereign nation’s microgrid would fail after a historic transition from coal.  

Tribal leaders also warned there could be widespread job losses across the 574 federally recognized tribal nations, an outcome at odds with Trump’s economic promises. “When we talk about bringing jobs back to America and keeping them here domestically, that also includes tribal nations,” Miller said. 

Kimberly Yazzie, a Diné professor at the University of British Columbia whose previous research focused on tribal clean energy development, called the legislation a big setback — though not entirely unexpected. “Tribes have been presented with challenges in the past hundred years and this is a challenge we’ll have to face,” she said. “It will come down to the tribal, entity, and individual level, and how they want to best move forward.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Clean energy projects on tribal lands were booming. Then came Trump’s tax bill. on Jul 3, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Miacel Spotted Elk.

• Completely strip Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) access for more than 2 million vulnerable Americans. The bill cuts $186 billion, an approximate 20 percent cut – the largest cut to the program in U.S. history. As many as 5 million people, including about 1 million children, live in households that could lose some or all of their hunger and nutrition assistance.
• Mandate more oil and gas sales on public lands and offshore, drastically increasing pollution and climate risks for all Americans.
• Increase subsidies for oil extraction by $14 billion through changes to the 45Q tax credit for carbon capture and utilization, on top of provisions in the bill that create tax loopholes that would allow the carbon capture industry to escape federal income taxes.
• Repeal major clean energy and environmental justice programs, including funding to address air pollution at schools, the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, Climate Pollution Reduction Grants, and Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grants.
• Create a pay-to-play scheme to fast track environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act.

In response, Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter said:

“As we approach Independence Day, Republicans in Congress have passed a budget that is a direct attack on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness we should be celebrating. This draconian budget will mean more hunger, more premature death from lack of healthcare, and more people’s lives and homes devastated by climate disasters. This is a massive handout to big corporations and billionaires at the expense of ordinary people. Extravagant White House celebrations won’t save the millions of people impacted by this terrible bill.
“Congress acted on Trump’s artificial deadline to get this bill passed by July 4th, but there is nothing patriotic or freeing about this direct attack on American’s safe food, clean water and a livable climate.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

• Trump’s Big Bill to be signed Friday after marathon vote and marathon speech by Dem leader Hakeem Jeffries;
• Democratic and labor leaders say Big Budget Bill will hurt workers and destroy the middle class;
• SF sues Trump over EPA termination of Environment Climate Justice grants;
• Advocates fear state cannabis tax proposals could unravel and hurt programs for children
• MALDEF planning million dollar lawsuit over US citizen arrested for filming ICE raid

The post Trump’s Big Bill to be signed Friday after marathon vote; Advocates fear state cannabis tax bills could unravel funding and hurt programs for children – July 3, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

Then, leading up to Tuesday’s vote, Iowa senator Chuck Grassley, who has previously advocated for reining in America’s factory farms, proposed an amendment that took aim at the loophole — a measure that would make sure that farm safety nets reach small and medium-sized family farms, too, according to a one-pager on the amendment released by Grassley’s staff and obtained by Grist. 

Other Republicans from farm country balked at the move, and in the end, Senate agricultural committee chair John Boozman convinced Grassley to drop the amendment. The Senate voted to pass the bill, a huge legislative victory for Trump. It now moves back to the House for a final high-stakes vote before heading to the president’s desk. 

The exclusion of Grassley’s provision is congruent with the Trump administration’s two evident priorities when it comes to agricultural policy: slash federal food and farm funding, leaving small farmers struggling to stay afloat, and shower commodity farmers with multi-billion-dollar bailouts. 

The result, says Austin Frerick, an agricultural and antitrust expert, is akin to “throwing gasoline on the inequality in America and in the food system.”

In the end, the main agricultural policy elements of the Senate bill were virtually the same as what was in the House’s version. Funding for rural development programs, farm loans, programs that invest in local and regional supply chains, and farmer-led sustainable research remain conspicuously absent.

What both versions do contain is a slick budgeting maneuver that takes unobligated climate-targeted funds from President Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, and re-invests them into programs under the current farm bill. In doing so, the budget bill would erase the requirements that the money must fund climate-specific projects. The Senate bill also retains the House’s proposal to increase subsidies to commodity farms — typically larger farms that grow crops like corn, cotton, and soybeans — by about $50 billion. 

“To me, it’s sending the message that there’s only one way to support farmers, and it’s through increased commodity subsidies for a select few farmers,” said Mike Lavender, policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. “And the reality couldn’t be further from the truth.”

One prominent aspect where the Senate bill deviates from the House bill has to do with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The House proposed that the federal government shift the financial onus of SNAP costs onto states, for the first time ever — increasing the administrative costs states have to cover to up to 75 percent, as well as mandating states to pay for a portion of the benefit costs. The Senate bill does that, too, but to a lesser degree. It would require states with specific payment error rates to pay anywhere between 5 percent and as much as 15 percent of the benefit costs, with some final-hour exemptions made by Senate Republicans for Alaska and Hawai’i in order to get Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski to vote in favor of the bill. 

By taking resources away from the federal government’s first line of defense against rising rates of hunger, the risk of food insecurity for millions of Americans is poised to deepen. The bill also puts forward new SNAP work requirements, mandating that parents of children ages 14 and older, veterans, those who are unhoused, former foster youth, and a subset of older people all work to maintain their benefits. If finalized, fewer immigrants, including refugees, people approved for asylum, certain domestic violence victims and survivors of trafficking, would be eligible for the monthly grocery stipend. 

These changes are emblematic of what Parker Gilkesson Davis of the Center for Law and Social Policy calls “the decline of public benefit programs.” The changes to SNAP, Gilkesson Davis continued, will “take away from the people, who have just not been able to catch a break, the ability to put food on their table.” Congressional Budget Office estimates suggest the Senate proposal would reduce federal spending on SNAP by roughly $287 billion over a decade. It is also expected to cause a little over 22 million families to lose some or all of their monthly food benefits, according to a new report by the Urban Institute.   

Another of Trump’s priorities will have grave implications for farmworkers and the business of producing food. As it is written now, the bill will increase the $10 billion annual budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, by more than $100 billion through 2029 for detention facilities, border wall operations and deportations, and make it more expensive for immigrants to apply for asylum, work authorization, humanitarian parole, and temporary protected status. About 40 percent of crop farmworkers are immigrants without legal status.  

“When we see ourselves targeting communities who are working to put food on our tables, and you are removing them from meat processing plants, you’re removing them from the fields where they would have otherwise been processing or harvesting food, then we have less folks to put food on our tables,” said Nichelle Harriott, the policy director of HEAL Food Alliance. “What does that mean in terms of our broader food economy and food chain? So I don’t think this is a bill that has been thought through in terms of what will be the ripple effects on the economy, on people’s budgets, on people’s wallets.”

Senator Grassley was successful in advocating for another provision in the bill related to agriculture: an extension and increase for a federal credit for small producers of biofuels, a derivative of food crops such as corn. The bill also maintains the transferability rules that allow producers using the credits to avoid large tax liabilities. Biofuels, and the devotion of land to producing bioenergy crops, have long been regarded as a misguided climate solution. 

“The significant investment in biofuel developments is going to be detrimental to building a food system that is centered on farmers and consumers. Under these provisions, we’re literally turning our farmers into miners, where instead of growing food, they’ll be growing feed stocks for energy production,” said Jim Walsh, policy director at the nonprofit Food & Water Watch. That will not only “push up food costs on consumers,” he said, “but undermine our ability to actually build true clean energy projects.” 

For 20-year-old Cale Johnson, what’s at stake with the budget bill moving through Congress isn’t just about the national and global implications — it’s deeply personal. Growing up in Kearney, Nebraska, his family relied on SNAP dollars to be able to afford groceries for most of his life. Even with those benefits, he and his mother still had to go to food pantries and Salvation Army food drives every month to avoid going hungry.

The steep cuts to SNAP in the bill, Johnson says, is a reflection of how congressional policymakers misconstrue the purpose of the program, and who relies on it. “Especially in Nebraska, there are so many Trump voters and Republican voters, lifelong conservatives who are on [SNAP]” he said. “I don’t think they understand that this is going to hurt millions out of their own voter base, and that they’re going to be betraying the very people that have been loyal to them for decades.”

Frida Garza contributed reporting to this story. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump’s tax bill could be a major win for Big Ag. Everyone else? Not so much. on Jul 3, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

The decision by the Redstone family, the major owners of Paramount, to settle a bogus lawsuit with President Trump over a 60 Minutes report he did not like is an extremely dangerous precedent in terms of both the First Amendment and government extortion.

Paramount’s decision will only embolden Trump to continue attacking, suing and intimidating the media which he has labeled “the enemy of the people.” It is a dark day for independent journalism and freedom of the press — an essential part of our democracy. It is a victory for a president who is attempting to stifle dissent and undermine American democracy.

It’s pretty obvious why Paramount chose to surrender to Trump. The Redstone family is in line to receive $2.4 billion from the sale of Paramount to Skydance, but they can only receive this money if the Trump administration approves this deal. In other words, the Redstone family diminished the freedom of the press today in exchange for a $2.4 billion payday.

Make no mistake about it. Trump is undermining our democracy and rapidly moving us towards authoritarianism and the billionaires who care more about their stock portfolios than our democracy are helping him do it.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

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One summer day in 2017, a front-page story in the StarNews of Wilmington, North Carolina, shook up the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The drinking water system, it said, was polluted with a contaminant commonly known as GenX, part of the family of “forever” PFAS chemicals.

It came from a Chemours plant in Fayetteville, near the winding Cape Fear River. Few knew about the contaminated water until the article described the discoveries of scientists from the Environmental Protection Agency and a state university. Given that certain types of PFAS have been linked to cancer, there was widespread anxiety over its potential danger.

In the onslaught of legal action and activism that followed, the EPA during President Donald Trump’s first term took an assertive stance, vowing to combat the spread of PFAS nationwide.

In its big-picture PFAS action plan from 2019, the agency said it would attack this complex problem on multiple fronts. It would, for example, consider limiting the presence of two of the best-known compounds — PFOA and PFOS — in drinking water. And, it said, it would find out more about the potential harm of GenX, which was virtually unregulated.

By the time Trump was sworn in for his second term, many of the plan’s suggestions had been put in place. After his first administration said PFOA and PFOS in drinking water should be regulated, standards were finalized under President Joe Biden. Four other types of PFAS, including GenX, were also tagged with limits.

But now, the second Trump administration is pulling back. The EPA said in May that it will delay enforcement on the drinking water limits for PFOA and PFOS until 2031, and it will rescind and reconsider the limits on the other four. Among those who challenged the standards in court is Chemours, which has argued that the EPA, under Biden, “used flawed science and didn’t follow proper rulemaking procedures” for GenX.

These EPA decisions under Trump are part of a slew of delays and course changes to PFAS policies that had been supported in his first term. Even though his earlier EPA pursued a measure that would help hold polluters accountable for cleaning up PFAS, the EPA of his second term has not yet committed to it. The agency also slowed down a process for finding out how industries have used the chemicals, a step prompted by a law signed by Trump in 2019.

At the same time, the EPA is hampering its ability to research pollutants — the kind of research that made it possible for its own scientists to investigate GenX. As the Trump administration seeks severe reductions in the EPA’s budget, the agency has terminated grants for PFAS studies and paralyzed its scientists with spending restrictions.

Pointing to earlier announcements on its approach to the chemicals, the EPA told ProPublica that it’s “committed to addressing PFAS in drinking water and ensuring that regulations issued under the Safe Drinking Water Act follow the law, follow the science, and can be implemented by water systems to strengthen public health protections.”

“If anything,” the agency added, “the Trump administration’s historic PFAS plan in 2019 laid the groundwork for the first steps to comprehensively address this contamination across media and we will continue to do so this term.”

In public appearances, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has pushed back on the suggestion that his agency weakened the drinking water limits on GenX and similar compounds. Future regulations imposed by his agency, he said, could be more or less stringent.

“What we want to do is follow the science, period,” he has said.

That sentiment perplexes scientists and environmental advocates, who say there is already persuasive evidence on the dangers of these chemicals that linger in the environment. The EPA reviewed GenX, for example, during both the first Trump and Biden administrations. In both 2018 and 2021, the agency pointed to animal studies linking it to cancer, as well as problems with kidneys, immune systems and, especially, livers. (Chemours has argued that certain animal studies have limited relevance to humans.)

Scientists and advocates also said it’s unclear what it means for the EPA to follow the science while diminishing its own ability to conduct research.

“I don’t understand why we would want to hamstring the agency that is designed to make sure we have clean air and clean water,” said Jamie DeWitt, a toxicologist in Oregon who worked with other scientists on Cape Fear River research. “I don’t understand it.”

Favored for their nonstick and liquid-resistant qualities, synthetic PFAS chemicals are widely used in products like raincoats, cookware and fast food wrappers. Manufacturers made the chemicals for decades without disclosing how certain types are toxic at extremely low levels, can accumulate in the body and will scarcely break down over time — hence the nickname “forever chemicals.”

The chemicals persist in soil and water too, making them complicated and costly to clean up, leading to a yearslong push to get such sites covered by the EPA’s Superfund program, which is designed to handle toxic swaths of land. During the first Trump administration, the EPA said it was taking steps toward designating the two legacy compounds, PFOA and PFOS, as “hazardous substances” under the Superfund program. Its liability provisions would help hold polluters responsible for the cost of cleaning up.

Moving forward with this designation process was a priority, according to the PFAS plan from Trump’s first term. Zeldin’s EPA describes that plan as “historic.” And, when he represented a Long Island district with PFAS problems in Congress, Zeldin voted for a bill that would have directed the EPA to take this step.

The designation became official under Biden. But business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and organizations representing the construction, recycling and chemical industries, sued. Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation’s playbook for the new administration, also questioned it.

Zeldin has said repeatedly that he wants to hold polluters accountable for PFAS, but his EPA requested three delays in the court case challenging the Superfund designation that helps make it possible.

The agency said in a recent motion it needed the latest pause because new leadership is still reviewing the issues and evaluating the designation in context of its “comprehensive strategy to address PFOA and PFOS.”

The EPA also delayed a rule requiring manufacturers and importers to report details about their PFAS use between 2011 and 2022. An annual bill that sets defense policy and spending, signed by Trump in his first term, had charged the EPA with developing such a process.

When Biden’s EPA finalized it, the agency said the rule would provide the largest-ever dataset of PFAS manufactured and used in the United States. It would help authorities understand their spread and determine what protections might be warranted.

Businesses were supposed to start reporting this month. But in a May 2 letter, a coalition of chemical companies petitioned the EPA to withdraw the deadline, reconsider the rule and issue a revised one with narrowed scope.

When the EPA delayed the rule less than two weeks later, it said it needed time to prepare for data collection and to consider changes to aspects of the rule.

In an email to ProPublica, the agency said it will address PFAS in many ways. Its approach, the agency said, is to give more time for compliance and to work with water systems to reduce PFAS exposure as quickly as feasible, “rather than issue violations and collect fees that don’t benefit public health.”

The court expects an update from the EPA in the Superfund designation case by Wednesday, and in the legal challenges to the drinking water standards by July 21. The EPA could continue defending the rules. It could ask the court for permission to reverse its position or to send the rules back to the agency for reconsideration. Or it could also ask for further pauses.

“It’s just a big unanswered question whether this administration and this EPA is going to be serious about enforcing anything,” said Robert Sussman, a former EPA official from the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. As a lawyer, he now represents environmental groups that filed an amicus brief in PFAS cases.

Back in North Carolina, problems caused by the chemicals continue to play out.

A consent order between the state and Chemours required the manufacturer to drastically reduce the release of GenX and other PFAS into the environment. (The chemicals commonly called GenX refer to HFPO-DA and its ammonium salt, which are involved in the GenX processing aid technology owned by Chemours.)

Chemours told ProPublica that it invested more than $400 million to remediate and reduce PFAS emissions. It also noted that there are hundreds of PFAS users in North Carolina, “as evidenced by PFAS seen upstream and hundreds of miles away” from its Fayetteville plant “that cannot be traced back to the site.”

PFAS-riddled sea foam continues to wash up on the coastal beaches. Chemours and water utilities, meanwhile, are battling in court about who should cover the cost of upgrades to remove the chemicals from drinking water.

Community forums about PFAS draw triple-digit crowds, even when they’re held on a weeknight, said Emily Donovan, co-founder of the volunteer group Clean Cape Fear, which has intervened in federal litigation. In the fast-growing region, new residents are just learning about the chemicals, she said, and they’re angry.

“I feel like we’re walking backwards,” Donovan said. Pulling back from the drinking water standards, in particular, is “disrespectful to this community.”

“It’s one thing to say you’re going to focus on PFAS,” she added. “It’s another thing to never let it cross the finish line and become any meaningful regulation.”

The EPA of Trump’s first term didn’t just call for more regulation of PFAS, it also stressed the importance of better understanding the forever chemicals through research and testing.

In a 2020 update to its PFAS action plan, the EPA highlighted its support for North Carolina’s investigation of GenX in the Cape Fear River. And it described its efforts to develop the science on PFAS issues affecting rural economies with “first-of-its-kind funding for the agriculture sector.”

Zeldin, too, has boasted about advancing PFAS research in an April news release. “This is just a start of the work we will do on PFAS to ensure Americans have the cleanest air, land, and water,” he said.

At about the same time, though, the agency terminated a host of congressionally appropriated grants for PFAS research, including over $15 million for projects focused on food and farmlands in places like Utah, Texas and Illinois.

Scientists at Michigan State University, for example, were investigating how PFAS interacts with water, soil, crops, livestock and biosolids, which are used for fertilizer. They timed their latest study to this year’s growing season, hired staff and partnered with a farm. Then the EPA canceled two grants.

In virtually identical letters, the agency said that each grant “no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities. The objectives of the award are no longer consistent with EPA funding priorities.”

The contrast between the agency’s words and actions raises questions about the process behind its decisions, said Cheryl Murphy, head of Michigan State’s Center for PFAS Research and co-lead of one of the projects.

“If you halt it right now,” she said, “what we’re doing is we’re undermining our ability to translate the science that we’re developing into some policy and guidance to help people minimize their exposure to PFAS.”

At least some of the researchers are appealing the terminations.

About a month after PFAS grants to research teams in Maine and Virginia were terminated for not being aligned with agency priorities, the agency reinstated them. The EPA told ProPublica that “there will be more updates on research-related grants in the future.”

Even if the Michigan State grants are reinstated, there could be lasting consequences, said Hui Li, the soil scientist who led both projects. “We will miss the season for this year,” he said in an email, “and could lose the livestock on the farm for the research.”

Federal researchers are also in limbo. Uncertainty, lost capacity and spending restrictions have stunted the work at an EPA lab in Duluth, Minnesota, that investigates PFAS and other potential hazards, according to several sources connected to it. As one source who works at the lab put it, “We don’t know how much longer we will be operating as is.”

The EPA told ProPublica that it’s “continuing to invest in research and labs, including Duluth, to advance the mission of protecting human health and the environment.”

Meanwhile, the agency is asking Congress to eliminate more than half of its own budget. That includes massive staffing cuts, and it would slash nearly all the money for two major programs that help states fund water and wastewater infrastructure. One dates back to President Ronald Reagan’s administration. The other was spotlighted in a paper by Trump’s first-term EPA, which said communities could use these funds to protect public health from PFAS. It trumpeted examples from places like Michigan and New Jersey.

The EPA lost 727 employees in voluntary separations between Jan. 1 and late June, according to numbers the agency provided to ProPublica. It said it received more than 2,600 applications for the second round of deferred resignations and voluntary early retirements.

“These are really technical, difficult jobs,” said Melanie Benesh, vice president for government affairs at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group. “And the EPA, by encouraging so many employees to leave, is also losing a lot of institutional knowledge and a lot of technical expertise.”

The shake-up also worries DeWitt, who was one of the scientists who helped investigate the Cape Fear River contamination and who has served on an EPA science advisory board. Her voice shook as she reflected on the EPA’s workforce, “some of the finest scientists I know,” and what their loss means for public well-being.

“Taking away this talent from our federal sector,” she said, will have “profound effects on the agency’s ability to protect people in the United States from hazardous chemicals in air, in water, in soil and potentially in food.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Anna Clark.

Senate Republicans voted Tuesday to advance Donald Trump’s massive spending and tax bill, which will now go back to the House of Representatives for final approval. President Trump has publicly pushed his party to get the bill on his desk to sign by July 4. Dozens of peaceful protestors, including disabled people in wheelchairs, were arrested last Wednesday, June 25, in Washington, DC, while protesting Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which will slash taxes, dramatically increase funding for war and immigration enforcement, and make devastating cuts to vital, popular programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Lorraine Chavez, an educator, researcher, and community leader based in Chicago, and Christine Rodriguez, a legal assistant from Pasadena, California, both of whom traveled to DC with the Debt Collective and were arrested for participating in the peaceful act of civil disobedience.

Guests:

• Lorraine Chavez is an educator, researcher, and community leader based in Chicago. She is also a student debtor and traveled to the Washington, DC, protest with the Debt Collective.
• Christine Rodriguez is a legal assistant and student debtor from Pasadena, California, who also traveled to the Washington, DC, protest with the Debt Collective.

Credits

• Studio Production / Post-Production: David Hebden

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

The Sunday morning talkshows have for decades played an important part in shaping political narratives in the United States. They typically bring on high-profile Washington guests for one-on-one interviews, aiming to set the political agenda for the week ahead. But these shows also have consistently marginalized the voices of women and BIPOC people, and those who might represent the public interest, rather than the interests of a narrow, wealthy elite (Extra!, 9–10/01, 4/12).

After Donald Trump was declared the winner of the 2016 and 2024 elections, the Sunday shows had an opportunity to hold up both his campaign promises and his cabinet picks to scrutiny. With his campaigns’ racist attacks on immigrants and diversity initiatives, as well as his movement’s assaults on the rights of women and trans people, inviting guests who more accurately reflect the diversity of the country would seem to be a journalistic imperative. Yet a new FAIR study finds that the Sunday shows’ coverage of the Trump transitions were even more heavily white and male than usual.

We also found that in 2024, when Trump’s rhetoric and cabinet picks became even more extreme, fewer guests voiced criticism of Trump and his cabinet than in 2016. By downplaying critiques of Trump, these shows used their inside-the-Beltway influence to tell insiders that the MAGA presidency should get a more deferential reception the second time around.

Methodology

FAIR documented all guests on ABC‘s This Week, CBS‘s Face the Nation, CNN‘s State of the Union, Fox News Sunday and NBC‘s Meet the Press from November 13, 2016, through January 22, 2017, and from November 10, 2024, through January 19, 2025. We used the Nexis news database, Archive.org and news outlet websites to obtain complete transcripts. We included all guests invited to speak on the show with the host, whether individually or in groups. (Most panel discussions—which were typically journalist roundtables—were excluded; the exceptions were those conducted in an interview format.)

We documented the guests’ occupation, gender and race or ethnicity, as well as whether they voiced critical or supportive opinions of Trump, his campaign and his cabinet picks. For politicians and other political professionals, we recorded partisan affiliation.

We counted 162 guests in the first Trump transition period, and 186 in the second. (Much of the difference can be accounted for by the fact that Christmas fell on a Sunday in 2016, resulting in only three guests across all shows, rather than the usual 15 to 17.)

From the first to the second transition period, there were some notable shifts in the shows’ guest demographics and views on the president-elect, particularly from nonpartisan guests and guests from the defeated Democratic Party.

Focus on Beltway insiders

The vast majority of guests in both time periods were current and former government officials, in line with the Sunday shows’ focus on Washington insiders. This habit has the effect of marginalizing other kinds of people with deep knowledge about various policy areas, such as academics, NGO leaders, labor leaders, activists or other public interest voices.

In 2016, current and former US officials and politicians made up 86% of all guest appearances. In 2024–25, that number stayed nearly the same, at 84%. In 2016, journalists came in a distant second, at 7%. In 2024, that distinction went to former military officials, with 6%.

Of the partisan sources, Republicans outnumbered Democrats (and independents who caucused with the Democrats) 56% to 40% in 2016–17. Interestingly, Democrats slightly outnumbered Republicans in 2024–25, 49% to 47%. (The remainder were primarily people who had served as appointees under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and one Green Party guest in 2016.)

Historically, Republicans have been overrepresented on the Sunday shows. It’s noteworthy that that wasn’t the case in the transition to the second Trump administration. But at the same time, the number of invited guests who voiced criticism of Trump or his cabinet picks decreased from 2016 to 2024, from 28% to 22%. This can be largely attributed to the fact that far fewer of the Sunday shows’ Democratic guests and nonpartisan guests took a critical position on Trump in 2024—a phenomenon that will be discussed in more detail below.

Skewing (more) male

The Sunday show guests were highly skewed toward men (81% of guests) in 2016; they were even more skewed (84%) in 2024. This was driven primarily by the shift in GOP guests, whose 3.5:1 male-to-female ratio in 2016 skyrocketed to an astounding 24:1 ratio in 2024. (Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Kellyanne Conway accounted for 15 of the 17 female GOP appearances in the first time period.)

Not every Sunday show guest talked about Trump; other interview topics ranged from political issues, like Middle East policy or the opioid epidemic, to largely apolitical interviews about things like sports or books. In 2024–25, there were 19 of these guests, and they were nearly evenly split along gender lines—meaning the gender split among those talking about Trump was even more skewed towards men.

Fox News was consistently the worst in this category, inviting 89% male guests in 2016 and 90% in 2024, but most of the others weren’t far behind. The high mark in female representation for any show in the study was CNN in 2016, when just 27% of its guests were women. In 2024, CBS bucked the trend as the only show that increased its female representation, moving from 20% to 25%, and also was the only show to invite a trans guest (Rep. Sarah McBride, 11/24/24) during either study period.

In other words, as Trump retook office under the shadow of Project 2025, with its promises to reverse decades of gains on gender equity and reproductive rights, nearly every show moved toward a greater silencing of women’s voices.

Marginalizing women’s voices is consequential. For instance, State of the Union host Jake Tapper (1/5/25) directed questions about Trump nominee Pete Hegseth to two white male guests, Republican Sen. Jim Banks and Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly. Asked directly by Tapper about the sexual assault claim against Hegseth, Banks waved it off; the only “concerns” Kelly expressed were about Hegseth’s lack of experience.

When CBS Face the Nation (11/24/24) asked similar questions of Democrat Sen. Tammy Duckworth, she responded directly: “It’s frankly an insult and really troubling that Mr. Trump would nominate someone who has admitted that he’s paid off a victim who has claimed rape allegations against him.” Female guests won’t always raise issues of women’s rights, gender equity or misogyny, nor should they be expected to shoulder that responsibility alone—but they are certainly more likely to.

Overwhelmingly white

The shows also invited overwhelmingly white guests to interview, though that number decreased from 2016 to 2024, from 85% to 78%. While not quite as extreme an overrepresentation as gender, the percentage of white guests still far exceeded their proportion among the general public: In 2024, 58% of the US population identified as non-Hispanic white, down from 62% in 2016.

From 2016 to 2024, Black representation on the Sunday shows decreased from 10% to 5%, while Asian-American guests increased, from less than 1% to 8%. This increase was in part due to repeat appearances by Democrats Duckworth and Rep. Ro Khanna. GOP guests also increased in diversity, due largely to four appearances by Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a member of the Cherokee Nation.

During the 2024–25 time period, neither CBS nor CNN invited any Black guests, and Fox invited no Latine guests, as the Trump team geared up for Day One attacks on anti-racism initiatives and on immigrant communities.

In 2016, then–Rep. Keith Ellison (D–Minn.) said of Trump on ABC (11/13/16):

We oppose his misogyny. We oppose his picking on people of different ethnic and religious groups. And we want to be making clear that if he tries to deliver on his word, that we will be there to say no.

Ellison appeared the next week on CBS (11/20/16), similarly decrying Trump’s “racism, misogyny,” and declaring, “It’s hard to normalize that, and we can never do it.” But eight years later, that racism and misogyny were repeatedly normalized by Sunday show guests—mostly of the white male variety.

Guestlists are not entirely determined by the shows themselves, as administrations choose who to make available as guests, and not every invited guest will agree to appear. Because shows lean so heavily on congressmembers for guest interviews, they also draw from a pool that is demographically skewed (76% non-Hispanic white, 72% male). But the Sunday shows clearly aren’t making any effort to offer voices more representative of the US population, tilting even further white and male than Congress does.

Democrats’ shift on Trump

When a guest spoke about Trump, his campaign or his cabinet picks, FAIR coded those comments as positive, neutral or critical. We defined those who praised Trump, his cabinet picks or his policy positions (as opposed to general Republican positions) as positive; those who do not take an explicit stance on these as neutral; and those who disparaged these as critical. Statements about Trump’s opponents, like Vice President Kamala Harris or Sen. Hillary Clinton, were not considered unless they also included specific references to Trump. The balance of these comments changed markedly between the first and second Trump transitions—particularly among Democratic and nonpartisan guests.

Overall, guest interviews became more neutral in the second transition. In 2016–17, 94% of guests made comments about Trump, and in 2024–25, 90% did so. But in the first transition, 30% of those guests spoke critically, while in the second, only 24% were critical. Neutral takes rose from 19% of sources to 28%. Nearly half the guests who commented on Trump had positive things to say in both transitions: 51% in the first, 48% in the second. It’s notable that there was a marked shift toward neutrality among guests, even as Trump’s rhetoric and cabinet picks became more extreme.

This was particularly noteworthy among those Democratic guests (and independents who caucused with Democrats) who made comments about Trump. In 2016–17, the combined Democratic and independent guests’ comments about Trump were critical 62% of the time, and only 4% of such comments were positive. In contrast, in 2024–25, when far more such guests were invited to appear, only 49% spoke critically, while 11% spoke positively. Trump-related commentary from Democrats shifted from 35% to 40% neutral.

Senators, who make up a large portion of partisan guests, didn’t shift their perspectives much between the years, from 63% to 62% critical. Representatives tilted a little more neutral, but the biggest shift can be seen in which Democrats the Sunday shows invited: more former White House officials in 2016–17 (10, vs. 4 in the second transition), and more officials of the current/outgoing White House in 2024–25 (13, vs. five in the first).

All the guests representing the outgoing administration were either neutral or voiced support for Trump. Meanwhile, in the first time period, seven of the critical Democratic interviews about Trump (and three of the neutrals) were from former presidential appointees. Only three former appointees were asked about Trump in the second transition—all of whom were critical.

It’s predictable that former officials, who are not representing the current White House team that is seeking a smooth transition, feel more free to speak critically. For instance, Norm Eisen, a former special counsel on ethics to Barack Obama, spoke to This Week (12/11/16) about Trump’s conflicts of interest, predicting, “He’s going to be tainted by scandal.”

In contrast, Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan offered a more flattering perspective (NBC Meet the Press, 12/1/24):

First I would just say that we’ve had good consultations with the incoming team. We’ve been transparent with them. We are committed to ensuring a smooth transition. Second, I’m glad to see the incoming team is welcoming the ceasefire.

Interestingly, Republican guests also trended slightly more toward neutral comments in the second transition period. Five Republicans (6%) spoke about Trump critically in the first time period, while only three (4%) did so in the second. At the same time, the percentage of Republicans making pro-Trump comments dipped from 87% to 84%. GOP guests making neutral comments increased from 6% to 12%.

A different kind of nonpartisan

Nonpartisan guests, who accounted for 15% of guests in both time periods, shifted even more markedly: Half of those who made comments about Trump expressed criticism in 2016–17, and none did so in 2024–25. Meanwhile, positive comments increased from 21% to 50%.

The types of guests dominating this category also changed: In 2016, the largest group consisted of journalists invited for one-on-one interviews (8); these often made critical remarks about Trump, as when the Washington Post‘s David Ignatius told Face the Nation (12/18/16), “I was struck…by his reluctance to do what typically happens in national security matters, which is seek some kind of bipartisan unified consensus.” Or when the New York Times‘ Dean Baquet said to Meet the Press (1/1/17), “I think that there are a lot of question marks about Donald Trump.”

In 2024, there was only one journalist (radio host Charlamagne tha God—This Week, 11/12/24), while business elites (4) and foreign diplomats (3) dominated.

As one might expect, diplomats tended to express more enthusiasm for the incoming president. “I know they share our goal of wanting to have security and stability,” British Ambassador Karen Pierce said of the incoming Trump administration (Face the Nation, 11/10/24). Ukrainian Ambassador Oksana Markarova told Face the Nation (12/15/24): “Let me thank President Trump. He is the one who made a historic decision…to provide us with lethal aid in the first place.”

Business leaders likewise tended to praise Trump. “The American consumer today, as well as corporate America, is quite excited about what the Trump administration is talking about,” IBM vice chair Gary Cohn—a Trump advisor—told Face the Nation (12/15/24). OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said to Fox News Sunday (12/1/24): “We need to be able to have the best AI infrastructure in the world….. I believe President-elect Trump will be very good at that.”

With Trump’s threats of retribution a major factor in the second transition, it’s not necessarily surprising that partisan guests might be more wary of voicing criticism—which is all the more reason for the Sunday shows to look outside their usual suspects. Instead, the few nonpartisan guests they invited came from occupations much more likely to say flattering things of the incoming president in order to curry favor.

Research assistance: Wilson Korik, Emma Llano

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Keiwana Grant-Floyd.

Dozens of peaceful protesters, including disabled people in wheelchairs, were arrested last Wednesday in Washington, DC, while protesting President Trump’s massive spending and tax bill, which will dramatically slash taxes, restructure the student loan and debt system, and make devastating cuts to vital, popular programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). With Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote, Senate Republicans voted Tuesday to advance Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, which will now go back to the House of Representatives for final approval. In this urgent episode of Working People, we speak with Lorraine Chavez and Chrstine Rodriguez, who were among the dozens arrested for their peaceful act of civil disobedience on June 25, about what’s in this bill, what it will mean for working people, and how working people are fighting back

Guests:

• Lorraine Chavez is an educator, researcher, and community leader based in Chicago. She is also a student debtor and traveled to the Washington DC protest with the Debt Collective.
• Chrstine Rodriguez is a legal assistant and student debtor from Pasadena, California, who also traveled to the Washington DC protest with the Debt Collective.

Additional links/info:

• The Debt Collective website, X page, Facebook page, and Instagram
• Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams, “Medicaid defenders in wheelchairs arrested ahead of Senate vote on ‘betrayal of a bill’”
• Chris Stein, The Guardian, “What’s in Trump’s big, beautiful bill? Tax cuts, deportations and more”
• Chris Stein, The Guardian, “Senate Republicans pass Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ bill, clearing major hurdle”

Featured Music:

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Credits:
Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

The Republican Party was basically started by Lincoln, who (if he had lived) would have repudiated and condemned virtually all of his Republican successors. The assassination that killed him transformed his Party into its exact opposite, in the most important ways.

Here is Lincoln speaking, so that the transformation wrought by that bullet is made clear by Lincoln himself, in his own time:

It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation. A few men own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital hire or buy another few to labor for them. A large majority belong to neither class — neither work for others nor have others working for them.

Lincoln was profoundly opposed to coerced labor, and he recognized that it can take many forms — not ONLY the form called ”slavery.” He also recognized that the few individuals who, as a group, own the most wealth and consequently hire a substantial percentage of the U.S. population, will possess, by their ability to hire and fire, enormous power, which might enable them to coerce their employees to accept unjustifiably low wages for their work. On this basis, he spoke publicly on the record as siding with the oppressed against their oppressors — even outside the context of merely slavery.

The poor are the lowest class of workers, and Lincoln there was making explicitly clear that — directly opposed to today’s Republican Party, which makes policy on the basis of the principle that a person is worth only whatever his/her net worth is, and so a billionaire is worth as much as a thousand millionaires — a person’s worth has no necessary relationship to his/her wealth — none.

Polling proves that vast majorities of the U.S. public detest Trump’s budget-and-tax priorities. Furthermore, an extraordinarily extensive Yale poll of nearly 5,000 Americans, published on June 27th, found that when respondents are informed of what is in Trump’s budget-and-tax bill, only 11% approve, 78% disapprove of it. Would it become law in a democracy? Of course not!

Today’s Republican Party — this Party that Lincoln would consider an abomination — is the exact opposite of anything that would become law in any democracy. If Trump’s bill, or anything like it, becomes law in America, this will be announcing to the entire world that America is a dictatorship by its super-rich. Such a Government used to be called an “aristocracy.” At every election-time, America’s public are being asked to side with one group of billionaires (the Republicann ones) against another group of billionaires (the Democratic ones), instead of to side with themselves and the rest of the public, against all billionaires — the remarkably few individuals who actually control the U.S. Government. This applies both in national U.S. politics and in state U.S. politics, so that the billionaires have veto-power to prevent ANY candidate they don’t control, from even getting their Party’s nomination (much less winning the final campaign). It is the aristocratic type of dictatorship — and Lincoln condemned it.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

At the NATO summit in the Hague, almost all European nations reached an agreement to raise military spending to 5% of each county’s GDP. This comes as President Trump said the U.S. would not come to the defense of other NATO nations unless they hit 5% in military spending. “Trump wants to move towards a much, much more instrumental and crudely material, transactional politics,” says Richard Seymour, writer, broadcaster and activist. “I think this is a version of imperial decline that Trump is trying to manage.”

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

U.S. President Donald Trump is touting a ceasefire deal between Israel and Iran, despite what he said were violations of the deal by both sides shortly after he announced it. Trump said he was especially angry with Israel and urged the country to stand down as he faces mounting criticism over the prospect of another U.S. war in the Middle East. “Part of the reason why Trump also was quite eager to get to a ceasefire, why he’s so frustrated with what the Israelis are doing right now, is precisely because he’s very much aware of the strain that all of this has caused within his own support base,” says political analyst Trita Parsi. Parsi says the breakdown of the global Non-Proliferation Treaty on nuclear weapons could lead to dangerous consequences, as countries like Iran see incentive to build their own nuclear deterrence.

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

Lowe lives about 20 miles outside of Fresno, in the valley’s heart. More than a dozen highways, including Interstate 5, run through the region, carrying almost half of the state’s truck traffic. The sky is usually hazy, the air often deemed hazardous, and 1 in 6 children lives with asthma. “You don’t realize how bad it is until you leave,” Lowe said. 

He understands California’s urgent need to clear the air by electrifying the trucking industry and pushing older, more polluting machinery off the road. That would reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by 17.1 tons annually by 2037, significantly reduce the amount of smog-forming ozone, and go a long way toward meeting federal air quality requirements. But as a partner at Kingsburg Truck Center, a dealership in Kingsburg, he’s seen how difficult this transition will be.

More than 15 percent of medium- and heavy-duty trucks sold statewide in 2023 were zero-emission. But the road has been bumpy amid growing uncertainty about California’s regulations and the Trump administration’s hostility toward electric vehicles, the clean energy transition, and the state’s climate policies.

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The Golden State started its trucking transition in 2021 when it required manufacturers to produce an increasing number of zero-emission big rigs, known as Advanced Clean Trucks, or ACT. The following year, it mandated that private and public fleets buy only those machines by 2036, establishing what are called Advanced Clean Fleets, or ACF. 

The Environmental Protection Agency granted the waiver California needed to adopt ACT in 2023. But it had not acted on the exemption required to enforce ACF by the time President Donald Trump took office, prompting the state to rescind its application as a “strategic move” to keep “options on the table,” according to the California Air Resources Board.

The U.S. Senate threw the fate of the Advanced Clean Trucks rule into question when it revoked the state’s EPA waiver on May 22, stripping the state of its ability to mandate the electrification of private fleets, though it can still regulate public ones. Now the one bright side for the state’s efforts to clean up trucking is the Clean Trucks Partnership, under which several manufacturers have already agreed to produce zero-emission rigs regardless of any federal challenges.

All of this limits California’s ability to ease pollution. The Air Resources Board has said the Advanced Clean Fleet rule would eliminate 5.9 tons of nitrogen oxide emissions in the San Joaquin Valley by 2037. Another rule, the In-Use Locomotive regulation, bans internal combustion trucks more than 23 years old by 2030 and would reduce those emissions by another 11.2 tons. Even with those rules in place, the state would have to cut another 6.3 tons to bring air quality in line with EPA rules.

With the fate of California’s campaign to decarbonize trucking in question, even those who want to see it succeed are wavering. Kingsburg Truck Center started selling battery electric trucks in 2022, but saw customers begin to cancel orders once the state was unable to enforce the Advanced Clean Fleet requirement. Lowe has had to lay off seven people as a result.

“We got heavy into the EV side, and when the mandate goes away, I’m like, ‘Shit, am I gonna be stuck with all these trucks?’” Lowe said. “If I were to do it all again, I’d probably take a lot less risk on the investment that we made into the zero-emission space.”

California remains committed to cleaning up trucking. But the transition will require creative policymaking because the Trump administration’s hostility to the idea makes it “extremely difficult” for the state to hit its goal of 100 percent zero-emission truck sales by 2036, said Guillermo Ortiz of the National Resources Defense Council.

Still, he sees ways the state can make progress. Lawmakers are considering a bill that would give the Air Resources Board authority to regulate ports, rail yards, and warehouses. That would allow regulators to mandate strategies to advance the transition, like requiring facilities to install charging infrastructure. Several state programs underwrite some of the cost of electric trucks, which can cost about $435,000 — about three times the price of a diesel rig.

That’s not to say California isn’t fighting back. It plans to sue the Trump administration to preserve its right to set emissions standards. Losing that will make it “impossible” to ease the Valley’s pollution enough to meet air quality standards, said Craig Segall, a former deputy executive director of the Air Resources Board. “Advanced Clean Fleets and Advanced Clean Trucks arise out of some pretty hard math regarding what’s true about air pollution in the Central Valley and in California, which is that it’s always been largely a car and truck problem,” he said. 

Even if the state loses the ability to regulate vehicle emissions and require electrification, Segall is confident market forces will push the transition forward. As China continues investing in the technology and developing electric big rigs, he said, companies throughout the rest of the world will need to do the same to stay competitive. He also said that trucking companies will see zero-emission trucks as an opportunity to lower maintenance and fueling costs. The Frito Lay factory in the Central Valley city of Modesto has purchased 15 Tesla electric big rigs.

Ultimately, the economic argument for ditching diesels is simply too appealing, said Marissa Campbell, the co-founder of Mitra EV, a Los Angeles company that helps businesses electrify. She said the state’s decision to table the Advanced Clean Fleets rule hasn’t hurt business.

“No one likes being told what to do,” she said. “But when you show a plumber or solar installer how they can save 30 to 50 percent on fuel and maintenance — and sometimes even more — they’re all ears.”

Valerie Thorsen leads the San Joaquin Valley office of CalSTART, a nonprofit that has since 1992 pushed for cleaner transportation to address pollution and climate change. She sees the Trump administration’s recalcitrance as nothing more than a hurdle on the road to an inevitable transition. But any effort to ditch diesels must be accompanied by an aggressive push to build charging infrastructure. “You don’t want to have vehicles you can’t charge or fuel,” she said. 

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The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District won a $56 million federal grant in January 2024, to build two solar-powered EV charging sites along Interstate 5 with 102 chargers specifically for big rigs. About 45 percent of California’s truck traffic passes through the region, which has over the past 25 years eased nitrogen oxide emission from stationary sources by more than 90 percent. “A majority of the remaining [nitrogen oxide] emissions and smog forming emissions in the valley come from heavy duty trucks,” said Todd DeYoung, director of grants and incentives at the district.

The Trump administration quickly halted grant programs like the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program that would have expanded charging infrastructure. But DeYoung remains confident that construction of the truck chargers will proceed because work started almost immediately. Similar projects are underway in Bakersfield and Kettleman City. 

Not everyone is convinced the infrastructure needs to roll out as quickly as the trucks. Ortiz said emphasizing the adoption of the trucks will pressure the market to ensure chargers come online. “That sends a signal to charging infrastructure providers, to utilities, saying, ‘These vehicles are coming, and we need to make sure that the infrastructure is there to support it,’” he said.

That support is crucial. Bill Hall is new to trucking. He spent decades as a marine engineer, but during the pandemic decided to try something new. He runs a one-man operation in Berkeley, California, and as he carried loads around the state noticed a lot of hydrogen stations. Intrigued, he reached out to truck manufacturer Nikola to ask about its electric hydrogen fuel cell rigs.

His engineering background impressed the startup, which thought he’d provide good technical feedback. Hall bought the first truck the company sold in California, augmenting his personal investment of $124,000 with $360,000 he received from a state program in December 2023. Despite a few initial bugs, he enjoyed driving it. As an early adopter, Nikola gave him a deal on hydrogen — $5.50 per kilogram, which let him fill up for about $385 and go about 400 miles. “I proved that you could actually pretty much take that hydrogen truck to any corner of California with a minimal hydrogen distribution system that they had,” Hall said. 

But weak sales, poor management, and other woes led Nikola to file for bankruptcy in February. Without its technical support, Hall no longer feels comfortable driving his truck. The company’s collapse also meant paying full price for hydrogen, about $33 per kilogram these days. Hall is still paying $1,000 a month for insurance and $225 a month for parking. He says the state shares some of the blame for his predicament because it didn’t do enough to support the technology. He would have liked to see it distribute 1,000 hydrogen trucks to establish them and subsidize fuel costs. “I did the right thing, which ended up being the wrong thing,” he said. 

Beyond the obvious climate implications of ditching diesel lie many health benefits. In addition to generating a lot of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide, the transportation sector is responsible for 80 percent of California’s ozone-forming emissions. “There’s no question that the transition away from combustion trucks to zero-emission would save lives, prevent asthma attacks, and generate significant, significant public health benefits all around the state,”  said Will Barrett, senior director for nationwide clean air advocacy with the American Lung Association.

The state has come a long way in the decades since smog blanketed Los Angeles, and the San Joaquin Valley has enjoyed progressively cleaner air over the past 25 years. But people like Luis Mendez Gomez know there is more work to be done, even if the air no longer smells like burning tires. He has lived alongside a busy highway and not far from a refinery outside of Bakersfield for 40 years. It has taken a toll: His wife was hospitalized for lung disease earlier this year, and he knows 10 people who have died from lung cancer.

“This pollution has been going on for years,” Mendez Gomez said. “Nobody had cared before, until now. We’re pushing the government and pushing companies to help us.”

But just when it looks like things might change, the federal government appears willing to undo that progress, he said. ”All the ground they gained is going to go away.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline California rolls on with electric trucks, despite Trump’s roadblocks on Jun 24, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Benton Graham.

The New York Times (6/18/25) made clear that it wouldn’t mind an unprovoked attack on Iran—so long as it wasn’t done hastily.

In the wake of the US-supported Israeli attack on Iran, and days before the direct US bombing that followed, the New York Times editorial board (6/18/25) argued that “America Must Not Rush Into a War Against Iran.”

This language was as shifty as it was deliberate. Rather than oppose a policy of unprovoked aggression and mass murder, the Times editorialists suggested such a campaign was happening too hastily, and it should be preceded by more debate.

The opinion writers at the most important paper in the world were fully in favor of attacking Iran; they only worried that Trump would go about it the wrong way. In fact, the Times’ justification for war was identical to that of the Trump administration’s explanation after the fact.  It laid it out in the first paragraph:

A nuclear-armed Iran would make the world less safe. It would destabilize the already volatile Middle East. It could imperil Israel’s existence. It would encourage other nations to acquire their own nuclear weapons, with far-reaching geopolitical consequences.

The New York Times‘ echo of the standard Israeli and US propaganda line offers an opportunity to critically examine this most recent justification for aggressive war.

‘Iran is not building a nuclear weapon’

The Trump administration’s top intelligence official saying that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon” (Responsible Statecraft, 6/8/25) did not prevent the New York Times from asserting that Iran “has made substantial progress toward acquiring a nuclear weapon.”

The premise here was that Iran is working to build a nuclear weapon, something that forms the backbone of the Israeli propaganda campaign justifying their actions. The only problem is that there is no evidence whatsoever for this position. Not only is there no evidence that Iran is building a nuclear weapon, there is no reason to think that if they did, they would be anything other than defensive weapons.

Nowhere in the Times analysis was there any reference to the fact that neither US intelligence agencies nor international monitoring organizations have found evidence of any Iranian intention to build a nuclear weapon. As recently as March 25, 2025, Tulsi Gabbard, the Trump administration’s director of national intelligence, told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the US intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”

While the International Atomic Energy Agency has been critical of steps Iran has taken to make its nuclear power program less transparent in the context of continual threats from Israel and the US to bomb that program, IAEA director Rafael Grossi emphasized in an interview with CNN (6/17/25; cited in Al Jazeera, 6/18/25), after those threats had become reality, “We did not have any proof of a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon.”

Unilaterally scrapped

“The Trump administration might well be able to achieve a stricter deal” than the one Obama negotiated in 2015, the Times advised—without mentioning that Trump’s unilateral repudiated the Obama deal (New York Times, 5/8/18).

While the Times editorial did make brief mention of the US’s Obama-era anti-nuclear treaty with Iran, it offered no analysis as to why the Trump administration unilaterally scrapped the deal, despite no violation on Iran’s part. Nor did the paper mention the Biden administration refusal to negotiate a return to the deal. There was no mention of the fact that as Israel launched its first strike against Iran, the Iranians had made it clear that they wished to make a deal with the Trump administration on its nuclear energy program, and were actively negotiating toward that end.

But the fact is that every country in the Middle East, including Iran, has been in favor of a nuclear weapons–free Middle East. Every country, that is, with the exception of Israel, whose illegal, undeclared and often unacknowledged stockpile of nuclear weapons are currently in the hands of a genocidal and messianic regime, hell-bent on attacking its neighbors and thwarting any opportunities for peace.

Despite all of the fearmongering about Iran’s alleged aggressive intent and destabilizing potential, the Times ignored ample analysis and evidence to the contrary. As eminent political scientist John Mearsheimer (PBS, 7/9/12) has argued, a nuclear armed Iran could make the region more stable, because of the deterrent power of nuclear weapons.

A 2009 US military–funded study from the RAND corporation (4/14/09) examined Iranian ”press statements, writings in military journals, and other glimpses into Iranian thinking,” and found that it was extremely unlikely that Iran would use nuclear weapons offensively against Israel. Contrary to the Times’ image of Iran as fanatical theocrats bent on Israel’s destruction at all costs, military planners in Iran are well aware of the danger of being wiped off the map by retaliatory US strikes, and plan accordingly. If the Islamic Republic was to get nuclear weapons, predicts RAND, they would be used to deter exactly the kind of unprovoked attack that the US and Israel have launched over the past several days. They would be defensive, not offensive, weapons.

‘A malevolent force in the world’ 

The IAEA statement cited by the New York Times was the product of intense lobbying by the US (Common Dreams, 6/23/25).

The editorial board explicitly avoided the question of what Congress should do on the question of war with Iran: “The separate question of whether the United States should join the conflict is not one that we are addressing here.” But they had no problem presenting their pros list:

We know the arguments in favor of doing so—namely, that Iran’s government is a malevolent force in the world, and that it has made substantial progress toward acquiring a nuclear weapon. Last week the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is part of the United Nations, declared that Iran was violating its nonproliferation obligations and apparently hiding evidence of its efforts.

And their cons list:

Given how much weaker Iran is today than it was then, thanks partly to Israel’s humbling of Iranian proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah, the Trump administration might well be able to achieve a stricter [Iran nuclear deal] today.

While the Times correctly pointed out that the IAEA found Iran to be in “noncompliance” with the nonproliferation treaty (NPT), the Times failed to point out that this came after an intense lobbying effort from Western officials just hours before Israeli strikes. They also ignore Iran’s detailed criticism of the IAEA finding, including its allegations that the findings were based in part on forged documents—a credible allegation, given Israel’s history of fabricating and forging evidence to justify aggression. Iran also noted that some of the “nonproliferation obligations” it had allegedly violated were not codified in the NPT, but instead were part of the agreement that the US unilaterally withdrew from. Nor did the Times make reference to the IAEA chief’s explicit insistence that the agency did not have proof Iran was trying to build a nuclear weapon.

‘Let this vital debate begin’ 

Shortly after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the bombing of Iran “was not and has not been about regime change” (BBC, 6/23/25), Trump posted, “Why wouldn’t there be a regime change???”

Instead of explaining this, the Times went straight to name-calling. One does not have to scrape the annals of the New York Times to predict that the phrase “malevolent force” has never been used to describe any of Washington’s ultra-violent allies, even the ones who have actually built and maintained an illegal stockpile of nuclear weapons. Certainly not Israel, the nation that has put an entire population under military apartheid for decades, and has slaughtered tens of thousands as part of what international rights organizations have labeled a genocide.

The US and Israel have made Iran the target of propaganda campaigns, terrorism, cyber attacks, assassinations, regime change operations and unprovoked attacks on its personnel and home soil. If the Times had included these facts, it would have inhibited the ultimate goal of the editorial: to promote the idea that war with Iran could potentially be desirable—and certainly justifiable. The Times seemed keen to act as a loyal opposition to Trump, while distancing themselves from the manner in which he might enact such a war.

Including the facts of America’s aggressive and provocative behavior against Iran would force them to conclude that the primary force destabilizing the region is not Iran, but the US and Israel. It isn’t Iran whose top papers are weighing the benefits of whether or not to launch a war of aggression against yet another nation. That honor goes to the New York Times, which said of this national discussion of mass murder policy: “Let this vital debate begin.”

After the strikes on Iran, the Trump administration and Israel have not announced full scale regime change war just yet, though there is every indication that such plans are in the works. As with Iraq in 2003, we have seen how easily false claims of weapons of mass destruction, and propaganda about a need to act, can morph into a years-long quagmire of senseless killing in the name of rebuilding a nation according to Washington’s designs. If such a war should be launched against Iran, the Times will have been one of its key supporters.

Research assistance: Emma Llano

ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com or via Bluesky: @NYTimes.com. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Bryce Greene.

Progressive Democrats of America condemns Trump’s unconstitutional bombing of Iran. We’re outraged by these reckless, lawless, aggressive actions. We support the Khanna/Massie War Powers Resolution to curtail the abuse of war powers.

Donald Trump ordered a surprise bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, including sites under international monitoring, without a vote from Congress. Without any public debate. The airstrikes on Iran’s Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear sites shocked the Congress and the rest of the world including, U.S. allies.

Carried out without congressional authorization or clear evidence of an imminent threat, Trump’s actions blatantly violated the U.S. Constitution as well as U.S. and international law.

As Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) stated: “Trump said he would end wars; now he has dragged America into one. His actions are a clear violation of our Constitution.”

The U.S. intelligence community confirmed in March that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons. There was no emergency, no justification whatsoever. Only Trump’s irrational warmongering.

International leaders responded with horror. As expected, Iran called the attack “a grave violation of the UN Charter.” They’re far from alone in this, however. UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned it could spiral into catastrophe. The EU and other nations have also condemned this unprovoked aggression.

Trump’s own political allies expressed dismay. Trump loyalists including Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene called these attacks a betrayal of the “America First” mandate to avoid endless wars.

This is not foreign policy. This is militarized authoritarianism. We must act to stop it now, before it spreads to enflame the entire Middle East, if not the entire globe in dangerous, unnecessary conflict.

We are outraged, but this moment demands more than outrage. It demands organized, coordinated resistance. Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) is helping lead the charge, organizing with our allies inside and outside of Congress to push back.

We’re mobilizing support for the War Powers Resolution and coordinating protests demanding an immediate ceasefire and all party negotiations to achieve a just and durable peace treaty as soon as practicable.

Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) was founded in 2004 to transform the Democratic Party and U.S. politics by working inside and outside of the party. This, by electing empowered progressives and by building the progressive movement in solidarity with with peace, justice, civil rights, environmental, and other reform efforts. For more information about the organization, please see https://PDAmerica.org

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Trump brusquely responded, “I don’t care what she said. I think they are very close to having one.”

This is just another instance of the rudeness, arrogance, and imbecility of Trump. First, Trump chose Gabbard to be his director of national intelligence.

Second, the assessment of Iran having a nuclear weapon program or not is not Gabbard’s assessment. It is, as she testified, on the “Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community”: “the collective assessment of the 18 U.S. intelligence elements making up the U.S. Intelligence Community and draws on intelligence collection, information available to the IC from open-source and the private sector, and the expertise of our analysts.”

During the 25 March threat assessment, Gabbard testified:

The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.

Third, since Gabbard, the messenger, was belittled by Trump as “wrong,” then the U.S. Intelligence Community must likewise be held by Trump to be wrong. People are then left with Trump’s uncertainty, revealed by his “I think…,” as to Iran working on developing nuclear weapons. That begs the question of whether Americans want to see their sons and daughters go to war based on what Trump thinks over the assessment of 18 intelligence agencies?

Nonetheless, Gabbard has tried to regain Trump’s good graces by, like Trump, discrediting the media. She posted on X.com:

However, if one watches the linked source above, it corroborates that the media, in this case, accurately reflected the intelligence community’s assessment as related by Gabbard. Thus, Gabbard’s X post makes her come across as sycophantic. Not a good look for a politician or non-politician.

If the ins and outs of politics is Gabbard’s bag — and it certainly seems to be — then she is in a tough spot. She already was forced, more-or-less, to leave the Democratic Party. And besides the Republican Party, there is no other major party to join in the United States,

Part 2: Nonetheless, Tulsi Gabbard still has her supporters in some independent media circles.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kim Petersen.

We speak with Carlos Fernández de Cossío, Cuba’s deputy foreign minister, about the Trump administration’s tightening restrictions on the country. Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has reinstated Cuba’s designation as a so-called state sponsor of terrorism, recommitted to upholding the decadeslong economic embargo and targeted Cuban immigrants for deportation. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now going after Cuba’s medical program that sends Cuban doctors and healthcare workers to assist other countries. The island nation was also among the countries on Trump’s travel ban that went into effect last week, severely limiting Cuban nationals from entering the U.S. This all comes as the Trump administration is reportedly planning to transfer thousands of immigrants to be detained at Guantánamo Bay. Fernández de Cossío says the influence of anti-Cuban politicians in the U.S. is “greater than any previous moment,” which allows them to push “this narrow approach, which is not relevant to the interests of most Americans.”

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

More than 5 million people joined No Kings Day protests Saturday in the largest day of action against President Trump since his return to office. Protests were held in over 2,100 cities and towns across the country. The protests coincided with a poorly attended, multimillion-dollar military parade on President Trump’s birthday, June 14. Democracy Now! spoke with anti-Trump protesters at the Washington, D.C., military parade and at New York City’s No Kings protest.

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

The protests emerged as resistance to militarized law enforcement (Al Jazeera, 6/7/25), a dynamic that was often obscured by coverage that focused on the “clash” between protesters and government. 

In the early morning of Friday, June 6, several federal agencies carried out militarized immigration raids across Los Angeles (Al Jazeera, 6/7/25). Armed and masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, along with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FBI and DEA, tore through these neighborhoods in unmarked vehicles, carrying out a new method of targeted raids in workplaces like Home Depot, Ambiance Apparel and car washes (Washington Post, 6/8/25, 6/12/25, LA Times, 6/10/25).

Later that morning, demonstrations formed in front of the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building and Metropolitan Detention Center, where detainees were believed to be held (Al Jazeera, 6/11/25). Protests grew exponentially over the weekend, spreading not only across California, but also to major cities around the country (Time, 6/9/25).

In response, without state authorization, President Donald Trump federalized and deployed 2,000 California National Guard troops to LA to “solve the problem” (CNN, 6/9/25). California Gov. Gavin Newsom, LA Mayor Karen Bass and other government officials have called this an unprecedented show of force and an abuse of executive power, intended to intimidate and terrorize local communities (Atlantic, 6/10/25; CNN, 6/9/25).

‘Violence’ and ‘anarchists’

While major media sources described these protests as “mostly peaceful,” they nevertheless tended to dwell on what was depicted as rioting and protester violence. In its morning newsletter, the New York Times (6/9/25) set the scene:

Hundreds of National Guard troops arrived in the city, and crowds of people demonstrated against President Trump’s immigration raids. They clashed with federal agents, leaving burned cars, broken barricades and graffiti scrawled across government buildings downtown.

Is it possible that Trump administration efforts to expel nearly a million Los Angeles residents are “driving chaos at LA immigration protests” (LA Times, 6/10/25)?

The LA Times (6/10/25), citing LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, blamed “‘anarchists’ who, he said, were bent on exploiting the state of unrest to vandalize property and attack police.” (Law enforcement agencies reported only a handful of minor injuries to officers—KCRA, 6/12/25.) These critiques were interwoven with descriptions of “scenes of lawlessness [that] disgusted” McDonnell, such as setting “Waymo taxis on fire,” “defacing city buildings with anti-police graffiti” and looting businesses. And, an ironic, laughable account of the underlying power dynamics at play:

Several young men crept through the crowd, hunched over and hiding something in their hands. They reached the front line and hurled eggs at the officers, who fired into the fleeing crowd with riot guns.

The article ran under the headline “Protesters or Agitators: Who Is Driving Chaos at LA Immigration Protests?”—never offering readers the possibility that the answer is, in fact, law enforcement. The framing came directly from McDonnell’s attempt, cited in the article, to draw a “distinction” between protesters and anarchists. Yet further down, the piece described what can only be understood as federal troops instigating chaos and violence:

A phalanx of National Guard troops charged into the crowd, yelling “push” as they rammed people with riot shields. The troops and federal officers used pepper balls, tear gas canisters as well as flash-bang and smoke grenades to break up the crowd.

No one in the crowd had been violent toward the federal deployment up to that point. The purpose of the surge appeared to be to clear space for a convoy of approaching federal vehicles.

‘Non-lethal’ weapons?

CNN (6/10/25) framed police munitions as the way cops “responded with force” after protests “devolved into violence.” 

One CNN article (6/10/25) offered “A Look at the ‘Less Lethal’ Weapons Authorities Used to Crack Down on Los Angeles Protests.” Reporter Dakin Andone wrote:

Police have used a standard variety of tools to disperse crowds and quell protests that had devolved into violence, with protesters lighting self-driving cars on fire and two motorcyclists driving into a skirmish line of officers, injuring two. A Molotov cocktail was also thrown at officers, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell alleged, condemning the “disgusting” violence.

Authorities have responded with force. So far, CNN has documented the deployment of flash-bangs, tear gas, pepper balls, rubber bullets and bean bag rounds, as well as more traditional gear such as batons.

To CNN, protesters devolve into “violence,” while heavily armed agents of the state respond with “force.”

The article noted that these weapons are not “harmless,” as they have been found to “disable, disfigure and even kill.” Projectiles are meant to cause “‘blunt-force trauma to the skin,’” chemical irritants cause “difficulty swallowing, chest tightness, coughing, shortness of breath and a feeling of choking,” and flash-bangs “obscure a target’s vision and hearing.”

Yet the article’s description of the effects of those weapons used in LA remained almost entirely theoretical. The only example it gave of a civilian targeted by one of these “less lethal” weapons was that of Australian 9News correspondent Lauren Tomasi, shot at close range by a rubber bullet while reporting on live TV. (Video footage shows that there was no one close to the line of officers, nor were any protesters closing in.) “The bullet left her sore, but she was otherwise unharmed,” CNN blithely noted.

While it’s good to see media standing up for those who were injured while exercising the freedom of the press (Guardian, 6/11/25), they might have shown similar concern for those hurt while engaging in freedom of assembly.

Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders (6/11/25) has documented an astounding 35 violent attacks on journalists, almost entirely by law enforcement, including numerous reporters hit by police projectiles. The Guardian (6/11/25) reported that British photographer Nick Stern needed surgery when police shot him in the leg with a “less-lethal projectile”; Toby Canham, a photographer working for the New York Post,  was “hit in the head by a less-lethal round” by a California highway patrol officer and “treated for whiplash and neck pain,” the Guardian said. (Protesters were injured by police munitions as well, as repeatedly attested by social media, but reporters showed less interest in those injuries.)

The headlines that reported the assault on Tomasi frequently left out the perpetrator: “Australian Reporter Covering Los Angeles Immigration Protests Hit by Rubber Bullet on Live TV,” was how CBS (6/10/25) put it; CNN (6/8/25) had “Australian Reporter Covering LA Protests Hit by Rubber Bullet.” The Sydney Morning Herald (6/9/25) described Tomasi as “caught in the crossfire as the LAPD fired rubber bullets at protesters”—which doesn’t sound like a “crossfire” at all.

Many reports denied the potential for these weapons to cause death by labeling them “non-lethal” (Guardian, 6/8/25, 6/11/25; AP, 6/9/25; LA Times, 6/10/25; USA Today, 6/10/25; Newsweek, 6/10/25) or “less-than-lethal” (New York Times, 6/6/25; NBC, 6/8/25). These descriptors are entirely inaccurate, as studies and reports have documented dozens of deaths caused by “less-lethal” projectiles, as well as hundreds of permanent injuries (BMJ Open, 12/5/17; Amnesty International, 3/14/23; Arizona Republic, 5/13/25).

Reuters (6/11/25) reported on attacks by such weapons under the headline “Journalists Among the Injured in LA as ICE Protests Grow Violent”—a framing that treated the protests as the source of the violence being inflicted on journalists by police.

As an example of leftists who “encouraged peaceful protests to turn violent,” NBC News (6/12/25) included those who condemned police violence “using expletives and slights.” (Note that the skateboard-wielding protester is the same individual the LA Times—6/10/25—used to suggest “agitators” were “driving chaos.”)

A remarkable NBC News article (6/12/25) blamed protesters for fomenting violence by pointing out police violence. “Some Far-Left Groups Have Encouraged Peaceful Protests to Turn Violent, Experts Say,” was the headline; one of the few examples, under the heading “Assassination culture,” was:

One anti-police group, the People’s City Council Los Angeles, has taken to calling out the actions of officers at the protests, using expletives and slights.

Just before 1 a.m. Tuesday, it posted on X the name and picture of a police officer it said was firing rubber bullets at protesters.

He is “fucking unhinged and unloading on protesters at point blank range,” the post read. “FUCK THIS PIG!!”

Perhaps it was the cop firing rubber bullets at protesters at point blank range who “encouraged peaceful protests to turn violent”—and not the “expletives and slights” of the witnesses?

‘Diverted public attention’

Sarah J. Jackson (Atlantic, 6/3/20): “When news stories employ sensational images of property damage, using terms such as riot and the even more sensational mayhem and chaos, researchers have noted a rise in public support for law-and-order crackdowns on protest.”

The New York Times editorial board (6/8/25), while critical of Trump’s National Guard deployment, opined that “protesters will do nothing to further their cause if they resort to violence.” The LA Times (6/10/25) expressed that “violence and widespread property damage at protests…have diverted public attention away from the focus of the demonstrations.” What has historically turned the tide against protests, however, is inflammatory reporting that blames protesters for their response to government’s aggressive efforts to suppress freedom of assembly (Penn State University, 6/1/01; Real Change, 3/18/09; Atlantic, 6/3/20).

By framing the problem as unruly demonstrators, the media lend legitimacy to the Trump administration’s attempt to set a precedent for military suppression of dissent. (“If there’s any protester that wants to come out, they will be met with very big force,” Trump said of the military parade he arranged to run through DC on June 14, his 79th birthday. “This is people that hate our country, but they will be met with very heavy force.”) Journalists should be focusing not on the broken windows, but on Trump’s very real efforts to break our democracy.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Shirlynn Chan.

In the days leading up to the events, President Trump sought to deter attendance, saying any protestors at his event would “be met with very big force.” The comment and his administration’s actions in Los Angeles have ignited greater enthusiasm in the rallies.

Statement of Virginia Kase Solomón, Common Cause President & CEO

From weaponizing the government against the people to throwing a sitting U.S. Senator to the ground for exercising his right to ask a question, the Trump Administration is leading this country right into a tyrannical dictatorship. There is nothing patriotic about activating our military force for political gamesmanship.

That’s why, despite Trump’s efforts to scare us from speaking out, we will fill the streets of America’s cities with peaceful protest and joyful resistance. Together, we will march for our futures to declare we have no kings in America.

The people are doing their part, and now it’s time for Congress to do theirs.

Congress is to blame for bringing us to this breaking point. Their partisanship has fueled widespread division, their inaction on comprehensive immigration reform has filled us with doubt, and their corruption has broken our trust.

Instead of passing comprehensive immigration reform, they wrung their hands for four decades, leaving millions of our neighbors without a pathway or plan. Today’s Congress wants to pass a budget that would give this president greater license to turn our government into a weapon against us — with our taxpayer dollars funding it all.

And because of their neglect, this administration is using these very real immigration challenges to attack and terrorize our communities.

We will not let this Congress repeat the mistakes of the past and we will not allow this President to play political football with this crisis. This is why tomorrow, we march.

In Washington, we marched for economic justice. In Selma, we marched for civil rights. And tomorrow, on Flag Day, from Los Angeles to Omaha to Concord, we will patriotically march for our freedoms and remind those in power that this is a government by the people.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Project 2025 is hollowing out government — and it’s just getting started 

As we approach the fifth month of Donald Trump’s second term, you might be asking: “What’s up with Project 2025?” According to GPAHE (Global Project Against Hate and Extremism), “Data compiled by the Project 2025 Tracker reveals a presidency operating with methodical precision, adhering to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook. Of the 313 total objectives identified in Project 2025, 98 have been completed as of June 2025, representing a 42 percent completion rate in just five months of governance. This rapid-fire execution creates one of the most striking paradoxes of the early Trump presidency: a policy framework the candidate repeatedly disavowed during his campaign has become the most reliable predictor of his administration’s priorities.”

In short, despite the Trump administration denial that it is following the Heritage Foundation’s playbook, Project 2025 is aggressively strip mining government agencies, providing rebar for an authoritarian takeover of democracy.

Let’s review. Project 2025 is the 920-page blueprint for authoritarianism in the U.S., spearheaded by the powerful and extreme far-right Heritage Foundation. More than 100 far-right organizations were involved in crafting the document, which, according to GPAHE “is proving to be the source for Trump’s anti-democratic policies, despite his repeated disavowal of Project 2025 during his campaign.” In addition, “Dozens of members of the new administration have direct ties to the effort.”

Project 2025’s playbook turns back the clock on civil rights and deprives people of their hard-won constitutional rights, while “pushing for the erosion of environmental and education protections. It also advocates for a frightening centralization of power in the executive branch, something Trump is keen to achieve.” [Full analysis of Project 2025]

So what is up with Project 2025?  

In a June 1 interview with Russell Vought, the Office of Management and Budget director, CNN’s Dana Bash asked him about DOGE, presidential power potentially overruling Congress, and the “woke” administrative state, among other topics. Vought was smoothly responding until the conversation turned to Project 2025, when things got a little frosty.

According to GPAHE, “Bash asked him about the unmistakable convergence between Trump’s governing agenda” and Project 2025 — “a document for which Vought himself had served as a key architect and co-author — and his denial came swiftly and absolutely.”

“‘No, of course not,’ Vought declared when asked whether his current work represented an enactment of Project 2025. ‘The only people that are delusional about whether the president is the architect, the visionary, the originator of his own agenda that he was very public about throughout the campaign … are his adversaries.’”

Here are excerpts from GPAHE’s reporting on Project 2025:

The chronological record tells the story that Vought seemed determined to obscure during his CNN appearance. Within hours of his January 20 inauguration, Trump had executed 25 distinct Project 2025 recommendations, ranging from deploying active-duty military personnel to the southern border to eliminating diversity offices across federal agencies. The systematic nature of implementation becomes particularly apparent when examining agency-specific progress rates.

The personnel enacting these policies also tell the story. A report by DeSmog reveals that 70 percent of Trump’s cabinet maintains direct ties to Project 2025 organizations — more than 50 high-level officials bound to the very groups that authored or co-sponsored Project 2025, the blueprint they are now executing. Vice President JD Vance connects to five Project 2025 entities, Secretary of State Marco Rubio to four, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins to three. This represents the Heritage Foundation’s ultimate victory: the architects have become the executors.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has achieved 100 percent completion of its single objective: to reduce regulations on cryptocurrency. Meanwhile, all six of Project 2025’s objectives regarding USAID have been completed. The White House itself has completed 88 percent of its 13 objectives, while the Department of State has finished 75 percent of its 10 Project 2025 objectives.

Environmental policy offers the most vivid illustration of this systematic execution. Project 2025 called for eliminating “the use of the social cost of carbon” in federal decision-making — Trump’s January 20 executive orders accomplished precisely that objective. Project 2025 recommended immediate withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change — both withdrawals were announced within hours of the inauguration. When Project 2025 suggested abolishing the Office of Domestic Climate Policy, Trump dissolved it before the inaugural celebrations had concluded. The Environmental Protection Agency has proven exceptionally responsive to Project 2025’s policies.

In May, the agency repealed energy efficiency standards for appliances, with Trump signing four Congressional Review Act resolutions to roll back energy efficiency rules while the Energy Department simultaneously rolled back 47 efficiency regulations. Earlier, the EPA had fired 388 probationary employees and terminated grant agreements worth $20 billion.

Project 2025 has been methodically checking off the boxes of its agenda. ICE, under “border Czar” Tom Homan is cranking up its activities; private prison corporations and companies providing infrastructure for ICE are profiting handsomely; and, the Department of Homeland Security eliminated its Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, while also dissolving the Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman and the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman. Media companies and individual journalists are under attack.

GPAHE noted that when Bash When Bash “pressed Vought about pending Project 2025 recommendations — ‘eliminating the Fed, privatizing Fannie and Freddy, banning medication abortion’ — his response carried the careful ambiguity of calculated evasion. ‘What’s on the agenda is what the president has put on the agenda, most of which he ran on,’ he replied, neither confirming nor denying while maintaining the fiction of presidential originality. Vought’s Sunday CNN performance was pure political theater designed to obscure systematic policy execution of a document designed to foment authoritarianism and Christian nationalist policies.”

The Trump administration and its allies have been working at breakneck speed to implement Project 2025. The administration’s work is serving as a rallying cry for Trump’s White supremacist allies, who see the Project’s successes as a much-welcomed blueprint for authoritarianism and an attractive recruiting tool.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Berkowitz.

Democratic Congressmember Ilhan Omar of Minnesota joins Democracy Now! to discuss the increasing authoritarianism of the Trump administration, including its crackdown on anti-ICE protesters in Los Angeles, targeting of pro-Palestine students on college campuses and plans for a massive military parade coinciding with Trump’s birthday on June 14. “We are in the midst of the creation of a police state,” says Omar. “It will be a dark day if we do not stand up for ourselves, for our Constitution and for our republic.”

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

So it was no surprise when, on Wednesday, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin gathered more than a half dozen Republican lawmakers at the agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters to announce the planned repeal of two rules, finalized under the Biden administration, that established limits on carbon and mercury emissions from U.S. power plants. Once finalized, the Trump administration’s proposals will eliminate all caps on greenhouse gases from the plants and revert the mercury limit to a less strict standard from 2012, respectively. 

The Biden-era rules, Zeldin said Wednesday, were “expensive, unreasonable, and burdensome” attempts “to make all sorts of industries, including coal and more, disappear.” With demand for electricity poised to surge in the coming years, especially as tech companies make massive investments in artificial intelligence infrastructure, Zeldin said that the EPA’s new proposals will boost electricity generation and “make America the AI capital of the world.”

His argument was echoed by the slate of Republican lawmakers who followed him at the podium. The old rules “would have forced our most efficient and reliable power generation into early retirement, just as Ohio and the rest of the nation are seeing a historic rise in demand due to the AI revolution, new data centers, and a manufacturing resurgence,” said Representative Troy Balderson. “Between data centers, AI, and the growing domestic manufacturing base, the simple fact is we need more electrons on the grid to power all of this,” added Representative Robert Bresnahan of Pennsylvania. 

But despite their vigorous agreement that as many energy sources as possible are needed to power America’s future and keep utility bills affordable, every single representative who spoke on Wednesday had, just weeks earlier, cast a vote for a major bill in Congress that will almost certainly have the opposite effect. Analysts say that the pending legislation, which has the Trump-inspired title “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” will slow the country’s buildout of new electricity sources and eventually lead the average U.S. household to incur hundreds of dollars in additional annual energy costs.

That’s because the new GOP legislation essentially repeals the Inflation Reduction Act, a landmark 2022 law that has resulted in roughly $800 billion in investments in clean energy technologies. By rolling back regulations on coal-fired power, the GOP’s hope seems to be that some of those lost energy investments can be compensated by fossil fuels. However, analysts agree that this is highly unlikely, due largely to the sheer cost of new coal-fired power, as well as supply bottlenecks that have sharply limited the feasibility of new natural gas plants. Instead, the result will likely just be more expensive electricity.

“The economics of coal plants are the worst they’ve ever been,” said Robbie Orvis, a senior director for modeling and analysis at Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan think tank. “Even just keeping existing coal plants online compared to building new renewables is more expensive.”

To justify its repeal of the greenhouse gas emissions rule for power plants, the EPA is arguing that the U.S. power sector is responsible for just 3 percent of global emissions, and as a result is not a “significant” contributor to air pollution, which is the threshold the Clean Air Act sets for when the government can regulate a stationary source of emissions. While the 3 percent figure is factually accurate, experts say the argument is misleading, especially given that the power sector is responsible for about a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions within the country. 

“You’re dealing with something that has lots and lots and lots of sources, and you can’t just throw up your hands and say, ‘Well, this won’t achieve anything,’” said David Bookbinder, director of law and policy at the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit founded by former EPA enforcement attorneys. 

If the U.S. power industry relies more on coal and natural gas relative to renewables, as Republicans appear to hope, those emissions could remain stubbornly high, especially as demand for power grows. What’s even more certain is that costs will continue to go up. The latest government inflation data shows that consumer electricity prices are already rising much more dramatically than overall consumer prices. In this environment, the technology companies building massive data centers to power cloud computing and AI have struggled to find adequate, cheap electricity. In fact, so many power-guzzling facilities are being built that lawmakers in Virginia, which is at the heart of the data center belt, have enacted legislation to prevent them from overwhelming the grid. 

Since utilities have been unable to meet the power needs of tech players like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon Web Services, some of these companies have begun directly contracting with renewables developers and striking deals with nuclear power plant operators. A trade group representing these companies recently asked the Senate to revise the pending legislation so it restores some of the clean energy provisions from the Inflation Reduction Act, saying the U.S. needs “affordable and reliable power” in order to “maintain its leadership in AI.” Analysts say such leadership is threatened if the Trump administration continues to try to tip the scales toward fossil fuel sources that are not competitive with newer sources of energy.

“The current administration is picking technology winners and losers and making trade-offs,” said Orvis. “And the trade-off they want to make is: get rid of the clean energy tax incentives that are driving all of this new clean electricity onto the grid, which puts downward pressure on prices and will lower people’s rates.”

Orvis added that higher electricity costs raise the cost of doing business for manufacturers, including those at the leading edge of AI, making it more difficult to compete with China. 

“We’re at a pivotal crossroads,” said Orvis. “We can either lean in and support the domestic growth of these industries by creating a policy environment with certainty, incentives, and support. Or we can do what the current administration is trying to do, and pull back on all of those things and allow China to step in.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump’s EPA accidentally made the case against passing the Big Beautiful Bill on Jun 13, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Naveena Sadasivam.

As immigrant rights protests spread to Chicago, we speak with Democratic Congressmember Delia Ramirez, who is the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants and married to a DACA recipient and recently called on Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign. She responds to President Trump’s threat to deploy troops in more major cities to quell protests. “What you are seeing is the beginning of fascism,” says Ramirez, who represents parts of Chicago. “For fascists, they select a public enemy. And today, it’s an immigrant. … Tomorrow, it’s anyone they find undesirable.”

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

John Christensen, Port Heiden’s tribal president, is currently making preparations for the annual trek. In a week’s time, he and his 17-year-old son will charter Queen Ann, the family’s 32-foot boat, eight hours north to brave some of the planet’s highest tides, extreme weather risks, and other treacherous conditions. The two will keep at it until August, hauling in thousands of pounds of fish each day that they later sell to seafood processing companies. It’s grueling work that burns a considerable amount of costly fossil fuel energy, and there are scarcely any other options.

Because of their location, diesel costs almost four times the national average — the Alaska Native community spent $900,000 on fuel in 2024 alone. Even Port Heiden’s diesel storage tanks are posing challenges. Coastal erosion has created a growing threat of leaks in the structures, which are damaging to the environment and expensive to repair, and forced the tribe to relocate them further inland. On top of it all, of course, diesel generators contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and are notoriously noisy. 

“Everything costs more. Electricity goes up, diesel goes up, every year. And wages don’t,” Christensen said. “We live on the edge of the world. And it’s just tough.”

In 2015, the community built a fish processing plant that the tribe collectively owns; they envisioned a scenario in which tribal members would not need to share revenue with processing companies, would bring home considerably more money, and wouldn’t have to spend months at a time away from their families. But the building has remained nonoperational for an entire decade, because they simply can’t afford to power it. 

Enormous amounts of diesel are needed, says Christensen, to run the filleting and gutting machines, separators and grinders, washing and scaling equipment, and even to store the sheer amount of fish the village catches every summer in freezers and refrigerators. They can already barely scrape together the budget needed to pay for the diesel that powers their boats, institutions, homes, and airport. 

The onslaught of energy challenges that Port Heiden is facing, Christensen says, is linked to a corresponding population decline. Their fight for energy independence is a byproduct of colonial policies that have limited the resources and recourse that Alaska Native tribes like theirs have. “Power is 90 percent of the problem,” said Christensen. “Lack of people is the rest. But cheaper power would bring in more people.” 

In 2023, Climate United, a national investment fund and coalition, submitted a proposal to participate in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, or GGRF — a $27 billion investment from the Inflation Reduction Act and administered by the Environmental Protection Agency to “mobilize financing and private capital to address the climate crisis.” Last April, the EPA announced it had chosen three organizations to disseminate the program’s funding; $6.97 billion was designated to go to Climate United. 

Then, in the course of President Donald Trump’s sweeping federal disinvestment campaign, the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund was singled out as a poster child for what Trump’s EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin claimed was “criminal.”

“The days of irresponsibly shoveling boatloads of cash to far-left activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over,” Zeldin said in February. He then endeavored on a crusade to get the money back. As the financial manager for GGRF, Citibank, the country’s third-largest financial institution, got caught in the middle. 

The New York Times reported that investigations into Biden officials’ actions in creating the program and disbursing the funds had not found any “meaningful evidence” of criminal wrongdoing.

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On March 4, Zeldin announced that the GGRF funding intended to go to Climate United and seven other organizations had been frozen. The following week, Climate United filed a joint lawsuit against the EPA, which they followed with a motion for a temporary restraining order against Zeldin, the EPA and Citibank from taking actions to implement the termination of the grants. On March 11, the EPA sent Climate United a letter of funding termination. In April, a federal D.C. district judge ruled that the EPA had terminated the grants unlawfully and blocked the EPA from clawing them back. The Trump administration then appealed the decision. 

Climate United is still awaiting the outcome of that appeal. While they do, the $6.97 billion remains inaccessible. 

Climate United’s money was intended to support a range of projects from Hawai’i to the East Coast, everything from utility-scale solar to energy-efficient community centers — and a renewable energy initiative in Port Heiden. The coalition had earmarked $6 million for the first round of a pre-development grant program aimed at nearly two dozen Native communities looking to adopt or expand renewable energy power sources. 

“We made investments in those communities, and we don’t have the capital to support those projects,” said Climate United’s Chief Community Officer Krystal Langholz.

In response to an inquiry from Grist, an EPA spokesperson noted that “Unlike the Biden-Haris administration, this EPA is committed to being an exceptional steward of taxpayer dollars.” The spokesperson said that Zeldin had terminated $20 billion in grant agreements because of “substantial concerns regarding the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program integrity, the award process, and programmatic waste and abuse, which collectively undermine the fundamental goals and statutory objectives of the award.” 

A representative of Citibank declined to comment. The Bureau of the Fiscal Service did not respond to requests for comment. 

Long before most others recognized climate change as an urgent existential crisis, the Alutiiq peoples of what is now known as Port Heiden, but was once called Meshik, were forced to relocate because of rising seawater. With its pumice-rich volcanic soils and exposed location on the peninsula that divides Bristol Bay from the Gulf of Alaska, the area is unusually vulnerable to tidal forces that erode land rapidly during storms. Beginning in 1981, disappearing sea ice engulfed buildings and homes.

The community eventually moved their village about a ten-minute drive further inland. No one lives at the old site anymore, but important structures still remain, including safe harbor for fishing boats.

The seas, of course, are still rising, creeping up to steal the land from right below the community’s feet. In a region that’s warming faster than just about any other place on the planet, much of the land is on the precipice of being swallowed by water. From 2017 to 2018, the old site lost between 35 and 65 feet of shoreline, as reported by the Bristol Bay Times. Even the local school situated on the newer site is affected by the shrinking shoreline — the institution and surrounding Alutiiq village, increasingly threatened by the encroaching sea. 

Before the Trump administration moved to terminate their funding, Christensen’s dream of transitioning the Port Heiden community to renewable sources of energy, consequential for both maintaining its traditional lifestyle and ensuring its future, had briefly seemed within reach. He also saw it as a way to contribute to global solutions to the climate crisis. 

“I don’t think [we are] the biggest contributor to global pollution, but if we could do our part and not pollute, maybe we won’t erode as fast,” he said. “I know we’re not very many people, but to us, that’s our community.”

The tribe planned to use a $300,000 grant from Climate United to pay for the topographic and waterway studies needed to design two run-of-the-river hydropower plants. In theory, the systems, which divert a portion of flowing water through turbines, would generate enough clean energy to power the entirety of Port Heiden, including the idle fish-processing facility. The community also envisioned channeling hydropower to run a local greenhouse, where they could expand what crops they raise and the growing season, further boosting local food access and sovereignty.

In even that short period of whiplash — from being awarded the grant to watching it vanish — the village’s needs have become increasingly urgent. Meeting the skyrocketing cost of diesel, according to Christensen, is no longer feasible. The community’s energy crisis and ensuing cost of living struggle have already started prompting an exodus, with the population declining at a rate of little over 3 percent every year — a noticeable loss when the town’s number rarely exceeds a hundred residents to begin with. 

“It’s really expensive to live out here. And I don’t plan on moving anytime soon. And my kids, they don’t want to go either. So I have to make it better, make it easier to live here,” Christensen said.

Janine Bloomfield, grants specialist at 10Power, the organization that Port Heiden partnered with to help write their grant application, said they are currently waiting for a decision to be made in the lawsuit “that may lead to the money being unfrozen.” In the interim, she said, recipients have been asked to work with Climate United on paperwork “to be able to react quickly in the event that the funds are released.” 

For its part, Climate United is also now exploring other funding strategies. The coalition is rehauling the structure of the money going to Port Heiden and other Native communities. Rather than awarding it as a grant, where recipients would have to pay the costs upfront and be reimbursed later, Climate United will now issue loans to the communities originally selected for the pre-development grants that don’t require upfront costs and will be forgiven upon completion of the agreed-upon deliverables. Their reason for the transition, according to Langholz, was “to increase security, decrease administrative burden on our partners, and create credit-building opportunities while still providing strong programmatic oversight.”   

Still, there are downsides to consider with any loan, including being stuck with debt. In many cases, said Chéri Smith, a Mi’Kmaq descendant who founded and leads the nonprofit Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy, replacing a federal grant with a loan, even a forgivable one, “adds complexity and risk for Tribal governments.” 

Forgivable loans “become a better option” in later stages of development or for income-generating infrastructure, said Smith, who is on the advisory board of Climate United, but are “rarely suitable for common pre-development needs.” That’s because pre-feasibility work, such as Port Heiden’s hydropower project, “is inherently speculative, and Tribes should not be expected to risk even conditional debt to validate whether their own resources can be developed.” This is especially true in Alaska, she added, where costs and logistical challenges are exponentially higher for the 229 federally recognized tribes than in the lower 48, and outcomes much less predictable. 

Raina Thiele, Dena’ina Athabascan and Yup’ik, who formerly served in the Biden administration as senior adviser for Alaska affairs to Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and former tribal liaison to President Obama, said the lending situation is particularly unique when it comes to Alaska Native communities, because of how Congress historically wrote legislation relating to a land claim settlement which saw tribes deprived of control over resources and land. Because of that, it’s been incredibly difficult for communities to build capacity, she noted, making even a forgivable loan “a bit of a high-risk endeavor.” The question of trust also shows up — the promise of loan forgiveness, in particular, is understandably difficult for communities who have long faced exploitation and discrimination in public and privatized lending programs. “Grant programs are a lot more familiar,” she said. 

Even so, the loan from Climate United would only be possible if the court rules in its favor and compels the EPA to release the money. If the court rules against Climate United, Langholz told Grist, the organization plans to pursue damage claims in another court and may seek philanthropic fundraising to help Port Heiden come up with the $300,000, in addition to the rest of the $6 million promised to the nearly two dozen Native communities originally selected for the grant program. 

“These cuts can be a matter of life or death for many of these communities being able to heat their homes, essentially,” said Thiele.

While many different stakeholders wait to see how the federal funding crisis will play out, Christensen doesn’t know what to make of the proposed grant-to-loan shift for Port Heiden’s hydropower project. The landscape has changed so quickly and drastically, it has, however, prompted him to lose what little faith he had left in federal funding. He has already begun to brainstorm other ways to ditch diesel.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said. “I’ll find the money, if I have to. I’ll win the lottery, and spend the money on cheaper power.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This Alaska Native fishing village was trying to power their town. Then came Trump’s funding cuts. on Jun 12, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

Condemnation is growing of President Trump’s travel ban that went into effect Monday, banning citizens of 12 countries from entering the United States: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and the Republic of Congo. It also imposes heightened restrictions on people from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. President Trump is “destroying what this nation stands for,” says Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition. “Immigration in the U.S. is an American value.” Guerline Jozef, co-founder and executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, called on communities to “fight to make sure that people have the right to migrate.” The administration is “literally separating families,” says Jozef.

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

And, it turns out, successful. 

In March, the administration moved to shutter over 30 field offices of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA, throughout coal country. Weeks later, it proposed cutting 90 percent of the staff at the National Institute for Occupational Health. That would have killed its efforts to screen miners for black lung and treat that progressive fatal disease, which is caused by chronic exposure to silica dust.

Miners and their advocates swiftly demanded that Trump, who has never shied away from celebrating coal miners as “real people,” change course. The United Mine Workers of America, the Black Lung Association, and environmental groups like Appalachian Voices came together to protest the cuts and tell lawmakers to back their calls to undo them. Two miners sued the administration, arguing the government is not meeting its obligations to protect those who produce a resource Trump deemed a “critical mineral” in an April 8 executive order vowing to restore the coal industry.

The administration seems to have heard them, at least in part. Late last month, MSHA offices were quietly removed from the list of government buildings slated for closure and sale. The administration also has reinstated hundreds of occupational health workers, including some of those in the Coal Worker Health Surveillance Program. 

Bipartisan support for miner safety came from Virginia Democratic senators Tim Warner and Tim Kaine and West Virginia Republican Shelly Moore Capito. Capito did not respond to a request for comment, but in a letter she sent to Trump in April the lawmaker expressed concern that eliminating NIOSH would hurt her state. She also said it would cost taxpayer dollars, by forcing the expensive decommissioning of specialized research labs where NIOSH scientists studied the effects of silica, coal dust and mold on the human respiratory system.

“As the President recognizes the importance of coal, we must also recognize the health of our miners,” Capito wrote in the letter, dated April 22. “I encourage you to bring back the NIOSH coal programs and researchers that will help ensure the President’s vision to unleash American energy can be done safely.”

Erin Bates, director of communications for United Mine Workers of America, credited Capito for her role in reversing the field office closures. She said the union’s president, Cecil Roberts met with Robert Kennedy, the secretary of health and human services, to lobby for saving NIOSH. The union has longstanding relationships with Democrats over worker safety issues, Bates said, but also has maintained good relationships with Republicans, given that much of coal country leans that way.

Democrats have pushed the administration on some of the remaining cuts to MSHA. During a House hearing on Thursday, Representative Bobby Scott urged Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer to hire more people. Scott drew attention to the revocation of job offers for dozens of mine inspectors. They will be urgently needed as the nation’s demand for critical minerals increases in the years ahead, Scott said.

“We must invest in MSHA’s pipeline of talent so that qualified inspectors will be there to ensure safety in these dangerous jobs,” Scott, a Democrat from Virginia, said. “We know that the process takes years.”

Miners and their advocates applauded the victories, but said there is still much work to do. 

“I feel like we’ve won some,” said Vonda Robinson, vice president of the Black Lung Association. “But I don’t think that we’ve got enough yet.”

Robinson remains concerned about the fate of the so-called silica rule, which tightens the acceptable level of exposure to that toxin. The rule, for the first time, brings the standard in line with what workers in other sectors have worked with for decades. But the rule has been placed in limbo since the cuts to NIOSH were announced, effectively eliminating the possibility of enforcement. Even with some job restorations, staffing shortages at the agency also make it difficult for various government departments to work together to safeguard worker health, Bates said.

“We’re in a major push to prevent an operations lag while most of the workers are out,” she said.

The president’s proposed federal budget also cuts funding from the Mine Safety Health Administration by 10 percent, down to $348.2 million from $387.8 million. “That is going to affect the offices that are still open and the inspectors that are working there,” Bates said. About $14 million of these cuts come from Mine Safety and Health Enforcement, and the agency would lose 47 salaried positions.

In a statement, the Department of Health and Human Services told Grist it remains committed to protecting the health and safety of coal miners. The Labor Department did not respond to requests for comment.

For now, miners and their advocates remain focused on determining just how many federal workers have been reinstated, whether any field offices remain closed, and securing further guarantees that the government will not step back from its critical safety work. 

“Our push is trying to get answers now and no more waiting and worrying,” Bates said. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Coal miners are fighting Trump’s safety cuts — and winning on Jun 11, 2025.

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

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

In an effort launched shortly after DOGE’s creation, ProPublica has now identified more than 100 private-sector executives, engineers and investors from Silicon Valley, big American banks and tech startups enlisted to help President Donald Trump dramatically downsize the U.S. government.

While Elon Musk has departed the Department of Government Efficiency, the world’s richest man is leaving a network of acolytes embedded inside nearly every federal agency.

At least 38 DOGE members currently work or have worked for businesses run by Musk, ProPublica found in an examination of their resumes and other records. At least nine have invested in Musk companies or own stock in them, a review of available financial disclosure forms shows.

ProPublica found that at least 23 DOGE officials are making cuts at federal agencies that regulate the industries that employed them, potentially posing significant conflicts of interest. One DOGE member tasked with overseeing mass layoffs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for instance, did so while owning stock in companies the agency regulated.

At least 12 remain, on paper, employees or advisers of the companies they worked at before DOGE, a review of financial disclosure forms shows. And at least nine continue to receive corporate benefits from their private-sector employers, including health insurance, stock vesting plans or retirement savings programs. These employment agreements could create a situation in which a DOGE staffer would be shaping federal policies that affect their employer.

The people behind DOGE are largely men in their 20s and 30s, most of whom bring no government experience to the task. Many of them previously worked in finance.

ProPublica’s list — the largest of its kind by any news organization — allows readers to gain a comprehensive understanding of the backgrounds of the people assigned to one of the Trump administration’s signature efforts. It comes at a crucial moment, as some of the first-generation DOGE members are leaving the government and a new crop is joining.

“Even though Elon Musk and some of his top officials are shifting their attention to other issues, I see no indication that the DOGE team members who remain will slow down their work to test the legal and ethical boundaries of using technology in the name of improving government services,” said Elizabeth Laird, a director at the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology.

While the Trump administration asserts it is the most transparent in history, DOGE operates shrouded by the shadows of bureaucracy.

Many of its staffers have deleted their public profiles, have wiped the internet of their professional backgrounds or were encouraged by leadership not to discuss their work with friends. At the behest of the Trump administration, the Supreme Court halted a court order Friday that would have required DOGE to turn over information to a government watchdog — challenging whether the group will ever be subject to public records requests. The Trump administration has banned DOGE staffers from speaking publicly without approval.

To cast a light on this secretive group, ProPublica began reporting in February on Musk’s influence inside the Trump administration, cataloging who was part of DOGE and how associates of the billionaire tech mogul were taking up senior posts across agencies. Our DOGE tracker, the first such list published by media outlets, is the culmination of hundreds of conversations with sources across government.

Today, we are adding 23 staffers to our tracker, taking the total to 109. They are spread throughout the government, from the Department of Defense to the General Services Administration to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And we are revealing the makeup of the DOGE team at the Defense Department, a group made up primarily of tech startup founders. They are led by former Special Forces soldier turned tech entrepreneur Yinon Weiss, according to a former senior Pentagon official familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Weiss has repeatedly appeared on Fox News pushing the U.S. to do more to support Israeli military operations in Gaza. He did not respond to a request for comment.

A White House official praised DOGE in an interview, saying that “bringing people in from the outside is precisely what this federal government needed after decades of stagnant bureaucrats who allowed the status quo to continue while the American people got screwed.”

The White House official said there is “no need” for the public to know who’s in DOGE and asserted that there have been no conflict-of-interest violations.

“For decades, we’ve been able to operate without these people's names,” the official said. “There’s no need to know the palace intrigue of who’s working in the building.”

Musk has defended DOGE’s work as “common sense” and “not draconian or radical.” He did not respond to requests for comment.

Musk’s retreat from Washington comes after his electric vehicle company Tesla sputtered amid economic turmoil — caused by a mixture of his own declining favorability and some shareholders reportedly losing confidence in his leadership. His relationship with Trump has fractured, with the billionaire blasting the president’s budget, Trump threatening to cancel Musk’s government deals and Musk then calling for the president’s impeachment.

How that fissure affects DOGE is yet to be seen, but the White House has already requested $45 million in funding for the group’s operations next year, an Office of Management and Budget document shows.

One of Musk’s top DOGE lieutenants, Steve Davis, who ProPublica reported has operated as the group’s de facto leader, is also departing government. Davis ran DOGE from the commissioner’s suite on the sixth floor of the GSA. Some believe Trump loyalist and OMB Director Russell Vought, a Project 2025 architect who once said he wanted to put federal workers “in trauma,” will take the DOGE reins.

Whether DOGE has accomplished its mission — to downsize the federal bureaucracy into a more streamlined and effective workforce — is far from clear.

Musk initially said the initiative would save taxpayers $2 trillion. He later amended that figure, suggesting in April that DOGE would cut $150 billion from the national debt this year. The $180 billion in savings that DOGE claims on its website has come under scrutiny by media fact-checkers who have cast doubt on its accuracy after finding errors in DOGE’s accounting of canceled contracts.

Still, DOGE has fired tens of thousands of federal workers and gutted humanitarian aid programs domestically and abroad. This includes pushing out some critical government employees in health, science and safety offices.

To compile our list, ProPublica tracked the industries where DOGE employees previously worked. We looked at the professional experience they brought to government and whether their assignments in DOGE could pose conflicts of interest. ProPublica pored through archived resumes, federal financial disclosures forms, online databases and other documents. We interviewed more than two dozen federal workers, some of whom shared internal agency emails, calendar invites and other material mapping DOGE’s activities. We sought comment from everyone listed in our tracker. Most declined our requests.

With DOGE entering a post-Musk chapter, here are our core findings:

One 25-year-old software engineer helped DOGE shrink the agency’s staff even after he was warned by ethics attorneys not to do anything that could boost the value of as much as $715,000 in stocks he owned in companies regulated by the agency. The White House has said the aide, who has since left the CFPB, “did not even manage” the layoffs and called the allegations “another attempt to diminish DOGE’s critical mission.” Another DOGE staffer, a political adviser to Musk, was paid between $100,001 and $1 million by one of his billionaire boss’ companies while simultaneously overseeing staff cuts at the CFPB. Neither staffer responded to requests for comment.

These and other instances of DOGE staffers overseeing government operations that could benefit their financial interests have prompted three Democratic lawmakers to ask the Department of Justice, government ethics officials and inspectors general to investigate.

The administration has made assessing such financial arrangements difficult. So far, federal agencies have released only 22 financial disclosure forms for the more than 100 DOGE members requested by ProPublica.

The DOGE 100-plus come from a variety of professions: 29 were executive managers, 28 were engineers, 16 were investors and 12 came from legal backgrounds. A scattered few others previously worked in cybersecurity, design and science.

More staffers come from finance backgrounds than any other area. Private equity investor Michael Cole, the founder of Shareholder Capital LLC, has worked at the Department of Agriculture, for example. Cole did not respond to a request for comment.

Under Trump and Musk, DOGE has become a largely male entity. Of the 109 staff members ProPublica has identified, 90 are men and 19 are women, making the group 83% male. That’s a far higher percentage of men than work in the executive branch as a whole, where 54% of staffers are male, according to 2024 data from the Office of Personnel Management.

Many are young and inexperienced. More than 60% of the DOGE staffers are in their 20s or 30s. One was 19 when he joined. As a percentage, the number of staffers under 30 in DOGE is about three times as high as in the executive branch as a whole.

Of staffers for whom ProPublica has identified ages, 28 are 29 or younger, 35 are 30 to 39, and 36 are 40 or older. The oldest is 67.

Few had experience working in state or federal government. ProPublica identified 21 DOGE staffers with previous government roles, including stints at the DOJ and NASA. That means more than 80% joined the government dismantling effort without previously working in government.

Those staffers continue to fire longtime federal employees, cut budgets and choke off government programs while protected by an administration that has pushed to keep their maneuverings out of the public spotlight.

DOGE’s secrecy has been part of its overall strategy, some experts believe, allowing it to obscure its work from government watchdogs and the courts.

“It’s harder to stop what they’re doing if you don’t know what they’re doing or who’s doing it,” said Faith Williams, director of the Effective and Accountable Government Program at the nonpartisan, nonprofit Project on Government Oversight. “It’s not inherently a bad thing these people come from outside the government. It’s that they lack any experience in the methods used to uncover waste and inefficiency.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by William Turton, Christopher Bing, Avi Asher-Schapiro, Al Shaw and Jake Pearson.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

In an effort launched shortly after DOGE’s creation, ProPublica has now identified more than 100 private-sector executives, engineers and investors from Silicon Valley, big American banks and tech startups enlisted to help President Donald Trump dramatically downsize the U.S. government.

While Elon Musk has departed the Department of Government Efficiency, the world’s richest man is leaving a network of acolytes embedded inside nearly every federal agency.

At least 38 DOGE members currently work or have worked for businesses run by Musk, ProPublica found in an examination of their resumes and other records. At least nine have invested in Musk companies or own stock in them, a review of available financial disclosure forms shows.

ProPublica found that at least 23 DOGE officials are making cuts at federal agencies that regulate the industries that employed them, potentially posing significant conflicts of interest. One DOGE member tasked with overseeing mass layoffs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for instance, did so while owning stock in companies the agency regulated.

At least 12 remain, on paper, employees or advisers of the companies they worked at before DOGE, a review of financial disclosure forms shows. And at least nine continue to receive corporate benefits from their private-sector employers, including health insurance, stock vesting plans or retirement savings programs. These employment agreements could create a situation in which a DOGE staffer would be shaping federal policies that affect their employer.

The people behind DOGE are largely men in their 20s and 30s, most of whom bring no government experience to the task. Many of them previously worked in finance.

ProPublica’s list — the largest of its kind by any news organization — allows readers to gain a comprehensive understanding of the backgrounds of the people assigned to one of the Trump administration’s signature efforts. It comes at a crucial moment, as some of the first-generation DOGE members are leaving the government and a new crop is joining.

“Even though Elon Musk and some of his top officials are shifting their attention to other issues, I see no indication that the DOGE team members who remain will slow down their work to test the legal and ethical boundaries of using technology in the name of improving government services,” said Elizabeth Laird, a director at the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology.

While the Trump administration asserts it is the most transparent in history, DOGE operates shrouded by the shadows of bureaucracy.

Many of its staffers have deleted their public profiles, have wiped the internet of their professional backgrounds or were encouraged by leadership not to discuss their work with friends. At the behest of the Trump administration, the Supreme Court halted a court order Friday that would have required DOGE to turn over information to a government watchdog — challenging whether the group will ever be subject to public records requests. The Trump administration has banned DOGE staffers from speaking publicly without approval.

To cast a light on this secretive group, ProPublica began reporting in February on Musk’s influence inside the Trump administration, cataloging who was part of DOGE and how associates of the billionaire tech mogul were taking up senior posts across agencies. Our DOGE tracker, the first such list published by media outlets, is the culmination of hundreds of conversations with sources across government.

Today, we are adding 23 staffers to our tracker, taking the total to 109. They are spread throughout the government, from the Department of Defense to the General Services Administration to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And we are revealing the makeup of the DOGE team at the Defense Department, a group made up primarily of tech startup founders. They are led by former Special Forces soldier turned tech entrepreneur Yinon Weiss, according to a former senior Pentagon official familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Weiss has repeatedly appeared on Fox News pushing the U.S. to do more to support Israeli military operations in Gaza. He did not respond to a request for comment.

A White House official praised DOGE in an interview, saying that “bringing people in from the outside is precisely what this federal government needed after decades of stagnant bureaucrats who allowed the status quo to continue while the American people got screwed.”

The White House official said there is “no need” for the public to know who’s in DOGE and asserted that there have been no conflict-of-interest violations.

“For decades, we’ve been able to operate without these people's names,” the official said. “There’s no need to know the palace intrigue of who’s working in the building.”

Musk has defended DOGE’s work as “common sense” and “not draconian or radical.” He did not respond to requests for comment.

Musk’s retreat from Washington comes after his electric vehicle company Tesla sputtered amid economic turmoil — caused by a mixture of his own declining favorability and some shareholders reportedly losing confidence in his leadership. His relationship with Trump has fractured, with the billionaire blasting the president’s budget, Trump threatening to cancel Musk’s government deals and Musk then calling for the president’s impeachment.

How that fissure affects DOGE is yet to be seen, but the White House has already requested $45 million in funding for the group’s operations next year, an Office of Management and Budget document shows.

One of Musk’s top DOGE lieutenants, Steve Davis, who ProPublica reported has operated as the group’s de facto leader, is also departing government. Davis ran DOGE from the commissioner’s suite on the sixth floor of the GSA. Some believe Trump loyalist and OMB Director Russell Vought, a Project 2025 architect who once said he wanted to put federal workers “in trauma,” will take the DOGE reins.

Whether DOGE has accomplished its mission — to downsize the federal bureaucracy into a more streamlined and effective workforce — is far from clear.

Musk initially said the initiative would save taxpayers $2 trillion. He later amended that figure, suggesting in April that DOGE would cut $150 billion from the national debt this year. The $180 billion in savings that DOGE claims on its website has come under scrutiny by media fact-checkers who have cast doubt on its accuracy after finding errors in DOGE’s accounting of canceled contracts.

Still, DOGE has fired tens of thousands of federal workers and gutted humanitarian aid programs domestically and abroad. This includes pushing out some critical government employees in health, science and safety offices.

To compile our list, ProPublica tracked the industries where DOGE employees previously worked. We looked at the professional experience they brought to government and whether their assignments in DOGE could pose conflicts of interest. ProPublica pored through archived resumes, federal financial disclosures forms, online databases and other documents. We interviewed more than two dozen federal workers, some of whom shared internal agency emails, calendar invites and other material mapping DOGE’s activities. We sought comment from everyone listed in our tracker. Most declined our requests.

With DOGE entering a post-Musk chapter, here are our core findings:

One 25-year-old software engineer helped DOGE shrink the agency’s staff even after he was warned by ethics attorneys not to do anything that could boost the value of as much as $715,000 in stocks he owned in companies regulated by the agency. The White House has said the aide, who has since left the CFPB, “did not even manage” the layoffs and called the allegations “another attempt to diminish DOGE’s critical mission.” Another DOGE staffer, a political adviser to Musk, was paid between $100,001 and $1 million by one of his billionaire boss’ companies while simultaneously overseeing staff cuts at the CFPB. Neither staffer responded to requests for comment.

These and other instances of DOGE staffers overseeing government operations that could benefit their financial interests have prompted three Democratic lawmakers to ask the Department of Justice, government ethics officials and inspectors general to investigate.

The administration has made assessing such financial arrangements difficult. So far, federal agencies have released only 22 financial disclosure forms for the more than 100 DOGE members requested by ProPublica.

The DOGE 100-plus come from a variety of professions: 29 were executive managers, 28 were engineers, 16 were investors and 12 came from legal backgrounds. A scattered few others previously worked in cybersecurity, design and science.

More staffers come from finance backgrounds than any other area. Private equity investor Michael Cole, the founder of Shareholder Capital LLC, has worked at the Department of Agriculture, for example. Cole did not respond to a request for comment.

Under Trump and Musk, DOGE has become a largely male entity. Of the 109 staff members ProPublica has identified, 90 are men and 19 are women, making the group 83% male. That’s a far higher percentage of men than work in the executive branch as a whole, where 54% of staffers are male, according to 2024 data from the Office of Personnel Management.

Many are young and inexperienced. More than 60% of the DOGE staffers are in their 20s or 30s. One was 19 when he joined. As a percentage, the number of staffers under 30 in DOGE is about three times as high as in the executive branch as a whole.

Of staffers for whom ProPublica has identified ages, 28 are 29 or younger, 35 are 30 to 39, and 36 are 40 or older. The oldest is 67.

Few had experience working in state or federal government. ProPublica identified 21 DOGE staffers with previous government roles, including stints at the DOJ and NASA. That means more than 80% joined the government dismantling effort without previously working in government.

Those staffers continue to fire longtime federal employees, cut budgets and choke off government programs while protected by an administration that has pushed to keep their maneuverings out of the public spotlight.

DOGE’s secrecy has been part of its overall strategy, some experts believe, allowing it to obscure its work from government watchdogs and the courts.

“It’s harder to stop what they’re doing if you don’t know what they’re doing or who’s doing it,” said Faith Williams, director of the Effective and Accountable Government Program at the nonpartisan, nonprofit Project on Government Oversight. “It’s not inherently a bad thing these people come from outside the government. It’s that they lack any experience in the methods used to uncover waste and inefficiency.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by William Turton, Christopher Bing, Avi Asher-Schapiro, Al Shaw and Jake Pearson.

From Nevada to Arkansas, companies are racing to dig more lithium out of the ground to meet the clean energy sector’s surging appetite. But this battery recycling facility, owned by Massachusetts-based Ascend Elements, is the first new lithium carbonate producer in the nation in years — and the only source of recycled lithium carbonate in North America. The company is finalizing upgrades to its Covington facility that will allow it to produce up to 3,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate per year beginning later this month. Right now, the only other domestic source of lithium carbonate is a small mine in Silver Peak, Nevada.

Since January, President Donald Trump has taken a sledgehammer to the Biden administration’s efforts to grow America’s clean energy industry. The Trump administration has frozen grants and loans, hollowed out key agencies, and used executive action to stall renewable energy projects and reverse climate policies — often in legally dubious ways. At the same time, citing economic and national security reasons, Trump has sought to advance efforts to produce more critical minerals like lithium in the United States. That is exactly what the emerging lithium-ion battery recycling industry seeks to do, which is why some industry insiders are optimistic about their future under Trump. 

Nevertheless, U.S. battery recyclers face uncertainty due to fast-changing tariff policies, the prospect that Biden-era tax credits could be repealed by Congress as it seeks to slash federal spending, and signs that the clean energy manufacturing boom is fading.

Battery recyclers are in “a limbo moment,” said Beatrice Browning, a recycling expert at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, which conducts market research for companies in the lithium-ion battery supply chain. They’re “waiting to see what the next steps are.”

To transition off fossil fuels, the world needs a lot more big batteries that can power EVs and store renewable energy for use when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. That need is already causing demand for the metals inside batteries to surge. Recycling end-of-life batteries — from electric cars, e-bikes, cell phones, and more — can provide metals to help meet this demand while reducing the need for destructive mining. It’s already happening on a large scale in China, where most of the world’s lithium-ion battery manufacturing takes place and where recyclers benefit from supportive government policies and a steady stream of manufacturing scrap. 

When the Biden administration attempted to onshore clean energy manufacturing, U.S. battery recyclers announced major expansion plans, propelled by government financing and other incentives. Under former president Joe Biden, the U.S. Department of Energy, or DOE, launched research and development initiatives to support battery recycling and awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to firms seeking to expand operations. The DOE’s Loan Program’s Office also offered to lend nearly $2.5 billion to two battery recycling companies.

The industry also benefited from tax credits established or enhanced by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the centerpiece of Biden’s climate agenda. In particular, the 45X advanced manufacturing production credit subsidizes domestic production of critical minerals, including those produced from recycled materials. For battery recyclers, the incentive “has a direct bottom-line impact,” according to Roger Lin, VP of government affairs at Ascend Elements.

The DOE didn’t respond to Grist’s request for comment on the status of Biden-era grants and loans for battery recycling. But recyclers report that at least some federal support is continuing under Trump. 

In 2022, Ascend Elements was awarded a $316 million DOE grant to help it construct a second battery recycling plant in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. That grant, which will go toward building capacity to make battery cathode precursor materials from recycled metals, “is still active and still being executed on,” Lin told Grist, with minimal impact from the change in administration. Ascend Elements expects the plant to come online in late 2026.

American Battery Technology Company, a Reno, Nevada-based battery materials firm, told a similar story. In December, the company finalized a $144 million DOE contract to support the construction of its second battery recycling facility, which will extract and refine battery-grade metals from manufacturing scrap and end-of-life batteries. That grant remains active with “no changes” since Trump’s inauguration, CEO Ryan Melsert told Grist. 

Yet another battery recycler, Cirba Solutions, recently learned that a $200 million DOE grant to help it construct a new battery recycling plant in Columbia, South Carolina, is moving forward. At full capacity, this facility is expected to produce enough battery-grade metals to supply half a million EVs a year. Cirba Solutions is also still spending funds from two earlier DOE grants, including a $75 million grant to expand a battery processing plant in Lancaster, Ohio. 

“I think that we aligned very much to the priorities of the administration,” Danielle Spalding, VP of communications and public affairs at Cirba Solutions, told Grist. 

Those priorities include establishing the U.S. as “the leading producer and processor of non-fuel minerals,” and taking steps to “facilitate domestic mineral production to the maximum possible extent,” according to executive orders signed by Trump in January and March. Because critical minerals are used in many high-tech devices, including military weapons, the Trump administration appears to believe America’s national security depends on controlling their supply chains. As battery recyclers were quick to note following Trump’s inauguration, their industry can help.

“Critical minerals are central to creating a resilient energy economy in the U.S., and resource recovery and recycling companies will continue to play an important role in providing another domestic source of these materials,” Ajay Kochhar, CEO of the battery recycling firm Li-Cycle, wrote in a blog post reacting to one of Trump’s executive orders on energy. 

Li-Cycle, which closed a $475 million loan with the DOE’s Loan Programs Office in November but is now facing possible bankruptcy, didn’t respond to Grist’s request for comment.

While Biden’s approach to onshoring critical mineral production was rooted in various financial incentives, Trump has pursued the same goal using tariffs — and by attempting to fast-track new mines. Although economists have criticized Trump’s indiscriminate and unpredictable application of tariffs, some battery recyclers are cautiously optimistic they will benefit from increased trade restrictions. In particular, recyclers see the escalating trade war with China — including recent limits on exports of various critical minerals to the U.S. — as further evidence that new domestic sources of these resources are needed. (China is the world’s leading producer of most key battery metals.)

“There is a chance that limiting the amount that is being imported from China … could really strengthen” mineral production in other regions, including the U.S., Browning said.

Trade restrictions between the U.S. and key partners outside of China could be more harmful. Today, Browning says, U.S. recyclers often sell the black mass they produce to refiners in South Korea, which don’t produce enough domestically to meet their processing capacity and are paying a premium to secure material from abroad. Trump imposed 25 percent tariffs on Korean imports in April, before placing them on a 90-day pause. If South Korea were to implement retaliatory tariffs in response, it could cut off a key revenue stream for the U.S. industry. However, recycling companies Grist spoke noted that there are currently no export bans or tariffs affecting their black mass, and emphasized their plans to build up local refining capacity. 

“The short answer is that we see the tariffs as an opportunity to focus on domestic manufacturing,” Spalding of Cirba Solutions said. 

While battery recyclers seem to align with Trump on critical minerals policy, and to some extent on trade, their interests diverge when it comes to energy policy. Without a clean energy manufacturing boom in the U.S., there would be far less need for battery recycling.

Today, nearly 40 percent of the material available to battery recyclers in the U.S. is production scrap from battery gigafactories, according to data from Benchmark. Another 15 percent consists of used EV batteries that have reached the end of their lives or been recalled, while grid storage and micromobility batteries (such as e-bike batteries) account for 14 percent. The remaining third of the material available for processing is portable batteries, like those in consumer electronics.

In the future, as more EVs reach the end of their lives, an even greater fraction of battery scrap will come from the clean energy sector. If a large number of planned battery and EV manufacturing facilities are canceled in the coming years — due to a repeal of Inflation Reduction Act tax incentives, a loss of federal funding, rising project costs, or perhaps all three — the recycling industry may have to scale back its ambitions, too. 

The budget bill that passed the House in May would undo a number of key Inflation Reduction Act provisions. Some clean energy tax credits, like the consumer EV tax credit, would be eliminated at the end of this year. The legislation was kinder to the 45X manufacturing credit, scheduling it to end in 2031 rather than the current phase-out date of 2032. But the bill could face significant changes in the Senate before heading to Trump’s desk, possibly by July 4. 

Despite uncertainty over the fate of IRA tax credits, Trump’s actions have already put a damper on U.S. manufacturing: Since January, firms have abandoned or delayed plans for $14 billion worth of U.S. clean energy projects, according to the clean tech advocacy group E2.

While the battery recyclers Grist spoke with are putting on a brave face under Trump’s second term, some are also looking to hedge their bets. As Ascend Elements ramps up lithium production in Georgia, it has lined up at least one buyer outside the battery supply chain. The battery industry accounts for nearly 90 percent of lithium demand globally, but the metal is also used in various industrial applications, including ceramics and glass making.

Integrating into the EV battery supply chain remains “the ultimate goal,” Lin told Grist. “But we are looking at other plans to ensure … the economic viability of the operation continues.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump’s second term is creating ‘a limbo moment’ for US battery recyclers on Jun 10, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Maddie Stone.

“Trump politicizing and weaponizing the National Guard makes us all less safe and less free. His threat to deploy the Marines into the streets of an American city is an illegal and authoritarian escalation.

“Trump’s threats have nothing to do with keeping people safe—it’s about political theater. He’s scapegoating immigrants to distract from the GOP’s real agenda: ripping health care away from millions to pay for tax cuts for the ultra-rich.

“We will not be intimidated. Progressives are standing up to this administration, including by conducting lawful oversight at ICE detention centers in Los Angeles and across the country. We stand with Angelenos, and we stand with immigrant families everywhere. The President must return command of the National Guard to Governor Newsom.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

“This is not law and order—it’s tyranny,” said Our Revolution Executive Director Joseph Geevarghese. “When power is concentrated in the hands of a corrupt few, and dissent is met with armed repression, democracy itself is under siege. We must call this what it is: a threat to the republic.”

Our Revolution stands with the people of Los Angeles and with communities nationwide who are rising up for justice and democracy. We urge every elected official, candidate, and organization that claims to defend democracy to speak out and act decisively against this authoritarian power grab.

In response to the Administration’s dangerous deployment of armed forces against civilians, Our Revolution is urging its 8 million+ members to demand Congress act now to stop this authoritarian power grab—circulating a petition calling on lawmakers to block the military escalation.

The line between military and civilian government is one of the most critical protections in a functioning democracy. Trump’s use of armed troops against U.S. communities is a blatant abuse of power. Congress must act.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

President Trump’s Executive Order calling for incarcerated transgender women to be housed in men’s prisons and halting gender-affirming medical care for prisoners has put one of the most vulnerable segments of the prison population in even greater danger. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, host Mansa Musa investigates the violent realities trans inmates face in the US prison system, and the impact that Trump’s attacks on LGBTQ+ rights is having inside prisons.

Guest(s):

• Dee Deidre Farmer, Executive Director of Fight4Justice. In 1994, Farmer’s landmark Supreme Court case, the unanimous Farmer v. Brennan decision, established that prisoners have a right to be protected from harm and that prisons are responsible for their safety.
• Ronnie L. Taylor, Advocacy, Policy, & Partnerships Director of FreeState Justice in Maryland.

Additional resources:

• Amy Harman, The New York Times, “Judge blocks Trump effort to end treatment for transgender inmates”
• Kaley Johnson & Sam Levin, The Guardian, “Trans women transferred to men’s prisons despite rulings against Trump’s order”

Credits:

Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Mansa Musa:

According to The Guardian, transgender women are being sent back to male prisons under an executive order issued by President Donald Trump. A recent report from Democracy Now, stated that 17 transgender women have coverage under a lawsuit they filed, but the remaining transgender population have been sent back. They are suffering horrible abuses in the form of rape by the male population and from the prison guards.

The impact of this decision can be seen in the segment of this transgender population that don’t have coverage. More importantly, we can see the impact that this decision is having on the prison population in general. What do you think? Should an executive order supersede a court order where multiple court decisions said transgender women should remain in the population where they’re at? Or should an executive order supersede that, regardless of the court?

To learn more about trans women and the LBGT community’s resistance, I spoke with Deidre Farmer, who in the mid ’90s, filed a historical lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Prisons because of their complicity in allowing rape to exist in all prisons they govern. Out of this lawsuit came PREA: Prison Rape Elimination Act. It became policy and it became law, throughout the prisons and throughout America.

Deidre Farmer:

I’m Deidre Farmer, I’m the executive director of Fight for Justice. I was incarcerated in the Federal Bureau of Prisons for a total of about 25-30 years. I brought the first transgender case accepted and decided by the US Supreme Court; In that case, Farmer V. Brennan, the US Supreme Court said that prison officials can be held liable for the sexual assault of other inmates when they knowingly place inmates at risk of danger. I am currently working with several organizations on cases that challenge the executive orders bought by Donald Trump regarding transgender people in prison as well as in the military.

Mansa Musa:

Talk about how this suit came into existence and more importantly, why?

Deidre Farmer:

I entered the Bureau of Prisons as a teenager and when I was 19-20 years old I was transferred to the Federal Penitentiary in Terre Haute. I had never been in a penitentiary environment before and did not know what to expect. I was in the prison system at Terre Haute for about a week when an inmate came into my cell with a knife and demanded that I have sex with him, and when I refused, he beat me up and raped me. Then a number of his homeboys or guys that he associated with, held me hostage in the cell for a day or two.

I ended up in protective custody and I had already started studying law and spending time in the library. When you’re in the segregation unit, you find other people who have had the same experience– They weren’t necessarily transgender people, some of them may have been LGBTQ or young guys that were vulnerable or other people viewed them as weak. When I was transferred from Terre Haute, this is something that continued to play on my mind because I knew people, like me, went into protective custody and therefore the prison officials knew what was happening in the population, but weren’t doing anything about it.

So I brought a suit claiming that when prison officials know that you are at risk of danger, assault, or rape, they can be sued for it. The district court and the Court of Appeals did not agree with me, but the US Supreme Court accepted the case. I wrote the petition on my own and filed it on my own and they accepted it. Then a friend of mine, who was an attorney at the ACLU National Prison Project, represented me in the Supreme Court. Of course, the court held if you can prove they knew — Because of the environment or previous incidents — Then you can sue them.

Mansa Musa:

Out of this litigation came what is now commonly known as PREA: Prison Rape Elimination Act. Based on this advocacy in the prison system right now, it’s policy that they had autonomous system set up where prisoners can complain about being sexually mistreated. We know this is a fact that PREA exists throughout the system– Federal Bureau, federal, state, and county jail, city jail, it exists.

The president issued this order and according to it, all transgender people are to be sent back to the institutions that they’ve been identified by their original sexual origin; If it’s a male that’s transgender and he’s in a female prison, according to Donald Trump, he going to be sent back to a male prison and vice versa. Talk about the impact that’s going to have on the transgender population in general and with the prison population overall.

Deidre Farmer:

What you’re doing is sanctioning the death of transgender people, whether they are transgendered or otherwise, they are still human beings and we should not be subjecting them to death because they do not conform to what our ideology of human beings should be. In my case, the Supreme Court recognized that people with certain vulnerabilities — Including gender dysphoria or transgender — Are vulnerable in certain populations.

After my case, there were many studies done. Consequently the US Congress took the issue up and enacted the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which is supposed to have zero tolerance for rape in prisons. As the Supreme Court said, rape is not part of the sentence. Congress, because they recognized from many, many hearings and testimonies from women, young people, disabled people, mentally challenged people, gender-conflicted people who were sexually assaulted in prison or in jail, and consequently implemented PREA, which is nationwide standards. It does not create legal rights, but if you violate it, you can lose federal funding.

The executive orders that Trump has issued totally ignores what the Supreme Court has said, totally ignores what the US Congress has said, and what Trump is saying, despite the vulnerabilities that you have, you’re going back into that environment. Despite the knowledge that you will be raped, despite the knowledge that the person who raped you might kill you so that you cannot tell. This is not an ideology, this is not a presumption; This is something that happens and has happened.

Now for transgender people who remain in facilities consistent with their biological gender, it is happening. To say that you will take an incarcerated transgender woman who has had vaginoplasty and has a vagina and place her into a male institution, it’s the same as placing a woman in there and to place a person at that risk, it’s inhumane.

Mansa Musa:

In Baltimore, I spoke to Ronnie Taylor, a policy advocate with Free State Justice about the adversities facing the LGBTQ community in its current political climate. Also, we talked about the historical activism of the LGBTQ community.

Ronnie Taylor:

Thank you for having me. Ronnie Taylor, as you said. Pronouns are she/her. I serve as the advocacy policy and partnerships director here at Free State. We are the oldest LGBT organization providing legal services, resources, advocacy, and education in the state of Maryland. And we’re the only– We call ourselves Maryland’s LGBTQ+ advocates.

Mansa Musa:

I was looking at some of y’alls accomplishments. Y’all have been given numerous awards, but more importantly, y’all had a bill passed to deal with marriage. Talk about that.

Ronnie Taylor:

Absolutely. We were birthed out of the merger of Equality Maryland, for those that are familiar with that. We became Free State Legal Project and then Free State Maryland. Equality Maryland passed the Same-Sex Marriage Act numerous years ago, and it was such an accomplishment for Maryland so we wanted to figure out how we can continue to position ourselves as advocates.

Unfortunately, when the doors closed at Equality Maryland, Free State Legal Project continued to work when it comes to our advocacy portions and we’ve been continuing to do that. We have some amazing legislative wins such as the Trans Health Equity Act. This recent year we passed the Carlton R. Smith Jr. HIV Modernization Act. The awards are great and it’s great to be recognized, but we’re going to continue to do the work for Marylanders.

Mansa Musa:

In the 2024 presidential campaign, Kamala Harris was being denigrated for providing or signing off on the legislation to allow transgender people to have a sex change according to what their orientation was. The President of the US and the Republican Party had a campaign ad; In the campaign ad they were promoting this as something that was inhuman and immoral with the way they was representing the person that was getting their sex changed, they had them looking almost monstrous. Talk about the impact that is having on the transgender community right now.

Ronnie Taylor:

Those acts that have come into place and how it is crucial to our current standing Marylanders, I pride myself in saying that on a local level, we have a great partner in our Governor Wes Moore. However, federally we are under attack, and that attack has looked a variance of ways. Military personnel folks and particularly trans folks who have been serving in the military for numerous of years.

Mansa Musa:

And honorably mention.

Ronnie Taylor:

And honorably mention. To have their careers taken away for an oath that they took to protect this country is inhumane in regards to our prison systems. The Prison Rape Elimination Act is a thing, and to say we’re going to put folks in cells and disregarding medical procedures and stating that you are trans, it’s simply an attack. Furthermore, there’s been numerous things this party has done; There’s been over 886 pieces of legislation introduced by the Federal Administration for the attack of transgender individuals.

Mansa Musa:

This is outstanding because you put all that time and energy into trying to have a moral agenda over people’s lives, but at the same token you are a convicted felon, you paid off Stormy Daniels for lewd lascivious behavior towards her, but you turned around and now you want to become the moral cop of people’s lives. Talk about the impact this is having on the transgender community and y’alls ability to raise funds.

Ronnie Taylor:

It’s hard. Funding is at a ultimate halt right now for a lot of organizations, including mine. If you put terms in such as “DEI” or “community” which our federal government are trying to eliminate, it puts us in a tricky situation. Thankfully we’ve been able to diversify our funding tools, as I’m in charge of that portfolio, and be able to still do the work. But it’s challenging because we don’t want to get rid of our moral compass and we refuse to.

We’re going to continue to do the work, but we find ourselves in a position in which the federal administration has proven they do not want to be a partner in this work. Thankfully, we have a great federal delegation in Maryland that’s going to continue to do the work and put forth legislation to combat that hate and that anti stuff, but it’s still there and it’s impacting everyday lives. It’s affecting people’s housing, their mental health, their ability to work, and so forth and so on.

Mansa Musa:

And we interviewed a transgender female that was responsible for PREA, Prison Rape and Enforcement Act, and she was saying that right now it look like it’s all out assault on transgender men or women in prison based on the fact that the president has put an executive order out saying that you going to be transferred to the prison of your assigned gender as opposed to your current gender. Talk about that if you can.

Ronnie Taylor:

I couldn’t agree with her more. It’s definitely an overall attack. It’s an agenda, it’s an attack. And one of the things that I often remind people in my advocacy work here is our current president, and I use that term loosely, these are just executive orders. This person has done nothing but signed executive orders throughout his time throughout this term. There has not been any laws. The reality is there’s still a chance to work and get things done on a local level. Now is the time more than ever. Primary general elections are coming up. We need folks to get in the race for the 2026, there are local elections, and do the work because it can be done.

And overall you need to hold your elected officials to the responsibility. When they took that oath to serve in Annapolis or serve in whatever state house you elected them to be in to do the work of all Marylanders. It’s inhumane. Trans people are a part of the political, social economic living sphere that we all consist and exist in. And so this attack on said sub community, it’s horrendous and there absolutely needs to be something done about it.

Mansa Musa:

This government is taking a conservative act. Like I said, we went back through the military, don’t ask, don’t tell, but now they just did an executive order around that. Secretary of Defense issued a memorandum about that, their prison, and they taking federal funds from anyone under [inaudible 00:17:48] species of DEI. But they primarily saying that if you’re transgender then you don’t have an arm and leg to stand on. Why do you think they’re having such a conservative act towards this particular community, sub-community?

Ronnie Taylor:

Great question, is we have to highlight folks from both sides of the aisle are trans.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, yeah.

Ronnie Taylor:

President Musk’s daughter is a woman of trans experience, but she’s not often talked about. She’s been pushed underneath of a carpet and it’s again, rooted in ignorance.

Mansa Musa:

As we go forward, what do you want our viewers to know about the transgender community? And more importantly, speak to them about what transgender means to you and what it should mean to society, because we live in a society supposed to be equal. We say we hold these truths to be self-evident that all people are treated equal and have [inaudible 00:18:42] rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If your life is at jeopardy, your liberty is at jeopardy, and then therefore you ain’t going to have no pursuit of happiness. Talk about why we should be looking at this issue and be real critical about this administration as it relates to their attitude towards people.

Ronnie Taylor:

Yeah. One of the things I often say is trans people since the beginning of time have done an amazing body of work, and our portfolio show that. Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera stood on the front lines of the Stonewall movement and they threw the first brick.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Ronnie Taylor:

That’s not often something that we talk about. Trans people are elected officials. We have precious Brandi Davis down in the south, we have Andrea Jenkins in the Midwest, we have Sarah McBride, our first congresswoman.

Mansa Musa:

Come on, come on.

Ronnie Taylor:

And so folks are capable and willing to do the work, but we refuse to be ostracized. And so what it means to me, and thank you for asking me that question, I have prided myself and it’s often a label that I wear with pride and I introduce myself and my pronouns and say, “I’m a woman of trans experience,” because I refuse to dim that light in the work that I’m doing.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Ronnie Taylor:

And so we’re in advocacy spaces, we’re in policy spaces. We are in all of the spaces. And so it’s ultimately the education that gets into it. And so the willingness to learn, there are some of us that are willing to do our trans one-on-one conversations with you, but you have to come to the table with a willingness to learn.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Ronnie Taylor:

And so, oftentimes our political landscape has shown that it’s okay to be disrespectful and neglectful of said communities, but there is some work to be done.

Mansa Musa:

There you have it. The real news, Rallying the Boss. Transgender community is here, it’s here to stay. We not trying to make no excuse for it, but they’re human beings like us. The only problem that we have with this whole entire issue is that someone thinks that they have the moral compass to determine who should have a quality life versus whose life should be treated differently. This country is prided on equality and we are saying that equality is paramount when it comes to recognizing the transgender community and all their accomplishments they have made.

These stories about the LBGT community and transgender and their rights to be treated as human beings is something that Rallying the Boss believe should be brought front and center as it relates to humanity. This is about humanity. This is not about a person’s preference, sexual orientation. This is about people being treated as human. And we at Rallying the Boss believe that these stories, when you look at them and evaluate them, will give you a sense of understanding about humanity. We ask that you continue to look at Rallying the Boss and we ask that you give your views. Tell us what you think about these stories because it’s your views that give us content and context to our next story.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Mansa Musa.

Whether a world war, a proxy conflict, an armed intervention, a psyop, or a regime change mission, the United States has not enjoyed a single moment of true, unadulterated peace.

And it’s not just at war with nations abroad. The US is also at war with itself.

Positive peace is not just the absence of violence, but also the absence of oppression. In all the years of this country’s existence, oppression has flourished, leaching away the lies told about the land of the free. Many pretend not to see the institutional apartheid and chronic subjection of minorities, but it lurks in every city, town, and neighborhood, right under the nose of the social theater we all take part in.

Well, the US is in hospice, and it’s lashing out—a last gasping breath of the inhumane, psychopathic systems that perpetuate violence, at home and abroad.

As Ariel Durant wrote, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.” No country needs to declare war on the United States—it’s caught in its own self-destructive web.

There are many casualties in war other than people. Truth was killed a long time ago, a necessary death for the proliferation of our military and the subjugation of countries and people that act against our interests. The next casualties will be the very values we tell ourselves we stand for, written boldly in our Constitution—though weren’t they also a lie? Overseas, human rights are meaningless. We’ve bombed and murdered scores of people, over and over and over again, and we’ve smiled with rotting teeth and declared it was all for the greater good.

Turns out the rot was coming from within.

If the US is at war with the world and itself, then every battlefield is a frontline—Ukraine, Gaza, China, the entire exploited global south, the self-declared allies with no true sovereignty… and here, university campuses are merely one more frontline.

Universities have a particular power in the US. They generally enjoy the ability to intellectually critique the US, its subjection of people, and the crimes it has inflicted on the global population. They are meant to have a level of separation from government interference and operate as beacons of education and places of global interaction and community. This doesn’t always happen, but sometimes it does.

Why are educational institutions a threat? Because they have the tools needed to see through the cognitive shroud of militarized capitalism and talk about it. Students are the real change-makers because they haven’t spent a lifetime beaten down by the system, exhausted by its impossibilities, and bent hopeless by the apparent futility of trying to make change. Change is slow, but students are young, energized, hopeful, open-minded, and visionary. They are also the future.

Students observe injustice, and they act on it. They’ve protested every war we’ve decided was wrong long after the fact—Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Palestine. And every time, the government has cracked down on students, demanding arrests and university compliance with its global agenda. The Trump administration is not doing anything new—they’ve just crossed a few more lines and been obvious about it.

University protests and encampments protesting the Gaza genocide were the major catalyst for the most recent crackdowns on academia, providing the government justification for launching probes to investigate “antisemitism” on campuses. The Trump administration has also been actively targeting what they perceive to be “anti-American” fields of study, like postcolonialism, critical race theory, gender studies, and social theory—the very fields that act as tools to outthink the militarized capitalism thinking bubble. They emphasize a need for “patriotic education,” which is the newest terminology for imperialist propaganda.

These actions coincided with unprecedented persecution of students and professors who have actively criticized the Gaza genocide and the United States’ role in funding it. Visa and green card holders alike have been arrested and face ongoing deportations merely for having an opinion that acts in opposition to state interests… the very definition of fascism.

Harvard is an interesting case. Widely seen as a symbol of American elitism, it almost seems counterintuitive for an oligarchic government to oppose. But there are no rules here, and the internal power systems have gone rabid, turning on themselves in an effort to choke out their own active failings. Trump plays the populist card well, but he’s hiding behind a mirror of his own gross corruption. He calls to “drain the swamp,” while bringing his ragtag group of billionaire friends into the White House and giving them political power they should never have—a blatant contradiction many choose to ignore.

Initially, Harvard University refused to capitulate to Trump’s demands, arguing they directly violated the university’s independence and constitutional rights. In response, Trump ordered federal agencies to freeze over $100 million in funds and attempted to revoke Harvard’s ability to enroll international students.

Harvard president Alan Gerber remains steadfast in his refusal to surrender, saying that Harvard must “stand firm” and set an example for other universities that will continue to be targeted.

To counter Harvard’s steadfastness, the administration’s most recent move reached absurd new heights. Last week, a joint letter from three congressional committees accused Harvard of partaking in global supervillain-esque activities such as training genocidal paramilitary groups from China, partnering with the Chinese military using US defense funds, collaborating with Iranian government-backed scientists, and even potentially helping to develop next-gen spy robots and transplant technology with illegal organ-harvesters.

The letter was ridiculous, reading less like a serious national security inquiry and more like a bureaucratic fever dream fueled by a conspiracy-laced Wikipedia binge. The “training” of a Chinese paramilitary group was actually a public health course that was attended by members of a Chinese administrative body. The accusations of Iran funding was regarding medical research on the bacterial properties of particles done in conjunction between Imam Khomeini International University, Harvard Medical School, and Zhejiang University-University of Edinburgh Joint Institute—a great display of an international, collaborative scientific study that could help improve the lives of all people (There is clearly a profound misunderstanding on how scientific and medical research works. These fields are collaborative by design, and all nearly of these studies are public, peer-reviewed work).

And the most bizarre claim of all is that Harvard’s liver regeneration research is somehow aiding and abetting organ harvesting conspiracies. Do I even need to speak to that?

Ultimately, this letter has nothing to do with national security concerns and is merely another weapon for the current administration to throw at Harvard in its efforts to get it to capitulate to their demands. And if the anti-China warhawks can push their agenda a bit more by using their red-baiting, xenophobic grab-bag of buzzwords, then what’s stopping them? They will conflate academic exchange with espionage, collaboration with treason, and conference panels with covert operations as long as it helps obtain their end goal of wiping independent thinking off syllabuses and replacing it with strictly I-love-America propaganda. At the end of the day, they don’t want you to know how to think—they want to tell you what to think.

If the Trump administration thinks that defunding our top academic institutions will improve the already lagging education systems, and that censoring free speech and prohibiting collaborative research will be a boon for progress and productivity, they have another thing coming. These actions will only hurt the US and drag it further behind on its last-ditch efforts to maintain its slipping grasp on world domination.

Montesquieu wrote, “The corruption of each government almost always begins with that of its principles.” Well, the US has never represented the principles that it’s long claimed to stand for. Men have never been treated equally, speech has never been free, and liberty and liberation have always been things to strive for, never things that are. This is not a change that spontaneously occurred, but something that is inherent within the imperialist system. And now the decay is becoming visible, and the empire with its “immoderate greatness” is turning on itself—eating itself—and we are all vulnerable to its collapse.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Megan Russell.

That’s because the legislation, which President Donald Trump has dubbed the Big Beautiful Bill, will repeal the vast majority of clean energy provisions contained in the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, which a Democrat-controlled Congress passed in 2022. That earlier law provided a wide array of financial incentives for the deployment of electricity sources like solar, wind, battery storage, and nuclear power, as well as support for consumers looking to buy zero- and low-emissions products like electric vehicles. Choking off support for those measures not only hobbles U.S. efforts to fight climate change — the IRA, if left intact, could single-handedly reduce the country’s carbon emissions by 40 percent — but it also means there are fewer new sources of energy for a country that has started to need more and more of it. And reduced supply coupled with increased demand means higher prices.

That’s the virtually unanimous conclusion of the academics and policy experts who have been trying to understand the likely effects of the rollback for the past few months, though each group of experts used different assumptions about the full extent of IRA repeal, given that the legislation is still currently being revised by the Senate. Part of the reason for this unanimity is that, once constructed, many newer energy sources like wind and solar don’t have substantial operating costs, compared to traditional power plants that must be continuously supplied with fuel.

“Clean electricity has zero generation cost,” said Robbie Orvis, a senior director for modeling and analysis at Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan think tank. “One of the dynamics is that less clean electricity gets built, and that makes power generation more expensive, because we’re relying more frequently on fossil fuels with higher generation costs.”

Orvis’ group calculated that those higher power generation costs from using coal or natural gas, along with other price increases stemming from IRA repeal, would result in household energy costs rising by more than $33 billion annually by 2035, compared to a scenario in which the IRA were left intact. That works out to roughly $250 more per year per household. Other analysts came to similar conclusions: The Rhodium Group, an independent policy analysis firm, estimates that average household costs could be as much as $290 higher per year by the same date. Princeton University’s ZERO Lab projects that energy costs could grow even higher: Their estimates show that, in a decade, annual household prices will be $270 to $415 higher under the GOP plan.

Energy Innovation’s analysis calculated the effects of repealing the IRA on energy bills and transportation costs across the nation. They found that, if the tax credits for clean energy are taken away, utilities will increasingly rely on natural gas and coal, which have higher generation costs. These costs would then be passed on to customers. Additionally, as electric utilities’ demand for natural gas increases, the cost of the fossil fuel in the market will also rise, further raising household energy bills.

“Gas suppliers can’t respond immediately to large changes in the demand for gas,” said Orvis. “The change in gas demand is pretty large without the tax credits. So you’re really increasing the reliance on gas, and therefore, gas demand and gas prices.”

On the transportation front, the legislation passed by the House of Representatives eliminates IRA tax credits for electric vehicles and undoes the nation’s latest tailpipe standards, which limit the amount of pollution that new vehicles are allowed to emit. The result is a greater reliance on gasoline than would happen under the status quo — and more demand for gasoline means higher prices at the pump, per Orvis’ modeling. 

These price spikes — and the electricity spikes in particular — won’t be felt uniformly across the nation. One key factor is how utilities in a state are regulated. Many states have just one utility that both generates power and provides it to electricity customers. But in so-called deregulated markets such as Texas and Pennsylvania, electricity providers compete on an open market to sell their power.

The rules around how utilities calculate and pass on the costs of generating electricity vary significantly between these two models. In regulated markets with just one provider, the cost of generating electricity and getting it to homes is averaged out and passed on to customers. But the competitive nature of deregulated markets means that customers can see wild fluctuations in price. During peak winter and summer, when demand for power is high, prices can be double or triple normal rates. As a result, customers in deregulated markets see more variation in their bills — because those bills closely track changes in the marginal cost of electricity. If those costs rise in a dramatic and systematic way because IRA repeal leads to fewer sources of energy, customers in deregulated markets will feel the full force of it. Customers in regulated markets like much of the Southeast, on the other hand, will be somewhat cushioned from the increase, because their costs reflect the average of all generation and transmission costs incurred by their utility.

“That helps minimize the impact of repealing IRA tax credits — though it also runs the opposite way and helps reduce savings when market prices go down,” said Jesse Jenkins, an associate professor at Princeton University who led the modeling conducted by the ZERO Lab, in an email. 

These rising costs will come on top of U.S. energy bills that are already ticking upward. Electricity prices have been steadily rising since 2020, and the federal Energy Information Administration recently forecasted that that trend is likely to continue through 2026. Prices have increased for a variety of reasons, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupting global oil and gas supply chains, extreme heat and other weather shocks, costly maintenance needed to protected the grid from wildfires, and the buildout of additional capacity to meet growing demand. U.S. electricity demand is beginning to rise for the first time in decades, thanks to the construction of new manufacturing facilities and data centers, which support operations like cloud computing and artificial intelligence, as well as the growing adoption of electric vehicles.

Orvis said that the IRA has been helping meet that demand and maintain the country’s competitive advantage with China, one of the Trump administration’s stated goals. The so-called Big Beautiful Bill would undermine that progress by reducing the amount of energy available for new manufacturing and AI development — and making the electricity that’s left more expensive for everyone.

“The ironic thing is that what’s in the bill, the net results of it will be completely contradictory to what the [Trump] administration’s stated policy priorities are and will cede a lot of the AI development and the manufacturing to China specifically,” said Orvis. “That’s the important macro context for everything that’s happening now — and some of the un-modelable implications in the long run.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill will raise household energy costs on Jun 6, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Naveena Sadasivam.

That’s because the legislation, which President Donald Trump has dubbed the Big Beautiful Bill, will repeal the vast majority of clean energy provisions contained in the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, which a Democrat-controlled Congress passed in 2022. That earlier law provided a wide array of financial incentives for the deployment of electricity sources like solar, wind, battery storage, and nuclear power, as well as support for consumers looking to buy zero- and low-emissions products like electric vehicles. Choking off support for those measures not only hobbles U.S. efforts to fight climate change — the IRA, if left intact, could single-handedly reduce the country’s carbon emissions by 40 percent — but it also means there are fewer new sources of energy for a country that has started to need more and more of it. And reduced supply coupled with increased demand means higher prices.

That’s the virtually unanimous conclusion of the academics and policy experts who have been trying to understand the likely effects of the rollback for the past few months, though each group of experts used different assumptions about the full extent of IRA repeal, given that the legislation is still currently being revised by the Senate. Part of the reason for this unanimity is that, once constructed, many newer energy sources like wind and solar don’t have substantial operating costs, compared to traditional power plants that must be continuously supplied with fuel.

“Clean electricity has zero generation cost,” said Robbie Orvis, a senior director for modeling and analysis at Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan think tank. “One of the dynamics is that less clean electricity gets built, and that makes power generation more expensive, because we’re relying more frequently on fossil fuels with higher generation costs.”

Orvis’ group calculated that those higher power generation costs from using coal or natural gas, along with other price increases stemming from IRA repeal, would result in household energy costs rising by more than $33 billion annually by 2035, compared to a scenario in which the IRA were left intact. That works out to roughly $250 more per year per household. Other analysts came to similar conclusions: The Rhodium Group, an independent policy analysis firm, estimates that average household costs could be as much as $290 higher per year by the same date. Princeton University’s ZERO Lab projects that energy costs could grow even higher: Their estimates show that, in a decade, annual household prices will be $270 to $415 higher under the GOP plan.

Energy Innovation’s analysis calculated the effects of repealing the IRA on energy bills and transportation costs across the nation. They found that, if the tax credits for clean energy are taken away, utilities will increasingly rely on natural gas and coal, which have higher generation costs. These costs would then be passed on to customers. Additionally, as electric utilities’ demand for natural gas increases, the cost of the fossil fuel in the market will also rise, further raising household energy bills.

“Gas suppliers can’t respond immediately to large changes in the demand for gas,” said Orvis. “The change in gas demand is pretty large without the tax credits. So you’re really increasing the reliance on gas, and therefore, gas demand and gas prices.”

On the transportation front, the legislation passed by the House of Representatives eliminates IRA tax credits for electric vehicles and undoes the nation’s latest tailpipe standards, which limit the amount of pollution that new vehicles are allowed to emit. The result is a greater reliance on gasoline than would happen under the status quo — and more demand for gasoline means higher prices at the pump, per Orvis’ modeling. 

These price spikes — and the electricity spikes in particular — won’t be felt uniformly across the nation. One key factor is how utilities in a state are regulated. Many states have just one utility that both generates power and provides it to electricity customers. But in so-called deregulated markets such as Texas and Pennsylvania, electricity providers compete on an open market to sell their power.

The rules around how utilities calculate and pass on the costs of generating electricity vary significantly between these two models. In regulated markets with just one provider, the cost of generating electricity and getting it to homes is averaged out and passed on to customers. But the competitive nature of deregulated markets means that customers can see wild fluctuations in price. During peak winter and summer, when demand for power is high, prices can be double or triple normal rates. As a result, customers in deregulated markets see more variation in their bills — because those bills closely track changes in the marginal cost of electricity. If those costs rise in a dramatic and systematic way because IRA repeal leads to fewer sources of energy, customers in deregulated markets will feel the full force of it. Customers in regulated markets like much of the Southeast, on the other hand, will be somewhat cushioned from the increase, because their costs reflect the average of all generation and transmission costs incurred by their utility.

“That helps minimize the impact of repealing IRA tax credits — though it also runs the opposite way and helps reduce savings when market prices go down,” said Jesse Jenkins, an associate professor at Princeton University who led the modeling conducted by the ZERO Lab, in an email. 

These rising costs will come on top of U.S. energy bills that are already ticking upward. Electricity prices have been steadily rising since 2020, and the federal Energy Information Administration recently forecasted that that trend is likely to continue through 2026. Prices have increased for a variety of reasons, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupting global oil and gas supply chains, extreme heat and other weather shocks, costly maintenance needed to protected the grid from wildfires, and the buildout of additional capacity to meet growing demand. U.S. electricity demand is beginning to rise for the first time in decades, thanks to the construction of new manufacturing facilities and data centers, which support operations like cloud computing and artificial intelligence, as well as the growing adoption of electric vehicles.

Orvis said that the IRA has been helping meet that demand and maintain the country’s competitive advantage with China, one of the Trump administration’s stated goals. The so-called Big Beautiful Bill would undermine that progress by reducing the amount of energy available for new manufacturing and AI development — and making the electricity that’s left more expensive for everyone.

“The ironic thing is that what’s in the bill, the net results of it will be completely contradictory to what the [Trump] administration’s stated policy priorities are and will cede a lot of the AI development and the manufacturing to China specifically,” said Orvis. “That’s the important macro context for everything that’s happening now — and some of the un-modelable implications in the long run.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill will raise household energy costs on Jun 6, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Naveena Sadasivam.

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When Thomas Fugate graduated from college last year with a degree in politics, he celebrated in a social media post about the exciting opportunities that lay beyond campus life in Texas. “Onward and upward!” he wrote, with an emoji of a rocket shooting into space.

His career blastoff came quickly. A year after graduation, the 22-year-old with no apparent national security expertise is now a Department of Homeland Security official overseeing the government’s main hub for terrorism prevention, including an $18 million grant program intended to help communities combat violent extremism.

The White House appointed Fugate, a former Trump campaign worker who interned at the hard-right Heritage Foundation, to a Homeland Security role that was expanded to include the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships. Known as CP3, the office has led nationwide efforts to prevent hate-fueled attacks, school shootings and other forms of targeted violence.

Fugate’s appointment is the latest shock for an office that has been decimated since President Donald Trump returned to the White House and began remaking national security to give it a laser focus on immigration.

News of the appointment has trickled out in recent weeks, raising alarm among counterterrorism researchers and nonprofit groups funded by CP3. Several said they turned to LinkedIn for intel on Fugate — an unknown in their field — and were stunned to see a photo of “a college kid” with a flag pin on his lapel posing with a sharply arched eyebrow. No threat prevention experience is listed in his employment history.

Typically, people familiar with CP3 say, a candidate that green wouldn’t have gotten an interview for a junior position, much less be hired to run operations. According to LinkedIn, the bulk of Fugate’s leadership experience comes from having served as secretary general of a Model United Nations club.

“Maybe he’s a wunderkind. Maybe he’s Doogie Howser and has everything at 21 years old, or whatever he is, to lead the office. But that’s not likely the case,” said one counterterrorism researcher who has worked with CP3 officials for years. “It sounds like putting the intern in charge.”

In the past seven weeks, at least five high-profile targeted attacks have unfolded across the U.S., including a car bombing in California and the gunning down of two Israeli Embassy aides in Washington. Against this backdrop, current and former national security officials say, the Trump administration’s decision to shift counterterrorism resources to immigration and leave the violence-prevention portfolio to inexperienced appointees is “reckless.”

“We’re entering very dangerous territory,” one longtime U.S. counterterrorism official said.

The fate of CP3 is one example of the fallout from deep cuts that have eliminated public health and violence-prevention initiatives across federal agencies.

The once-bustling office of around 80 employees now has fewer than 20, former staffers say. Grant work stops, then restarts. One senior civil servant was reassigned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency via an email that arrived late on a Saturday.

The office’s mission has changed overnight, with a pivot away from focusing on domestic extremism, especially far-right movements. The “terrorism” category that framed the agency’s work for years was abruptly expanded to include drug cartels, part of what DHS staffers call an overarching message that border security is the only mission that matters. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has largely left terrorism prevention to the states.

ProPublica sent DHS a detailed list of questions about Fugate’s position, his lack of national security experience and the future of the department’s prevention work. A senior agency official replied with a statement saying only that Fugate’s CP3 duties were added to his role as an aide in an Immigration & Border Security office.

“Due to his success, he has been temporarily given additional leadership responsibilities in the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships office,” the official wrote in an email. “This is a credit to his work ethic and success on the job.”

ProPublica sought an interview with Fugate through DHS and the White House, but there was no response.

The Trump administration rejects claims of a retreat from terrorism prevention, noting partnerships with law enforcement agencies and swift investigations of recent attacks. “The notion that this single office is responsible for preventing terrorism is not only incorrect, it’s ignorant,” spokesperson Abigail Jackson wrote in an email.

Through intermediaries, ProPublica sought to speak with CP3 employees but received no reply. Talking is risky; tales abound of Homeland Security personnel undergoing lie-detector tests in leak investigations, as Secretary Kristi Noem pledged in March.

Accounts of Fugate’s arrival and the dismantling of CP3 come from current and former Homeland Security personnel, grant recipients and terrorism-prevention advocates who work closely with the office and have at times been confidants for distraught staffers. All spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from the Trump administration.

In these circles, two main theories have emerged to explain Fugate’s unusual ascent. One is that the Trump administration rewarded a Gen Z campaign worker with a resume-boosting title that comes with little real power because the office is in shambles.

The other is that the White House installed Fugate to oversee a pivot away from traditional counterterrorism lanes and to steer resources toward MAGA-friendly sheriffs and border security projects before eventually shuttering operations. In this scenario, Fugate was described as “a minder” and “a babysitter.”

DHS did not address a ProPublica question about this characterization.

The CP3 homepage boasts about the office’s experts in disciplines including emergency management, counterterrorism, public health and social work.

Fugate brings a different qualification prized by the White House: loyalty to the president.

On Instagram, Fugate traced his political awakening to nine years ago, when as a 13-year-old “in a generation deprived of hope, opportunity, and happiness, I saw in one man the capacity for real and lasting change: Donald Trump.”

Fugate is a self-described “Trumplican” who interned for state lawmakers in Austin before graduating magna cum laude a year ago with a degree in politics and law from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Instagram photos and other public information from the past year chronicle his lightning-fast rise in Trump world.

Starting in May 2024, photos show a newly graduated Fugate at a Texas GOP gathering launching his first campaign, a bid for a delegate spot at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. He handed out gummy candy and a flier with a photo of him in a tuxedo at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Fugate won an alternate slot.

The next month, he was in Florida celebrating Trump’s 78th birthday with the Club 47 fan group in West Palm Beach. “I truly wish I could say more about what I’m doing, but more to come soon!” he wrote in a caption, with a smiley emoji in sunglasses.

Posts in the run-up to the election show Fugate spending several weeks in Washington, a time he called “surreal and invigorating.” In July, he attended the Republican convention, sporting the Texas delegation’s signature cowboy hat in photos with MAGA luminaries such as former Cabinet Secretary Ben Carson and then-Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).

By late summer, Fugate was posting from the campaign trail as part of Trump’s advance team, pictured at one stop standing behind the candidate in a crowd of young supporters. When Trump won the election, Fugate marked the moment with an emotional post about believing in him “from the very start, even to the scorn and contempt of my peers.”

“Working alongside a dedicated, driven group of folks, we faced every challenge head-on and, together, celebrated a victorious outcome,” Fugate wrote on Instagram.

In February, the White House appointed Fugate as a “special assistant” assigned to an immigration office at Homeland Security. He assumed leadership of CP3 last month to fill a vacancy left by previous Director Bill Braniff, an Army veteran with more than two decades of national security experience who resigned in March when the administration began cutting his staff.

In his final weeks as director, Braniff had publicly defended the office’s achievements, noting the dispersal of nearly $90 million since 2020 to help communities combat extremist violence. According to the office’s 2024 report to Congress, in recent years CP3 grant money was used in more than 1,100 efforts to identify violent extremism at the community level and interrupt the radicalization process.

“CP3 is the inheritor of the primary and founding mission of DHS — to prevent terrorism,” Braniff wrote on LinkedIn when he announced his resignation.

In conversations with colleagues, CP3 staffers have expressed shock at how little Fugate knows about the basics of his role and likened meetings with him to “career counseling.” DHS did not address questions about his level of experience.

One grant recipient called Fugate’s appointment “an insult” to Braniff and a setback in the move toward evidence-based approaches to terrorism prevention, a field still reckoning with post-9/11 work that was unscientific and stigmatizing to Muslims.

“They really started to shift the conversation and shift the public thinking. It was starting to get to the root of the problem,” the grantee said. “Now that’s all gone.”

Critics of Fugate’s appointment stress that their anger isn’t directed at an aspiring politico enjoying a whirlwind entry to Washington. The problem, they say, is the administration’s seemingly cavalier treatment of an office that was funding work on urgent national security concerns.

“The big story here is the undermining of democratic institutions,” a former Homeland Security official said. “Who’s going to volunteer to be the next civil servant if they think their supervisor is an apparatchik?”

Spring brought a burst of extremist violence, a trend analysts fear could extend into the summer given inflamed political tensions and the disarray of federal agencies tasked with monitoring threats.

In April, an arson attack targeted Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, who blamed the breach on “security failures.” Four days later, a mass shooter stormed onto the Florida State University campus, killing two and wounding six others. The alleged attacker had espoused white supremacist views and used Hitler as a profile picture for a gaming account.

Attacks continued in May with the apparent car bombing of a fertility clinic in California. The suspected assailant, the only fatality, left a screed detailing violent beliefs against life and procreation. A few days later, on May 21, a gunman allegedly radicalized by the war in Gaza killed two Israeli Embassy aides outside a Jewish museum in Washington.

June opened with a firebombing attack in Colorado that wounded 12, including a Holocaust survivor, at a gathering calling for the release of Israeli hostages. The suspect’s charges include a federal hate crime.

If attacks continue at that pace, warn current and former national security officials, cracks will begin to appear in the nation’s pared-down counterterrorism sector.

“If you cut the staff and there are major attacks that lead to a reconsideration, you can’t scale up staff once they’re fired,” said the U.S. counterterrorism official, who opposes the administration’s shift away from prevention.

Contradictory signals are coming out of Homeland Security about the future of CP3 work, especially the grant program. Staffers have told partners in the advocacy world that Fugate plans to roll out another funding cycle soon. The CP3 website still touts the program as the only federal grant “solely dedicated to helping local communities develop and strengthen their capabilities” against terrorism and targeted violence.

But Homeland Security’s budget proposal to Congress for the next fiscal year suggests a bleaker future. The department recommended eliminating the threat-prevention grant program, explaining that it “does not align with DHS priorities.”

The former Homeland Security official said the decision “means that the department founded to prevent terrorism in the United States no longer prioritizes preventing terrorism in the United States.”

Kirsten Berg contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Hannah Allam.

Between discontinuing Affordable Care Act (ACA) coverage for coverage for small businesses owners, family caregivers, and millions of Americans, and kicking 7.8 million Americans off of Medicaid, the Republican tax scam will make basic necessities like food and healthcare more expensive for most Americans in order to pay for tax cuts for themselves, their wealthy donors, and giant corporations.

In April, a dozen congressional Republicans vowed to preserve Medicaid, saying:

“We cannot and will not support a final reconciliation bill that includes any reduction in Medicaid coverage for vulnerable populations.”

They voted for the bill and its cuts to Medicaid anyways. Now, millions of Americans are staring down cuts to their healthcare while six of those congressional Republicans stand to personally benefit from passing the tax scam.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

President Trump’s plan to fuse government power with private surveillance tech to build a centralized, national citizen database is the final step in transforming America from a constitutional republic into a digital dictatorship armed with algorithms and powered by unaccountable, all-seeing artificial intelligence.

This isn’t about national security. It’s about control.

According to news reports, the Trump administration is quietly collaborating with Palantir Technologies—the data-mining behemoth co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel—to construct a centralized, government-wide surveillance system that would consolidate biometric, behavioral, and geolocation data into a single, weaponized database of Americans’ private information.

This isn’t about protecting freedom. It’s about rendering freedom obsolete.

What we’re witnessing is the transformation of America into a digital prison—one where the inmates are told we’re free while every move, every word, every thought is monitored, recorded, and used to assign a “threat score” that determines our place in the new hierarchy of obedience.

The tools enabling this all-seeing surveillance regime are not new, but under Trump’s direction, they are being fused together in unprecedented ways, with Palantir at the center of this digital dragnet.

Palantir, long criticized for its role in powering ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids and predictive policing, is now poised to become the brain of Trump’s surveillance regime.

Under the guise of “data integration” and “public safety,” this public-private partnership would deploy AI-enhanced systems to comb through everything from facial recognition feeds and license plate readers to social media posts and cellphone metadata, cross-referencing it all to assess a person’s risk to the state.

This isn’t speculative. It’s already happening.

Palantir’s Gotham platform, used by law enforcement and military agencies, has long been the backbone of real-time tracking and predictive analysis. Now, with Trump’s backing, it threatens to become the central nervous system of a digitally enforced authoritarianism.

As Palantir itself admits, its mission is to “augment human decision-making.” In practice, that means replacing probable cause with probability scores, courtrooms with code, and due process with data pipelines.

In this new regime, your innocence will be irrelevant. The algorithm will decide who you are.

To understand the full danger of this moment, we must trace the long arc of government surveillance—from secret intelligence programs like COINTELPRO and the USA PATRIOT Act to today’s AI-driven digital dragnet embodied by data fusion centers.

Building on this foundation of historical abuse, the government has evolved its tactics, replacing human informants with algorithms and wiretaps with metadata, ushering in an age where pre-crime prediction is treated as prosecution.

Every smartphone ping, GPS coordinate, facial scan, online purchase, and social media like becomes part of your “digital exhaust”—a breadcrumb trail of metadata that the government now uses to build behavioral profiles. The FBI calls it “open-source intelligence.” But make no mistake: this is dragnet surveillance, and it is fundamentally unconstitutional.

Already, government agencies are mining this data to generate “pattern of life” analyses, flag “radicalized” individuals, and preemptively investigate those who merely share anti-government views.

This is not law enforcement. This is thought-policing by machine, the logical outcome of a system that criminalizes dissent and deputizes algorithms to do the targeting.

Nor is this entirely new.

For decades, the federal government has reportedly maintained a highly classified database known as Main Core, designed to collect and store information on Americans deemed potential threats to national security.

As Tim Shorrock reported for Salon, “One former intelligence official described Main Core as ‘an emergency internal security database system’ designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law.”

Trump’s embrace of Palantir, and its unparalleled ability to fuse surveillance feeds, social media metadata, public records, and AI-driven predictions, marks a dangerous evolution: a modern-day resurrection of Main Core, digitized, centralized, and fully automated.

What was once covert contingency planning is now becoming active policy.

What has emerged is a surveillance model more vast than anything dreamed up by past regimes—a digital panopticon in which every citizen is watched constantly, and every move is logged in a government database—not by humans, but by machines without conscience, without compassion, and without constitutional limits.

This is not science fiction. This is America—now.

As this technological tyranny expands, the foundational safeguards of the Constitution—those supposed bulwarks against arbitrary power—are quietly being nullified and its protections rendered meaningless.

What does the Fourth Amendment mean in a world where your entire life can be searched, sorted, and scored without a warrant? What does the First Amendment mean when expressing dissent gets you flagged as an extremist? What does the presumption of innocence mean when algorithms determine guilt?

The Constitution was written for humans, not for machine rule. It cannot compete with predictive analytics trained to bypass rights, sidestep accountability, and automate tyranny.

And that is the endgame: the automation of authoritarianism. An unblinking, AI-powered surveillance regime that renders due process obsolete and dissent fatal.

Still, it is not too late to resist—but doing so requires awareness, courage, and a willingness to confront the machinery of our own captivity.

Make no mistake: the government is not your friend in this. Neither are the corporations building this digital prison. They thrive on your data, your fear, and your silence.

To resist, we must first understand the weaponized AI tools being used against us.

We must demand transparency, enforce limits on data collection, ban predictive profiling, and dismantle the fusion centers feeding this machine.

We must treat AI surveillance with the same suspicion we once reserved for secret police. Because that is what AI-powered governance has become—secret police, only smarter, faster, and less accountable.

We don’t have much time.

Trump’s alliance with Palantir is a warning sign—not just of where we are, but of where we’re headed. A place where freedom is conditional, rights are revocable, and justice is decided by code.

The question is no longer whether we’re being watched—that is now a given—but whether we will meekly accept it. Will we dismantle this electronic concentration camp, or will we continue building the infrastructure of our own enslavement?

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we trade liberty for convenience and privacy for security, we will find ourselves locked in a prison we helped build, and the bars won’t be made of steel. They will be made of data.