The exchange is one of many moves by the Trump administration to privatize public land and roll back climate and environmental protections. In just six months the White House has announced plans to shrink iconic national monuments, reopened oil and gas leasing, rescinded watershed protections to pave the way for mining, and opened millions of acres of national forest to logging. These decisions have been joined by a broader dismantling of climate and environmental regulations, including efforts to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to curb greenhouse gases. 

Even as he continued upending how the country’s natural resources are managed, President Trump signed an executive order vowing to “Make America Beautiful Again.” His directive, issued July 3, called for balancing environmental stewardship with economic growth, and established a commission to “advise and assist the President regarding how best to responsibly conserve America’s national treasures and natural resources.” It is unclear what policies this commission might develop or how much authority it will hold. 

Benji Backer, a 27-year-old conservative conservationist, hopes to influence some of those details. He has built a national platform around the idea that caring about the environment and climate change is a bipartisan issue. After founding the non-profit American Conservation Coalition, or ACC, eight years ago, Backer launched Nature is Nonpartisan this spring. While ACC was “strictly meant for conservatives, by conservatives,” he sees the new organization transcending partisanship, pursuing environmental action regardless of who holds political power. “If there’s a future for our environment, there has to be a center voice that’s willing to call balls and strikes, and not care about who they could potentially piss off,” he said.

The group’s board includes notable conservative figures like David Bernhardt, a lawyer who served as interior secretary during the first Trump administration and was investigated for failing to recuse himself from decisions affecting Halliburton, a former client. He now consults for oil and gas firms. Other advisors include Chris LaCivita Jr., a political consultant and son of the president’s 2024 campaign manager, as well as more centrist figures like Van Jones and David Livingston. 

Shortly after the president took office Backer delivered a draft order to the White House containing a list of policy goals he’d developed in consultation with groups like Ducks Unlimited and the National Wildlife Federation. These included goals like restoring forests and combating plastic pollution. Though the final order, announced at the Iowa State Fair, does not explicitly mention climate change, Backer says it helps the EPA administrator and Interior Secretary “move in the right direction.” Based on his conversations with them, Backer says, “They’ve been focused on cutting. It’s my hope that they start building soon.”

Though the Trump administration’s revisions substantially altered the order, Backer was quick to celebrate it. “Working with the White House on this EO for the past six months has been an honor,” he posted on X shortly after Trump signed the document. “This is an incredible step that will leave a positive mark for our environment for generations!”

Backer’s optimistic tone marks a shift from a letter he co-signed with nine other Republican leaders in December, stating that Trump’s win “raises serious questions about both the durability of recent climate gains and the prospects for future progress.” At that time, the coalition statement focused on the election of climate-engaged Republicans like Reps. John Curtis and Marianette Miller-Meeks, both members of the Conservative Climate Caucus. Like many liberal organizations preparing for a Trump administration, the letter also discussed shifting focus to state and local climate action. 

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Lobbying efforts by the American Conservation Coalition and its advocacy arm have met mixed success with the Trump administration. They appear to have spent $2.65 million trying to preserve key parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, particularly clean energy tax credits. “The tax credits empower the private sector to invest in clean, reliable energy,” Danielle Franz, ACC’s chief executive officer, told Grist, “It’s important to use our resources to reward innovation, and to have those free market or market-based incentives.” She added that the document Grist obtained that outlines the lobbying effort was a “leaked, outdated draft that was never finalized or published,” and “appears to conflate” ACC and its advocacy group’s work.” Those efforts ultimately failed: The reconciliation bill made significant cuts to clean energy policy, effectively halting federal incentives for wind, solar, and other renewable energy projects. The bill did retain some support for nuclear and geothermal power. Franz declined to criticize the decision or discuss specific energy policies, saying “in any bill you’re going to have give and take.” 

The budget bill debate also demonstrated how effective conservative voices can be in shaping environmental policy. When Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee proposed requiring the sale of millions of acres of federal land, it sparked swift and broad backlash, including from hunters, anglers, and right-leaning influencers like Joe Rogan. After widespread conservative criticism, Lee scaled back the bill, then withdrew it — underscoring the significant influence GOP conservation groups like ACC can have in determining environmental policy. 

It was, Backer says, “a perfect example of what is possible. It basically just allowed us to go out there and show that millions of Americans are willing to stand together for the same environmental outcome.” He hopes to build on that momentum with practical goals: Nature Is Nonpartisan is developing a short list of priorities he believes are politically feasible, including providing more funding for easing water pollution, reforming the Endangered Species Act, and tackling the backlog of maintenance in the nation’s 63 National Parks. (His list made no mention of climate change.) To garner support, Backer recently organized a coalition meeting of conservation groups, including right-leaning organizations like American Forests and Safari Club International, as well as more liberal conservation groups like The Nature Conservancy. 

It’s part of a broader effort to tap into what he and others see as a growing awareness among conservatives. As Franz puts it, if you asked most conservatives if “climate change is real, they would say yes.” She points out conservation has deep roots in the Republican party, from Teddy Roosevelt championing the creation of national parks to Ronald Reagan approving the Montreal Protocol to address the ozone hole. 

Public opinion has shifted sharply since then, however. According to a 2024 Gallup poll, only 11 percent of Republicans consider climate change a great personal threat, down from 29 percent a decade ago. A Pew Research Center survey reveals that while a majority of Republicans support concrete policies like expanding solar farms and joining international climate agreements, only 12 percent say climate change should be a top national priority — underscoring how political polarization shapes broader attitudes. Though there may be pragmatic support for specific policies, Republicans still consistently prioritize consumer costs, and fossil fuels over renewable energy. “Most conservatives understand the issue,” Franz says. “They’re just tired of the moralism and want solutions aligned with their values.”

In the past, ACC has advocated for streamlining permitting and boosting nuclear energy, promoting an “all‑of‑the‑above” strategy that includes renewables. Franz says ACC is happy with Trump’s “energy abundance” strategy, arguing that traditional energy produced in the United States has “a net reduction for global emissions” because “American-made fossil fuels are cleaner than some other countries.” 

The data tell a different story. The International Energy Agency has been unequivocal: To stay within global climate goals, no new fossil fuel development can move forward. Studies show U.S. methane emissions are severely undercounted, especially from shale gas fields, and claims of American fossil fuels being cleaner obscure the urgent need to shift away from them altogether. “Look, I’m not here to defend what Trump’s done on the environment over the last six months,” Backer said. “This is not a black or white thing. This is a four year administration, and we’re trying to shift them in the direction towards conservation as much as we possibly can.” 

But hoping for a gradual course correction is at odds with the urgency of the crisis and the need for swift action, said Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who led the EPA under President George W. Bush. She is upset by the Trump administration’s dismantling of that agency, saying the president “has no respect for science.”

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In the absence of climate leadership from Washington, Whitman said states will have to step up with their own agreements, like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a coalition of 11 eastern states that aims to limit and reduce  emissions from the power sector. Although each of those states is currently led by a Democrat, several of them have had Republican governors since the coalition’s inception in 2005. “There are Republicans that really care about the environment and are doing work,” Whitman said. But while she agrees bipartisan advocacy is essential, she says there’s a clear disconnect between the rhetoric in Make America Beautiful Again and the administration’s policies. “You’ve got to watch what they’re doing, not just what they’re saying,” she added. The gap, she said, “is pretty stark.”

Still, Franz is optimistic about building conservative consensus around a sustainable future. “Our message to conservatives is that this country is worth protecting,” she says. 

In its first six months, the Trump administration has aggressively expanded oil and gas leasing, rolled back critical environmental regulations, and weakened methane emissions, reversing previous conservation protections and U.S. progress on global climate commitments. Asked about these policies, Franz said, “I think oftentimes these pieces want to relitigate and relitigate and relitigate the past, instead of talking about the future that conservatives see.”

Franz and Backer see themselves as guardians of a tradition that protects a natural heritage alongside economic freedom. They don’t see a gulf between a livable future and the reality unfolding in Washington — a White House that praises abundance while leasing away the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; an administration that talks about stewardship while gutting the laws that made it possible. 

Franz recently became a parent, an experience that’s deepened her commitment to her work. She wants her four-month-old son to grow up seeing the north woods of Minnesota the way she did — deer tracks in the snow, the bite of a November wind, the smell of rifle oil. Franz talks about caring about outcomes, not performative belief tests, how conservatives are tired of virtue signaling, and focusing on solutions. She doesn’t see a tension between supporting oil and gas and promoting conservation at the same time. “It assumes a binary choice between use and between care, and I think that we can do both.”

Whether that’s true is no longer just an ideological debate. It’s a matter of time. As Franz says, “It’s not really a question of, ‘Do you believe in climate change?” anymore. It’s more a question of, ‘What do you want to do about it?’

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Can protecting nature be nonpartisan? on Aug 1, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lois Parshley.

A torrent of water rushes underneath, gray and angry. Wind whips. Thunder rumbles in the distance. Clouds threaten rain. And before you is a bridge.

But it is not just any bridge. It spans from one rocky cliff to the other, and it is strung together by rope and twine, bound and rebound for generations. Eternity. 

This is Q’eswachaka. The last Incan Bridge. It stands over 12,000 feet above sea level and spans 30 meters over the Apurimac River down in a majestic canyon never found by the Spanish.

It was once an important passage along the Qhapaq Ñan, a network of roads stretching more than 2,000 kilometers across the Incan empire, from present day Colombia all the way down to Chile and Argentina.

The bridge has lasted here for more than six centuries. But that is only possible because it is rebuilt every year. 

In early June, the residents of four Quechua communities hold a three-day-long festival, where they rebuild the bridge from scratch. First, they cut down the old one and let it drop into the water below. Then the women beat and work the straw they have brought from the highlands. They begin to weave it. Transform it into the fibers and the rope for the new bridge. The men build the rope flooring and the railings. Slowly, the bridge is built anew.

This is not just a task to be done, but an ancestral ceremony with song and dance, ritual. An ancient art passed down from generation to generation. Their own offering to Pachamama, Madre Tierra—Mother Earth.

The communal building of bridges like this was once cherished and embraced, and carried out by communities across the Incan Empire. But this, they say, is the last. And these communities are holding on, like the very bridge itself.

More than a river crossing, and a connection between two roads, this is a symbol of the community’s connection to their past, to their ancestors, to their culture, their traditions, to the next generations, to the land… and to Mother Earth.

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. 

The Q’eswachaka festival is happening right now in the Peruvian mountains south of Cuzco. 

It was an honor to visit the location earlier this year. 

You can check out some exclusive pictures and drone footage that I shot on my Patreon. That’s patreon.com/mfox. There you can also follow my reporting and support my work and this podcast.

This is Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

Q’eswachaka is the last Incan rope bridge. It’s located down in a valley in the Andes mountains of Peru. And in early June, the residents of four Quechua communities hold a three-day-long festival, where they rebuild the bridge from scratch.

This is not just a task to be done, but an ancestral ceremony. A means of holding on to their traditions and the story—resisting modernity and the passage of time, by preserving this piece of their history and their culture.

The bridge itself is a symbol of the community’s connection to their past, to their ancestors, to the next generations, to the land… and to Mother Earth.

This is episode 48 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.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

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

To see exclusive pictures and video of the last Incan rope bridge, you can visit Michael Fox’s Patreon: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also follow his reporting and support his work and this podcast.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

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

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

It started with a call. A man identifying himself as a federal immigration agent contacted a Venezuelan father in San Antonio, interrogating him about his teenage son. The agent said officials planned to visit the family’s apartment to assess the boy’s living conditions.

Later that day, federal agents descended on his complex and covered the door’s peephole with black tape, the father recalled. Agents repeatedly yelled the father’s and son’s names, demanded they open the door and waited hours before leaving, according to the family. Terrified, the father, 37, texted an immigration attorney, who warned that the visit could be a pretext for deportation. The agents returned the next two days, causing the father such alarm that he skipped work at a mechanic shop. His son stayed home from school.

Department of Homeland Security agents have carried out dozens of such visits across the country in recent months as part of a systematic search for children who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border by themselves, and the sponsors who care for them while they pursue their immigration cases. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is responsible for the children’s care and for screening their sponsors, has assisted in the checks.

The agency’s welfare mission appears to be undergoing a stark transformation as President Donald Trump seeks to ramp up deportation numbers in his second term, a dozen current and former government officials told ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. They say that one of the clearest indications of that shift is the scale of the checks that immigration agents are conducting using information provided by the resettlement agency to target sponsors and children for deportation.

Trump officials maintain that the administration is ensuring children are not abused or trafficked. But current and former agency employees, immigration lawyers and child advocates say the resettlement agency is drifting from its humanitarian mandate. Just last week, the Trump administration fired the agency’s ombudsman, who had been hired by Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration to act as its first watchdog.

“Congress set up a system to protect migrant children, in part by giving them to an agency that isn’t part of immigration enforcement,” said Scott Shuchart, a former official with Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump’s first term and later under Biden. The Trump administration, Shuchart said, is “trying to use that protective arrangement as a bludgeon to hurt the kids and the adults who are willing to step forward to take care of them.”

Republicans have called out ORR in the past, pointing to instances of children working in dangerous jobs as examples of the agency’s lax oversight. Lawyers, advocates and agency officials say cases of abuse are rare and should be rooted out. They argue that the administration’s recent changes are immigration enforcement tools that could make children and their sponsors more susceptible to harmful living and working conditions because they fear deportation.

Project 2025, a right-wing blueprint to reshape the federal government, called for moving the resettlement agency under the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, arguing that keeping the agencies separate has led to more unaccompanied minors entering the country illegally. Although Trump publicly distanced himself from the overall plan during his reelection campaign, many of his actions have aligned with its proposals.

During Trump’s first term, he required ORR to share some information about the children and their sponsors, who are usually relatives. That led to the arrests of at least 170 sponsors in the country illegally and spurred pushback from lawmakers and advocates who said the agency shouldn’t be used to aid deportation. Immediately after starting his second term in January, Trump issued an executive order calling for more information sharing between the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the resettlement agency, and Homeland Security. Now, current and former employees of the resettlement agency say that some immigration enforcement officials have been given unfettered access to its databases, which contain sensitive and detailed case information.

Data sharing for “the sole purpose of immigration enforcement imperils the privacy and security” of children and their sponsors, Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, wrote in a February letter to the Trump administration. In a March response to Wyden, Andrew Gradison, an acting assistant secretary at HHS, said the resettlement agency is complying with the president’s executive order and sharing information with other federal agencies to ensure immigrant children are safe. Wyden told the news organizations that he plans to continue pressing for answers. On Tuesday, he sent another letter to the administration, stating that he is “increasingly concerned” that ORR is sharing private information “beyond the scope” of what is allowed and “exposing already vulnerable children to further risks.”

Two advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit last week in Washington, arguing that the Trump administration unlawfully reversed key provisions of a 2024 Biden rule. Those provisions had barred ORR from using immigration status to deny sponsors the ability to care for children. They also had previously prohibited the agency from sharing sponsor information for the purpose of immigration enforcement. Undoing the provisions has led to the prolonged detention of children because sponsors are afraid or can’t claim them because they are unable to meet requirements, the lawsuit alleges. The government has not responded to the lawsuit in court.

In conjunction with those changes, Trump tapped an ICE official to lead ORR for the first time. That official was fired two months into her job because she failed to implement the administration’s changes “fast enough,” her successor for the position, Angie Salazar, an ICE veteran, said in a March 6 recording obtained by ProPublica and the Tribune.

“Some of these policy changes took too long. Three weeks is too long,” Salazar told staff without providing specifics. Salazar said that she would ramp up an effort to check on immigrant children and strengthen screenings of their sponsors.

She told staff that, in nearly two weeks, ICE investigators had visited 1,500 residences of unaccompanied minors. Agents had uncovered a handful of instances of what she said were cases of sex and labor trafficking. Salazar did not provide details but said identifying even one case of abuse is significant.

“Those are my marching orders,” Salazar told staffers. “While I will never do something outside the law for anybody or anything, and while we are operating within the law, we will expect all of you to do so and be supportive of that.”

Salazar said she expected an increase in the number of children taken from their sponsors and placed back into federal custody, which in the past has been rare.

Since Salazar took charge, ORR has instituted a raft of strict vetting rules for sponsors of immigrant children that the agency argues are needed to ensure sponsors are properly screened. Those include no longer accepting foreign passports or IDs as forms of identification unless people have legal authorization to be in the U.S. The resettlement agency also expanded DNA checks of relatives and increased income requirements, including making sponsors submit recent pay stubs or tax returns. (The IRS recently announced that it would share tax information with ICE to facilitate deportations.)

ORR said in a statement that it could not respond to ongoing litigation and did not answer detailed questions about Salazar’s comments or about the reasoning for some of the new requirements. Its policies are intended to ensure safe placement of unaccompanied minors, and the agency is “not a law enforcement or immigration enforcement entity,” the statement read.

Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesperson, also declined to comment on pending lawsuits. But he criticized how the agency within his department was run under Biden, saying it failed to protect unaccompanied children after they were released to sponsors while turning “a blind eye to serious risks.” Jen Smyers, a former ORR deputy director, disputed those claims, saying the Biden administration made strides to address longstanding concerns that included creating a unit to combat sponsor fraud and improving data systems to better track kids.

Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS assistant secretary, did not respond to detailed questions but said in a statement that her agency shares the goal of ensuring that unaccompanied minors are safe. She did not answer questions about the Venezuelan family in San Antonio. She also declined to provide the number of homes the agents have visited across the country or say whether they found cases of abuse or detained anyone for the purpose of deportation.

An April email obtained by ProPublica and the Tribune shows for the first time the scale of the operation in the Houston area alone, which over the past decade has resettled the largest number of unaccompanied immigrant children in the country. In the email, an ICE official informed the Harris County Sheriff’s Office that the agency planned to visit more than 3,600 addresses associated with such minors. The sheriff’s office did not assist in the checks, a spokesperson said.

An internal ICE memo obtained last month through a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Immigration Project, a Washington-based advocacy group, instructed agents to find unaccompanied children and their sponsors. The document laid out a series of factors that federal agents should prioritize when seeking out children, including those who have not attended court hearings, may have gang ties or have pending deportation orders. The memo detailed crimes, such as smuggling, for which sponsors could be charged.

In the case of the San Antonio family, the father has temporary protected status, a U.S. permit for certain people facing danger at home that allows him to live and work here legally. The news organizations could not find a criminal record for him in the U.S. His son is still awaiting an immigration court hearing since crossing the U.S.-Mexico border alone a year ago. The father stated in his U.S. asylum application that he left Venezuela after receiving death threats for protesting against President Nicolás Maduro’s government. The father, who declined to be identified because he fears ICE enforcement, said in an interview that his son later fled for the same reason.

Meanwhile, the avenues for families, like that of the Venezuelan man and his son, to raise concerns about ORR’s conduct are shrinking. The Trump administration reduced staff at the agency’s ombudsman’s office. Mary Giovagnoli, who led the office, was terminated last week. An HHS official said the agency does not comment on personnel matters, but in a letter to Giovagnoli, the agency stated that her employment “does not advance the public interest.” Giovagnoli said the cuts curtail the office’s ability to act as a watchdog to ensure the resettlement agency is meeting its congressionally established mission.

“There’s no effective oversight,” she said. “There is this encroachment on ORR’s independence, and I think this close relationship with ICE makes everyone afraid that there’s going to come a point in time where you don’t know where one agency stops and the next begins.”

Doris Burke contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Lomi Kriel, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, and Mica Rosenberg, ProPublica.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

Just one year ago, JD Vance was a leading advocate of the Great Lakes and the efforts to restore the largest system of freshwater on the face of the planet.

As a U.S. senator from Ohio, Vance called the lakes “an invaluable asset” for his home state. He supported more funding for a program that delivers “the tools we need to fight invasive species, algal blooms, pollution, and other threats to the ecosystem” so that the Great Lakes would be protected “for generations to come.”

But times have changed.

This spring, Vance is vice president, and President Donald Trump’s administration is imposing deep cuts and new restrictions, upending the very restoration efforts that Vance once championed. With the peak summer season just around the corner, Great Lakes scientists are concerned that they have lost the ability to protect the public from toxic algal blooms, which can kill animals and sicken people.

Cutbacks have gutted the staff at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Severe spending limits have made it difficult to purchase ordinary equipment for processing samples, such as filters and containers. Remaining staff plans to launch large data-collecting buoys into the water this week, but it’s late for a field season that typically runs from April to October.

In addition to a delayed launch, problems with personnel, supplies, vessel support and real-time data sharing have created doubts about the team’s ability to operate the buoys, said Gregory Dick, director of the NOAA cooperative institute at the University of Michigan that partners with the lab. Both the lab and institute operate out of a building in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that was custom built as NOAA’s hub in the Great Lakes region, and both provide staff to the algal blooms team.

“This has massive impacts on coastal communities,” Dick said.

Multiple people who have worked with the lab also told ProPublica that there are serious gaps in this year’s monitoring of algal blooms, which are often caused by excess nutrient runoff from farms. Data generated by the lab’s boats and buoys, and publicly shared, could be limited or interrupted, they said.

That data has helped to successfully avoid a repeat of a 2014 crisis in Toledo, Ohio, when nearly half a million people were warned to not drink the water or even touch it.

If the streams of information are cut off, “stakeholders will be very unhappy,” said Bret Collier, a branch chief at the lab who oversaw the federal scientists that run the harmful algal bloom program for the Great Lakes. He was fired in the purge of federal probationary workers in February.

The lab has lost about 35% of its 52-member workforce since February, according to the president of the lab’s union, and it was not allowed to fill several open positions. The White House released preliminary budget recommendations last week that would make significant cuts to NOAA. The budget didn’t provide details, but indicated the termination of “a variety of climate-dominated research, data, and grant programs, which are not aligned with Administration policy” of ending “‘Green New Deal’ initiatives.”

An earlier document obtained by ProPublica and reported widely proposed a 74% funding cut to NOAA’s research office, home of the Great Lakes lab.

Vance’s office didn’t respond to questions from ProPublica about how federal cuts have affected Great Lakes research. The White House also didn’t respond to messages.

Municipal water leaders in Cleveland and Toledo have written public letters of support on behalf of the lab, advocating for the continuation of its work because of how important its tools and resources are for drinking water management.

In a statement to ProPublica, staffers from Toledo’s water system credited the Great Lakes lab and NOAA for alerting it to potential blooms near its intake days ahead of time. This has saved the system significant costs, they said, and helped it avoid feeding excess chemicals into the water.

“The likelihood of another 2014 ‘don’t drink the water’ advisory has been minimized to almost nothing by additional vigilance” from both the lab and local officials, they said.

Remaining staff have had to contend with not only a lack of capacity but also tight limits on spending and travel.

Several people who have worked in or with the lab said that the staff was hampered by strict credit card limits imposed on government employees as part of the effort to reduce spending by the Department of Government Efficiency, which has been spearheaded by presidential adviser Elon Musk.

“The basic scientific supplies that we use to provide the local communities with information on algal bloom toxicity — our purchasing of them is being restricted based on the limitations currently being put in by the administration,” Collier said.

NOAA and the Department of Commerce, which oversees the agency, didn’t respond to messages from ProPublica. Neither did a DOGE official. Eight U.S. senators, including the minority leader, sent a letter in March to a top NOAA leader inquiring about many of the changes, but they never received a response.

The department described its approach to some of its cuts when it eliminated nearly $4 million in funding for the NOAA cooperative institute at Princeton University and emphasized the importance of avoiding wasteful government spending. ProPublica has reported on how the loss of research grants at Princeton and the more significant defunding of the NOAA lab it works with would be a serious setback for weather and climate preparedness.

A number of the staffing losses at the Great Lakes lab came when employees accepted offers of early retirement or voluntary separation; others were fired probationary workers targeted by DOGE across the government. That includes Collier, who had 24 years of professional experience, largely as a research professor, before he was hired last year into a position that, according to the lab’s former director, had been difficult to fill.

A scientist specializing in the toxic algal blooms was also fired. She worked on the team for 14 years through the cooperative institute before accepting a federal position last year, which made her probationary, too.

A computer scientist who got real-time data onto the lab’s website — and the only person who knew how to push out the weekly sampling data on harmful algal blooms — was also fired. She was probationary because she too was hired for a federal position after working with the institute.

And because of a planned retirement, no one holds the permanent position of lab director, though there is an acting director. The lab isn’t allowed to fill any positions due to a federal hiring freeze.

At the same time, expected funds for the lab's cooperative institute are delayed, which means, Dick said, it may soon lay off staff, including people on the algal blooms team.

In March, Cleveland’s water commissioner wrote a letter calling for continued support for the Great Lakes lab and other NOAA-funded operations in the region, saying that access to real-time forecasts for Lake Erie are “critically important in making water treatment decisions” for more than 1.3 million citizens.

In 2006, there was a major outbreak of hypoxia, an issue worsened by algal blooms where oxygen-depleted water can become corrosive, discolored and full of excess manganese, which is a neurotoxin at high levels. Cleveland Water collaborated with the lab on developing a “groundbreaking” hypoxia forecast model, said Scott Moegling, who worked for both the Cleveland utility and Ohio’s drinking water regulatory agency.

“I knew which plants were going to get hit,” Moegling said. “I knew about when, and I knew what the treatment we would need would be, and we could staff accordingly.”

The American Meteorological Society, in partnership with the National Weather Association, spotlighted this warning system in its statement in support of NOAA research, saying that it helps “keep drinking water potable in the Great Lakes region.”

Collier, the former branch chief, said that quality data may be lacking this year, not just for drinking water suppliers, but also the U.S. Coast Guard, fisheries, shipping companies, recreational businesses and shoreline communities that rely on it to navigate risk. In response to a recent survey of stakeholders, the president of a trade organization serving Great Lakes cargo vessels said that access to NOAA’s real-time data “is critically important to the commercial shipping fleet when making navigation decisions.”

Because federal law requires NOAA to monitor harmful algal blooms, the cuts may run against legal obligations, several current and former workers told ProPublica. The blooms program was “federally mandated to be active every single day, without exception,” Collier said.

The 2024 bloom in Lake Erie was the earliest on record. At its peak, it covered 550 square miles. Warming temperatures worsen the size and frequency of algal blooms. While the field season was historically only about 90 days, Collier said, last year the team was deployed for 211 days.

As the shallowest of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie is typically first to show signs of problems. But it’s also an emblem of environmental stewardship, thanks to its striking recovery from unchecked industrial pollution. The lake was once popularly declared “dead.” A highly publicized fire inflamed a river that feeds into it. Even Dr. Seuss knocked it in the 1971 version of “The Lorax.” The book described fish leaving a polluted pond “in search of some water that isn’t so smeary. I hear things are just as bad up in Lake Erie.”

But the rise of agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and NOAA, and labs like the one protecting the Great Lakes, along with legislation that protected water from pollution, led to noticeable changes. By 1986, two Ohio graduate students had succeeded in persuading Theodor Geisel, the author behind Dr. Seuss, to revise future editions of his classic book.

“I should no longer be saying bad things about a body of water that is now, due to great civic and scientific effort, the happy home of smiling fish,” Geisel wrote to them.

Early this year, headlines out of the Midwest suggested that “Vance could be a game-changing Great Lakes advocate” and that he might “save the Great Lakes from Trump.”

A 2023 report to Congress about the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a popular funding mechanism for projects that protect the lakes, including the research lab’s, described the lab’s work on harmful algal blooms as one of its “success stories.” Last year, with Vance as a co-sponsor, an act to extend support for the funding program passed the Senate, but stalled in the House. Another bipartisan effort to reauthorize it launched in January.

Project 2025, the plan produced by the Heritage Foundation for Trump’s second term, recommended that the president consider whether NOAA “should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.”

NOAA is “a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry,” the plan said, and this industry’s mission “seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable.”

“That is not to say NOAA is useless,” it added, “but its current organization corrupts its useful functions. It should be broken up and downsized.”

When asked at his confirmation hearing in January if he agreed with Project 2025’s recommendation of dismantling NOAA, Howard Lutnick, head of the commerce department, said no.

One month later, the Great Lakes lab’s probationary staff got termination notices. That includes Nicole Rice, who spent a decade with NOAA. A promotion made her communications job vulnerable to the widespread firings of federal probationary workers.

In recent testimony to a Michigan Senate committee, Rice expressed deep concern about the future of the Great Lakes.

“It has taken over a century of bipartisan cooperation, investment and science to bring the Great Lakes back from the brink of ecological collapse,” Rice said. “But these reckless cuts could undo the progress in just a few short years, endangering the largest surface freshwater system in the world.”

Vernal Coleman contributed reporting.

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

The Trump administration has issued a new executive order opening up vast swathes of protected ocean to commercial exploitation, including areas within the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument.

It allows commercial fishing in areas long considered off-limits due to their ecological significance — despite overwhelming scientific consensus that marine sanctuaries are essential for rebuilding fish stocks and maintaining ocean health.

These actions threaten some of the most sensitive and pristine marine ecosystems in the world.

• READ MORE: Other President Trump executive order reports

Condeming the announcement, Greenpeace USA project lead on ocean sanctuaries Arlo Hemphill said: “Opening the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument to commercial fishing puts one of the most pristine ocean ecosystems on the planet at risk.

“Almost 90 percent of global marine fish stocks are fully exploited or overfished. The few places in the world ocean set aside as large, fully protected ocean sanctuaries serve as ‘fish banks’, allowing fish populations to recover, while protecting the habitats in which they thrive.

“President Bush and President Obama had the foresight to protect the natural resources of the Pacific for future generations, and Greenpeace USA condemns the actions of President Trump today to reverse that progress.”

President Trump signs executive order on Pacific fisheries     Video: Hawai’i News Now

Slashed jobs at NOAA
A second executive order calls for deregulation of America’s fisheries under the guise of boosting seafood production.

Greenpeace USA oceans campaign director John Hocevar said: “If President Trump wants to increase US fisheries production and stabilise seafood markets, deregulation will have the opposite effect.

“Meanwhile, the Trump administration has already slashed jobs at NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] and is threatening to dismantle the agency responsible for providing the science that makes management of US fisheries possible.”

“Trump’s executive order on fishing could set the world back by decades, undoing all the progress that has been made to end overfishing and rebuild fish stocks and America’s fisheries.

“While there is far too little attention to bycatch and habitat destruction, NOAA’s record of fisheries management has made the US a world leader.

“Trump seems ready to throw that out the window with all the care of a toddler tossing his toys out of the crib.”

‘Slap in face to science’
Hawai’i News Now reports that a delegation from American Samoa, where the economy is dependent on fishing, had been lobbying the president for the change and joined him in the Oval Office for the signing.

Environmental groups are alarmed.

“Trump right here is giving a gift to the industrial fishing fleets. It’s a slap in the face to science,” said Maxx Phillips, an attorney for the Centre for Biological Diversity.

“To the ocean, to the generations of Pacific Islanders who fought long and hard to protect these sacred waters.”

Republished from Greenpeace USA with additional reporting by Hawai’i News Now.

The executive orders, announced on April 17, 2025, are detailed here:

• Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness
• Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Unleashes American Commercial Fishing in the Pacific

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Oh, my gosh. It happens a lot of different ways. Often, I think of it like a pearl. It starts with a little grain of sand, and then you have to just let it turn around a bunch… Or maybe it’s like a snowball.

Sometimes it’ll happen that I’ll have a tiny little phrase that’ll bumble around my head, possibly for years. Possibly it’ll just be that day, and I’ll feel the need to just get the song out.

But, yeah, it’ll just start with this little pearl. That’s when you do the traditional thing of waiting for inspiration to strike. However, I also have my little tricks to jumpstart the creative process, because sometimes you’re either not feeling jazzed about an idea that you’ve had, or you just feel like there’s nothing there. I have my little songwriting tricks that I do, and I teach that method as well.

What are some of those tricks?

The method that I teach, that I came up with over the last eight years or so, is basically a variation of morning pages or sense-based writing.

This songwriting teacher, Pat Pattison, he teaches this method where you write for 10 minutes straight, in prose. You don’t have to make it rhyme, you don’t have to put it in neat verse–it’s almost like word vomit. But staying in your five senses, you start with a little prompt. I’ll tell people, “Okay. Wallpaper.” Or, “Mountain,” or something like that, and whatever comes to them, staying in their five senses, they’ll just write and write and write and write.

Then we will go through what they wrote and see if there is any cool image nugget. I mean, because we’re staying in our senses, there’s going to be a lot of images generated. I ask myself, “Is there a particular image that really struck you?”

Then I’ll use that as a little kernel, a little grain of sand. Sometimes that will actually bridge to another idea, so you won’t use the original thing in your sense-based free writing. But it’s just like you have to trick your brain into writing a song.

You sing about some deeply personal things sometimes. Do you feel that songwriting and performing helps you process certain parts of your life? Or do you find putting it to song is a way of honouring pieces of your life in an intentional way? Maybe it’s both–or more than that?

Both. It can be incredibly therapeutic and that’s, I think, how a lot of people–if not most people–come to songwriting, if not all art expression. It’s a self-soothing, self-therapeutic method.

I used to be this avid journal writer. I’d start to feel really agitated if I wasn’t journaling for hours a day. Now I find that the songwriting process satisfies something similar in me.

But that’s just some songs, the particularly deep personal stuff. To give an example: I wrote a song called “The Great Unknown” about my mother-in-law who did assisted-death in Belgium. That was absolutely the only way I knew how to make sense of this bewildering, harrowing, beautiful experience that I’d been a bystander of, just supporting my husband, supporting my mother-in-law. But also honouring how much I loved her. So, that was that for me.

Sometimes I know it’s worked, the expression, the catharsis has happened, because I’ll cry almost to the point of dehydration. I’m like, “Oh, cool. Must have hit a rich vein on that one!”

That’s one of those songwriting experiences that was absolutely therapeutic, if not necessary. I wouldn’t have known how to process and internalize that experience without having gone to songwriting in order to do that.

Your music also tells other vivid stories that are apart from your personal experience. What draws you to storytelling, particularly in songwriting, and where did those narratives come from?

Yeah. I remember somebody said to me, “Oh, I love your songs, but I feel so bad for you!” I said, “Why?!” They said, “Well, all these bad things have happened to you.” I was like, “Well, they didn’t happen to me! I just have a vivid imagination.”

There’s a song in particular that maybe they meant–it’s called “I Had to Be Right.” I put it on a record maybe 10 years ago. I take on characters in order to write songs. It means that I’ve just got so much more material to work with than my own personal experience. My own personal experience is always embedded in the songs to give them their authenticity.

Why is narrative so important? I think that’s the songs that I grew up on. Stan Rogers has always been a really big influence on me. That’s how I discovered the ballad tradition.

I love a good story. It’s often a tendency of mine to write a very narrative story with vivid characters that have whole lives. I could write a novel about a song, about the world that I create within a song, if you gave me the time to do it.

You grew up on Bowen Island, a small island off the west coast of Canada. Now you’ve made your home in a village in Scotland. How have you found your upbringing, or the places you’ve lived, have shaped your sound and stories?

It’s interesting because I’ve always gravitated toward folk and Americana music, again because that was the music that I was raised with. But I’m hopelessly nostalgic. Even though I know that the past was a bad place to be–especially for women or anyone who’s not white and male and able-bodied–yet I really, really romanticize it.

Growing up on Bowen, it was pretty easy to do that. Even in the 90s. I started hitchhiking at age 11, and everyone who owned a horse on the island, I had their phone number. I would call them up at random and say, “Can I ride your horse?” They would let me. I had an incredible amount of freedom and beautifully few distractions. I got my first cell phone when I was 16. I’m so glad that I didn’t grow up with social media and iPhones and stuff like that. I was just reading. We didn’t even have television. We had VHS, and we’d rent movies at Bowen Village Video once a week. It was great because their selection was weird, hippie stuff. I discovered some really cool films that way.

Anyway, growing up on Bowen, how did that influence me? I mean, I was allowed to live in my imagination all the time. I had so much room, so much freedom. The outdoors were just at my fingertips at all times. I guess I started with a vivid imagination, and then Bowen just was a perfect place to have that. Yeah.

Do you find now, have you been able to carry that with you? Or do you have to work harder with the distractions to get yourself back to that place?

Oh, yeah. Definitely. Now that I’m an adult, and I have responsibilities, I have a hard time getting back into my creative process. It’s a lot easier when there are fewer distractions, and when I’ve set out an intention to do that, or if I’m around other people who are creating.

Yeah, I mean, living here [Moniaive, a small village in Scotland]–part of the beauty of why we live here, is that there are few distractions. There’re a lot of creative folks about, and the quality of life is really high compared to the cost of it. It’s an excellent place to be an artist. It’s very similar to Bowen. It’s a bit feral, the way that Bowen was a bit feral, and it feels very familiar.

When you find yourself coming up against creative blocks, have you found a way to push through them or have you noticed ways that you have found your way through them?

I just don’t push through them, I just trust that there’s going to be a time.

I’ve never been a prolific songwriter, and I’ve met many songwriters who are prolific. They write all the time, but the quality is… I haven’t seen it particularly good.

You can’t be on all the time. I think I used to be really stressed out about that, when I’d have a dry spell. And now I realize that so long as I feel really proud of what I make, I’d rather have quality rather than quantity. That’s probably counterintuitive to this content-generating culture that we have right now.

I lost my love of live performance and music for a number of years, and it was through that, forcing it, that I just burnt out. I was forcing myself to go on tour, I was forcing myself into a bunch of situations that were uncomfortable and incredibly difficult–just financially, interpersonally–and I hated being a musician. I just wanted to give up.

I remember a long time ago, I would meet musicians like that. I could tell that they were disgruntled. I was like, “No one makes you be a musician. Just get off the road, just do something else.”

I had to take my own advice, and so I did. I got off the road for years. COVID helped with that, because it looked like I was taking a break, like everybody else. But the reality is, I had been planning to do that for quite some time already.

I do not force it.

That’s definitely a skill to know how to wait and let it come in its own time.

Yeah. It’s so precarious and delicate and precious, I often think, these days. Because we had so much taken away from us. As artists, we are continually giving things up, but with COVID, the rug was pulled out so quickly that now I remind myself of how it is a privilege to be an artist. It’s a privilege to be asked to make art. But the biggest privilege is that you have the ability to do it. I think humans are all just, by nature, very creative, but maybe not in artistic, expressive, passionate ways. Sometimes it can feel like a burden like, “Oh, God. Why can’t I just be happy doing something else, something that would be more stable or maybe make my parents understand me better or something?”

Then it dawned on me, I think in this last tour, in November, I was like, I remember just turning the door of this hotel and just thinking to myself, “I am so privileged to have the ability that I have.” I have to protect that with everything that I do.

So, part of the protection is just being like, “Don’t force it. Don’t ever force it.”

When you said that you took time away, you took time away from performing to study herbal medicine, right?

Yeah, I did.

You’ve talked in the past about how the subtle power of plants drew you down an unexpected path, that of becoming a herbalist. We’d love to hear more about that journey and where it’s taken you.

Oh, my gosh. It’s so cool because I stopped being a musician for years, and I became a herbal medicine student. What I was doing for work was gardening, so I was just dirty all the time. When I wasn’t working with plants, I was foraging and making medicine and learning in such a microscopic way - just staring at plants and reading about them all the time.

That was a perfect antidote to me burning out as a musician, to just do something else. If you’re a passionate person, you’re probably going to have more than one passion. So, why not just follow another path for a little while? For me, it led me back to music.

That was always the idea, that I would hopefully start blending an artistic practice with a herbal medicine practice. That is what has happened. In fact, I wish that I had more herbal medicine in my life. I wish I just had more patients to work with. I’ve just fallen into being a musician again. Because the herbs, and working with the people, it’s so refreshing. It just like, it just wipes this clean slate and it gets me out of that navel-gazing art mode. I have to put on my clinician hat and be there for somebody 100 percent and take things, their health, which is often very complex - it’s a huge responsibility.

So, yeah. I think that, so far, it’s been the best possible thing for my art, to do something else.

What have plants taught you about creativity?

Plants taught me? Oh, my god. That’s such a good question! They teach me about everything all the time. But as far as creativity goes, necessity is the mother of invention–like studying the evolution of plants. I mean the evolution of life on earth, but also the evolution of plants. You’ve got whatever, algae, and then you’ve got these prehistoric trees that were sending out spores and stuff. Then you have angiosperms, which are the seeds. Basically one plant, one day developed a spore that was covered in this hard coating, and suddenly now the most dominant type of plant on this earth are seed-bearing flowering plants, because somebody had a great idea. A plant had a great idea! And it took off like wildfire. Obviously over an incredibly long scale of time.

I think that music, or any type of art, can be like that. Somebody comes along, has a great idea, and it’s genre-defying, it’s era-defying, and it changes the way everybody makes it from then on.

Maybe in the film context, it would be like, I don’t know… Maybe the method actors that were starting to act like they were real people and not theatre on film, and now that’s what we think film should be.

Then other pressures in music are, for instance, musical pieces used to be extremely long, and now we all only write songs that are three minutes or less, because we had to. Because there were these pressures, particularly in radio, and now suddenly that’s what a song is.

The adaptation, the evolutionary adaptation, creative adaptation, they’re the same. But obviously on a shorter timescale for within one human being’s life span.

So, now you’re at a point in your life where you have both music and herbal medicine in your life. How do you find music helps your work as a herbalist, and how do the plants help with your music?

The herbalism, it helps a lot. First of all, it is the same thing: freelance work. I remember when I started to study as a herbalist, one of my teachers said, “You’re going to have a leg up, once you leave herbal medicine school, because you already know about freelance, you already know about self-promotion, and you’re able to ride the ups and downs and the uncertainty.”

There’re a lot of people who I studied with, they were absolutely brilliant. But I wonder if they’re ever going to leave those stable jobs that they had while they were studying, just because it is so tricky. That’s okay. You don’t have to be a full-time herbalist any more than you need to be a full-time musician, even though both of those practices are totally all-consuming.

So, there’s the practical side of things that I’ve seen a lot of overlap. However, in studying a holistic healthcare practice, I have learned to be more professional. I think that I was just freewheeling as a musician quite a bit, and now I think I’m a lot more considered about the way I interact with people out in the world. It has just made me grow up, to be honest. I have to think about other people’s experience a lot more.

Part of the beauty of sitting in front of–we call them patients, you guys would call them clients in Canada, I think–part of the beauty is that you get amazing insight. I’ve got an amazing insight, and I continue to get this amazing insight into human nature. Because just listening to people tell me not only their medical history, but their life history… just to see how they relate to their own bodies, and they relate to other people in their family, and their friends and stuff like that, because that all goes into the treatment plan. So, basically, I think that I’m a lot more compassionate and understanding of people than I’ve ever been.

That helps, that definitely helps, when I come up against, I don’t know, a challenging situation with a promoter, or even just a fan who’s just… Or not a fan, but an audience member who is, I don’t know, who doesn’t get social cues, maybe isn’t so good with boundaries, maybe is crossing mine quite a bit… I’m better at knowing what [my boundaries] are, knowing how to protect them, at the same time as being compassionate. I don’t always nail it, but I am just way better at it than I ever was before.

You’ve talked about how tough the music industry can be and about the challenges that come with being on the road. How do you keep passionate about your passion?

I’ve realized recently that, for me, music is a community-based thing. I need to surround myself with other creative people. I will feed off of their passion and their talents and their abilities, and I’ll just get excited.

I just have to continually place myself and expose myself to other people’s talent. It’s brilliant.

I don’t listen to music. We listen to music because my husband puts it on, but it’s not my natural inclination to put on music, because it’s super distracting. So, when I’m confronted with music in a live setting, it’s like, you can’t peel me away.

I think that I stay passionate by being surrounded by other people who are passionate.

Where do you find the greatest joy in your creative life?

It’s definitely on stage. It’s absolutely on stage. It’s funny because they tell you that there are all sorts of ways that you can make money in music- or “revenue streams,” is what they call it. For me, the only one I’m ever interested in is live performance. That’s the whole reason why I do this.=

I am a performer first and foremost. It took me a long time to call myself a musician or an artist, but it never ever took me a second to feel comfortable with the idea of performer, because I’ve always been a performer.

Getting up on stage and singing into a mic, I transform. I don’t know what it is. It’s just something in me, like this little homunculus inside that’s like, “Okay, time to come out!”

I just feel me on stage, all the time.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Kailey and Sam Spear.

Sure enough, a vapor cloud materialized and ignited, causing three large explosions and a massive fire that sent smoke “pouring into the sky.” Pieces of equipment the size of cars flew through the air, miraculously landing in the Schuylkill River without hitting any homes. The force of the explosions threw workers back, injuring five, but ultimately did not cause any fatalities. Workers remembering the incident years later agreed that it could have been much worse. 

“You figure you ain’t going home,” one former worker told Grist of the moment he saw the fire in Unit 433. “You figure this is it.” 

Shortly after the incident, the company filed for bankruptcy and shut down, leaving around 1,000 workers jobless and without severance pay.

Refineries that use HF are regulated under the EPA’s Risk Management Program, or RMP, a regulation designed to improve chemical accident prevention at large petrochemical facilities — but for reasons that have little to do with knowhow and capacity, RMP regulations have been glaringly ineffective. Indeed, few regulations have been subject to the yo-yo of successive presidential administrations, and their political whims, like the RMP. 

The RMP program was established in 1990 following a series of infamous chemical disasters in the 1980s, most notably the chemical leak at Union Carbide’s plant in Bhopal, India which poisoned roughly 500,000 people, around 20,000 of whom died in the hours and years afterwards due to health complications from the exposure. Another leak at a Union Carbide facility in West Virginia the following year caused eye, throat, and lung irritation for at least 135 residents.

The first iteration of the rule came into effect in 1994, during the Clinton administration, but lacked several important protections such as independent auditing for regulated facilities, public information provisions, and the requirement that companies complete a “safer technology and alternatives analysis” to determine whether there are any safer ways to conduct their operation. A series of chemical disasters in 2013 — including a massive explosion at the West Fertilizer Company in West, Texas that killed 15 people and damaged 350 homes — brought these deficiencies to the attention of regulators. 

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In January 2017, the Obama EPA finalized amendments to the Accidental Release Prevention Requirements of the RMP, which included measures to enhance emergency preparedness requirements and ensure that local emergency response officials and residents had access to information to better prepare for potential chemical disasters. But the provisions never went into full effect: In May 2018, the Trump EPA proposed amendments to remove third-party audits and incident investigations, among other protections. The Trump rule was finalized in December of 2019 — six months before the explosion at the Pennsylvania refinery. 

When Biden took office, in 2021, the EPA began working on a new set of amendments for the RMP rule. Unions like U.S. Steelworkers and advocates at organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists pushed for better public disclosure provisions, the inclusion of more types of facilities in the safer technologies alternatives assessment requirements, and the freedom for workers to stop work that they deem unsafe. 

“Many communities that are vulnerable to chemical accidents are in overburdened and underserved areas of the country,” said former EPA Administrator Michael Regan in a statement announcing the final rule last March. It was slated to go into effect in 2027.

In the past few years, several chemical disasters have disrupted life in the country’s industrial corridors. In August 2023, a large fire at Marathon Petroleum’s refinery in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana in August 2023 burned for seven hours, causing residents to flee for safety. But in the days following the incident, neither the company nor state and federal environmental regulators responded to locals’ questions about what chemicals the air was being tested for. And in 2024, a hydrogen sulfide leak at Pemex’s refinery in Deer Park, Texas several months killed two contract workers and injured 35 others. 

In January, a group of industry trade associations sent Lee Zeldin a letter congratulating him on his appointment to the position of EPA Administrator and asking him to take swift action against the “misguided and illegal new requirements” of Biden’s RMP rule. In their letter, the trade groups argued that the new rule represents an overextension of the EPA’s authority and fails to provide a durable solution to facility safety, though they did not explain how the rule falls short in this regard. They singled out an interactive map that the agency published last year separate from the rulemaking process showing where RMP facilities are located around the country, along with other basic public information such as compliance history and the types of chemicals stored onsite. 

In a statement announcing the EPA’s decision to revisit the RMP rule earlier this month, Zeldin seemed to buy industry’s argument.

“The Biden EPA’s costly Risk Management Plan rule ignored recommendations from national security experts on how their rule makes chemical and other sensitive facilities in America more vulnerable to attack,” Zeldin said. The press release also notes that Biden’s RMP rule makes domestic oil refineries and chemical facilities less competitive. 

“It took years to come to the rule that was finalized last year,” said Darya Minovi, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “To see that rolled back simply because of a letter sent by industry trade associations is really frustrating and shows what little regard this administration has for communities they say they care about.”

Minovi told Grist that the rhetoric about national security is overblown. The public data tool does not contain sensitive information, she said, and when the Department of Homeland Security reviewed the rule last year, they flagged no concerns with the public information disclosure requirements. 

“We’re not happy about it,” the U.S. Steelworkers representative told Grist about the Trump administration’s reconsideration of the RMP rule. As for Zeldin’s concerns about making domestic oil and gas companies competitive, “I think that putting workers and communities at greater risk of catastrophic injuries is not good for the economy.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The EPA wants to roll back a rule that’s essential for protecting you from chemical disasters on Mar 21, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lylla Younes.

Instead, he used his status as a veteran democracy activist to urge Hong Kong's 7 million residents to occupy the Central business district until the authorities let them have proper elections.

Chu, a mild-mannered Baptist minister, joined fellow activists former politics lecturer Chan Kin-man and law professor Benny Tai at a news conference in 2013 to call for a mass, citywide civil disobedience movement to campaign for fully democratic elections, which many feared Beijing would not allow despite promises made during the 1997 handover negotiations.

The following year, the ruling Chinese Communist Party issued a plan on Aug. 31 setting out Beijing's plan for reforms of the electoral system that would give everyone a vote, but would also ensure that only candidates approved by the government would be allowed to run in elections in the first place.

The public backlash amid growing calls for genuine democratic reform took the form of a student strike, camps on major roads, sit-ins, mass rallies of hundreds of thousands of people and an unofficial referendum that came out overwhelmingly in favor of open nominations for electoral candidates.

While the authorities refused to back down, saying there was 'no room' for discussion on the electoral rules, police fired tear gas and beat protesters in clashes that began this week 10 years ago.

To protect themselves, demonstrators used umbrellas, and the “Umbrella Movement” was born.

"The National People's Congress Standing Committee once again interpreted the law and nixed all of the promises they had made in the Basic Law," Chu told Radio Free Asia in a recent interview, referring to clauses in Hong Kong's constitution that provide for steady progress towards full universal suffrage.

Back then, Chu was already 70, and had a long-running track record of campaigning for more democracy. He was also instrumental in helping to smuggle former student leaders of the 1989 pro-democracy movement on Tiananmen Square out of China to avoid the crackdown that ensued – an operation known as “Yellow Bird.”

"I and the other scholars [Tai and Chan] were very discouraged," he said. "It felt as if there was no hope of democracy."

"So when Benny Tai made his proposal, I felt it was the last step we could take," Chu said. "We knew we probably couldn't win this, but we had to do it."

"Only that way could there be any hope; we couldn't just sit there waiting for death," he said.

"The other two were willing to do it, even though they could go to prison," Chu added. "If they were willing to do that for democracy, then I was going to support them. I had no hesitation in taking part."

For Chu, Hong Kong's political awakening dates back to the mass demonstrations on the city's streets in protest at the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, which were repeated annually as the Tiananmen vigils for more than three decades before being banned amid a citywide crackdown in the wake of the 2019 protests.

"1989 was a huge stimulus to those of us fighting for democracy," Chu said. "Then we knew that this government was capable of treating its own people that way, capable of killing them."

"That was very unsettling for people in Hong Kong, because what happens in Beijing today can happen in Hong Kong tomorrow," he said. "The main issue for me in [initiating] the Umbrella Movement was that we couldn't allow the massacre that happened in Beijing to take place in Hong Kong."

"We had to fight for a democratic government that could protect our freedoms and the rule of law for the people of Hong Kong."

He likens the jailing of Benny Tai, who is among dozens of pro-democracy activists and former lawmakers currently behind bars and awaiting sentencing for "subversion" under the 2020 National Security Law after they organized a democratic primary in the summer of 2020, to sacrifices made by the late Qing Dynasty reformist politician Tan Sitong, who was executed on Sept. 28, 1828 at the age of 33.

"Tan Sitong could have left, but he said he couldn't, because his sacrifice would inspire a lot of people," Chu said. "He was willing to burn up his own life to be a torch [for others]."

"Benny Tai was willing to do that too, as a form of encouragement to those in Hong Kong who feel powerless and helpless," he said. 

"Maybe that encouragement will last a long time," Chu said. "Why then should we give up? Not giving up is an expression of hope."

To that end, Chu has written a book in Chinese titled The Words of the Bell-Ringer: Memoir of the Rev. Chu Yiu-ming, recording Hong Kong's struggle for democracy. He also writes postcards including verses from the Bible to his comrades in prison.

Chan and Tai were tried and sentenced in 2019 to 16 months' imprisonment for "conspiracy to cause a public nuisance” with their public encouragement of the Umbrella Movement, while Chu, who is now 80, was given a suspended jail term due to ill-health, and left Hong Kong.

INTERVIEW: Umbrella Movement changed the face of Hong Kong politics

EXPLAINED: How the umbrella became a Hong Kong protest symbol

Key figures in the Umbrella Movement: Where are they now?

Now in exile in democratic Taiwan, Chu often feels intense grief over the activists back in Hong Kong who are now behind bars.

"I am worried for so many people in prison and I often pray for them," he said. "I often shed tears when I think of them -- it's painful."

"What can we [overseas] say about this? They're the ones suffering, and my thoughts are really with them, so I am sad now," Chu said. "I may be here in body, but in spirit, I'm with them."

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chen Zifei for RFA Mandarin.

In the skies, unmanned drones hovered like black, stationary ravens of menace.  But these were not deemed sufficient by Victoria Police.  Helicopters kept them company.  Surveillance cameras also stood prominently to the north end of the bridge.

Before this assortment of marshalled force was an eclectic gathering of individuals from keffiyeh-swaddled pro-Palestinian activists to drummers kitted out in the Palestinian colours, and any number of theatrical types dressed in the shades and costumery of death.  At one point, a chilling Joker figure made an appearance, his outfit and suitcase covered in mock blood.  The share stock of chants was readily deployed: “No justice, no peace, no racist police”; “We, the people, will not be silenced.  Stop the bombing now, now, now”.  Innumerable placards condemning the arms industry and Israel’s war on Gaza also make their appearance.

The purpose of this vast, costly exercise proved elementary and brutal: to defend Land Forces 2024, one of the largest arms fairs in the southern hemisphere, from Disrupt Land Forces, a collective demonised by the Victorian state government as the great unwashed, polluted rebel rousers and anarchists.  Much had been made of the potential size of the gathering, with uncritical journalists consuming gobbets of information from police sources keen to justify an operation deemed the largest since the 2000 World Economic Forum. Police officers from regional centres in the state had been called up, and while Chief Commissioner Shane Patton proved tight-lipped on the exact number, an estimate exceeding 1,000 was not refuted.  The total cost of the effort: somewhere between A$10 to A$15 million.

It all began as a healthy gathering at the dawn of day, with protestors moving to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre to picket entry points for those attending Land Forces.

Over time, there was movement between the various entrances to prevent these modern merchants of death from spruiking their merchandise and touting for offers.  As Green Left Online noted, “The Victorian Police barricaded the entrance of the Melbourne Convention Centre so protestors marched to the back entrance to disrupt Land Forces whilst attendees are going through security checks.”

In keeping with a variant of Anton Chekhov’s principle, if a loaded gun is placed upon the stage, it is bound to be used.  Otherwise, leave it out of the script.  A large police presence would hardly be worthwhile without a few cracked skulls, flesh wounds or arrests.  Scuffles accordingly broke out with banal predictability.  The mounted personnel were also brought out to add a snap of hostility and intimidation to the protestors as they sought to hamper access to the Convention.  For all of this, it was the police who left complaining, worried about their safety.

Then came the broader push from the officers to create a zone of exclusion around the building, resulting in the closure of Clarendon Street to the south, up to Batman Park. Efforts were made to push the protests from the convention centre across the bridge towards the park.  This was in keeping with the promise by the Chief Commissioner that the MCEC site and its surrounds would be deemed a designated area over the duration of the arms fair from September 11 to 13.

Such designated areas, enabled by the passage of a 2009 law, vests the police with powers to stop and search a person within the zone without a warrant.  Anything perceived to be a weapon can be seized, with officers having powers to request that civilians reveal their identity.

Despite such exercisable powers, the relevant legislation imposes a time limit of 12 hours for such areas, something most conspicuously breached by the Commissioner.  But as Melbourne Activist Legal Support (MALS) group remarks, the broader criteria outlined in the legislative regime are often not met and constitute a “method of protest control” that impairs “the rights to assembly, association, and political expression” protected by the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities.

The Victorian government had little time for the language of protest.  In a stunningly grotesque twist, the Victorian Premier, Jacinta Allan, defended those at the Land Forces conference as legitimate representatives of business engaging in a peaceful enterprise.  “Any industry deserves the right to have these sorts of events in a peaceful and respectful way.”  If the manufacture, sale and distribution of weapons constitutes a “peaceful and respectful” pursuit, we have disappeared down the rabbit hole with Alice at great speed.

That theme continued with efforts by both Allan and the opposition leader, John Pesutto, to tarnish the efforts by fellow politicians to attend the protest.  Both fumed indignantly at the efforts of Greens MP Gabrielle de Vietri to participate, with the premier calling the measure one designed for “divisive political purposes.”  The Green MP had a pertinent response: “The community has spoken loud and clear, they don’t want weapons and war profiting to come to our doorstep, and the Victorian Labor government is sponsoring this.”

The absurd, morally inverted spectacle was duly affirmed: a taxpayer funded arms exposition, defended by the taxpayer funded police, used to repel the tax paying protestors keen to promote peace in the face of an industry that thrives on death, mutilation and misery.

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

But on a rainy night in September, Castro and a friend, while ending their day advocating for the rights of fishing communities, were allegedly abducted by the Philippine military for their work. 

“They covered our mouths and brought us to a secret detention facility,” she said. The military interrogators asked them questions about their work in environmental justice, and accused them of being communists. “It’s actually the situation of many activists and environmental defenders here in the Philippines.”

Castro and her friend were eventually released two weeks later, but in December of 2023, the Philippine Department of Justice filed charges against them both for “embarrassing” and casting the Philippine military in a “bad light.” The military has denied Castro’s accusations. 

A new study from Global Witness, an international organization that focuses on human rights and documenting infractions, finds that tactics like what Castro experienced are happening to land defenders across the planet, often with deadly results. In 2023, almost 200 environmental activists were killed for “exercising their right to protect their lands and environment from harm.” These killings are often carried out alongside acts of intimidation, smear campaigns, and criminalization by governments and often in concert with companies. The report says violence often accompanies land acquisition strategies linked to the developmental interests of agricultural, fossil fuel, and green energy companies.

“Governments around the world, not only in the Philippines, have the obligation to protect any of their citizens,” said Laura Furones, lead author of the report. “Some governments are failing spectacularly at doing that, and even becoming complicit with some of those attacks or providing an operating environment for companies.”

Indigenous peoples are the most vulnerable to these tactics. Last year, around half of those killed for their environmental activism were Indigenous or Afrodescendents. Between 2012 and 2023, almost 800 Indigenous people have been killed protecting their lands or resources, representing more than a third of all environmental defenders killed around the world in that same time frame. 

Colombia has the highest death toll of environmental land defenders, and the number has gone up in 2023. There are 79 documented cases representing the highest annual total that Global Witness has accounted for since 2012. Of those cases, 31 people were Indigenous. Other Latin American countries like Brazil, Honduras, and Mexico have consistently had the most documented cases of murders of environmental defenders.

Furones said with the rise of green energy projects, mining will continue to grow, and with it, the potential for violence against land defenders. Mining operations have resulted in the most loss of life according to Global Witness, and while most of these deaths occurred in Latin American countries last year, between 2012 and 2023, many occurred in Asia. Around 40 percent of killings related to mining have happened in Asia since 2012 and the report indicates there are many mineral resources in Asia that are important for green energy technologies.  

“The region has significant natural reserves of key critical minerals vital for clean energy technologies, including nickel, tin, rare-earth elements, and bauxite,” the report said. “This might be good news for the energy transition, but without drastic changes to mining practices it could also increase pressure on defenders.”

This year, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues also looked into the rise of criminalization that land defenders face, while reporting from the forum showed that there has been very little done to protect Indigenous peoples’ rights over the last decade. A recent report from Climate Rights International, also on the criminalization of climate activism with a focus on Western democracies, like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, found that governments are violating basic tenets of freedom of expression and assembly in order to crack down on climate activists. In the United Kingdom, for example, five people associated with the group Just Stop Oil were given four- and five-year prison sentences for “conspiring to cause a public nuisance” by blocking a major roadway in London in order to bring attention to the abundant use of fossil fuels. They are the longest sentences ever given for non-violent protests in Britain. Taken together, the reports highlight how criminalization has become a strategy to discredit climate activists. 

In the Philippines, Jonila Castro said she would continue to protect the people and places of Manila, but she does not go anywhere alone and said she feels like she’s always looking over her shoulder. She is currently facing six months of prison for her activities.

“I think the government is thinking that we will be silenced because we’re facing charges,” she said. “But I can’t think of a reason not to continue, and that’s the same with many of the environmental defenders and activists here.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Nearly 200 people were killed last year protecting the environment on Sep 10, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Taylar Dawn Stagner.

Photograph Source: FOX 52 – CC BY-SA 4.0

The tiltrotor V-22 Osprey has a plagued, bloodied history.  But blighted as it is, the aircraft remains a cherished feature of the US Marines, regarded as vital in supporting combat assault, logistics and transport, not to mention playing a role in search-and-rescue missions and delivering equipment for the Navy carrier air wings.

In March this year, V-22 flights were again permitted after a three-month pause following a fatal crash on November 29 of an Air Force CV-22B off Yakushima Island, Japan and the grounding of all V-22S aircraft in early December.  Col. Brian Taylor, program manager for the V-22 Joint Program Office, told a media roundtable two days prior to rescinding the ground order that a “meticulous and data-driven approach” had been used in investigations.

The approach, however, may well have been less meticulous and data-driven than a matter of desperation and self-interest, not to mention the role the aircraft is intended to play in the lighter, more agile forms of conflict envisaged by the “Force Design 2030” strategy.  A feature of that strategy is EABO, known to the military wonks as Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations.

Bryan Clark, senior fellow and director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology, offers a blunt assessment.  “There’s not a clear backup for the Marines, there’s not a clear backup for the Air Force, and soon there won’t be a backup for the Navy’s [carrier onboard delivery] mission.”

The Osprey’s failures have also left their spatter in Australia.  On August 27, 2023 a V-22B Osprey with 23 US marines crashed to the north of Darwin on Melville Island, leading to three fatalities.  Darwin, having become a vital springboard in projecting US power in the Indo-Pacific, hosts an annual Marine Rotational Force, so-called to avoid suspicions of a permanent garrisoning of the city.

The crash also stirred unwanted memories of a previous Osprey crash in Australia, when a Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 265 failed to safely land on the flight deck of USS Green Bay on August 5, 2017.  That lethal occasion saw three deaths and 23 injuries.

The Osprey has pride of place in a military force that specialises in lethal aviation mishaps during training and routine operations.  Join the US Armed Forces, and you might just get yourself killed by your own machinery and practices.  The investigation into the Melville Island crash was instructive to that end, showing the aircraft to be, yet again, an object of pious reverence in US defence circles.

The initial investigation into the crash was initially eclectic: the Northern Territory police, fire and emergency services, along with personnel from the Australian Defence Force and the US Marine Corps.  At the time, acting assistant commissioner and incident controller, Matthew Hollamby, expressed his enthusiasm in carrying out a “thorough investigation”. “We are in the recovery phase and working closely with NT Fire and Rescue Service to assist us with a safe and respectful recovery operation of the three deceased US marines.”

Despite such utterances, it soon became clear that any investigation into the matter would ultimately be pared back.  Either the servitors were not considered up to the task, or all too capable in identifying what caused the crash.  In September 2023, the local press reported that territory officials were no longer needed, with NT News going so far as to claim that local agencies had been “ousted from the investigation”.  The Marines had taken full reins over the matter.

The top brass accordingly got the findings they wanted from the US Marines’ official report, which involved sparing the Osprey and chastising the personnel.  There had been no “material or mechanical failure of any component on the aircraft”.  The crash had been “caused by a series of poor decisions and/or miscalculations.”

The squadron’s attitude to procedure had also been less than enviable, marked by a “culture that disregarded safety of flight procedures”.  There had been a “lack of attention to detail and failure to comply with proper pre-flight procedures”.  There had also been a “lackadaisical attitude across the squadron” towards maintenance practices.  Command responsibility in not addressing that particular culture was also acknowledged, while the conduct of the Australian Defence Forces and “local nationals” in responding to the crash were deemed “admirable”.

Such reports are hardly intended as ironic, but the executive summary notes how Australian defence protocols were so developed as to enable the Marines to operate with even greater daring than they otherwise would.  The ADF’s “casualty evacuation (CASEVAC) and mass casualty (MASSCAS) support structure is allowing Marine units to conduct multi-national military training events in the Northern Territories without sacrificing force requirements.  Without these well-established relationships in place this mishap may have been more tragic.”

The findings should have given the then Northern Territory Chief Minister Eva Lawler pause for concern.  Squadrons of personnel operating such machinery indifferent to safety would surely stir some searching questions.  But NT officials, under the eagle eye of the Canberra military establishment, aim to please, and Lawler proved no different.  She knew “that the US Marines will do the work that’s needed now to make sure that any recommendations out of any inquiry are implemented in full.”

In a statement of unconvincing worth, the Marines insisted that they remained “unwavering” in their “commitment to the world class training of our aircrews and ensuring their safety”.  And that commitment, not to mention the type of training, is precisely what we should be afraid of.

The post Protecting the Widow Maker: The US Marines Exonerate the Osprey appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

In March this year, V-22 flights were again permitted after a three-month pause following a fatal crash on November 29 of an Air Force CV-22B off Yakushima Island, Japan and the grounding of all V-22S aircraft in early December.  Col. Brian Taylor, program manager for the V-22 Joint Program Office, told a media roundtable two days prior to rescinding the ground order that a “meticulous and data-driven approach” had been used in investigations.

The approach, however, may well have been less meticulous and data-driven than a matter of desperation and self-interest, not to mention the role the aircraft is intended to play in the lighter, more agile forms of conflict envisaged by the “Force Design 2030” strategy.  A feature of that strategy is EABO, known to the military wonks as Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations.

Bryan Clark, senior fellow and director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology, offers a blunt assessment.  “There’s not a clear backup for the Marines, there’s not a clear backup for the Air Force, and soon there won’t be a backup for the Navy’s [carrier onboard delivery] mission.”

The Osprey’s failures have also left their spatter in Australia.  On August 27, 2023 a V-22B Osprey with 23 US marines crashed to the north of Darwin on Melville Island, leading to three fatalities.  Darwin, having become a vital springboard in projecting US power in the Indo-Pacific, hosts an annual Marine Rotational Force, so-called to avoid suspicions of a permanent garrisoning of the city.

The crash also stirred unwanted memories of a previous Osprey crash in Australia, when a Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 265 failed to safely land on the flight deck of USS Green Bay on August 5, 2017.  That lethal occasion saw three deaths and 23 injuries.

The Osprey has pride of place in a military force that specialises in lethal aviation mishaps during training and routine operations.  Join the US Armed Forces, and you might just get yourself killed by your own machinery and practices.  The investigation into the Melville Island crash was instructive to that end, showing the aircraft to be, yet again, an object of pious reverence in US defence circles.

The initial investigation into the crash was initially eclectic: the Northern Territory police, fire and emergency services, along with personnel from the Australian Defence Force and the US Marine Corps.  At the time, acting assistant commissioner and incident controller, Matthew Hollamby, expressed his enthusiasm in carrying out a “thorough investigation”. “We are in the recovery phase and working closely with NT Fire and Rescue Service to assist us with a safe and respectful recovery operation of the three deceased US marines.”

Despite such utterances, it soon became clear that any investigation into the matter would ultimately be pared back.  Either the servitors were not considered up to the task, or all too capable in identifying what caused the crash.  In September 2023, the local press reported that territory officials were no longer needed, with NT News going so far as to claim that local agencies had been “ousted from the investigation”.  The Marines had taken full reins over the matter.

The top brass accordingly got the findings they wanted from the US Marines’ official report, which involved sparing the Osprey and chastising the personnel.  There had been no “material or mechanical failure of any component on the aircraft”.  The crash had been “caused by a series of poor decisions and/or miscalculations.”

The squadron’s attitude to procedure had also been less than enviable, marked by a “culture that disregarded safety of flight procedures”.  There had been a “lack of attention to detail and failure to comply with proper pre-flight procedures”.  There had also been a “lackadaisical attitude across the squadron” towards maintenance practices.  Command responsibility in not addressing that particular culture was also acknowledged, while the conduct of the Australian Defence Forces and “local nationals” in responding to the crash were deemed “admirable”.

Such reports are hardly intended as ironic, but the executive summary notes how Australian defence protocols were so developed as to enable the Marines to operate with even greater daring than they otherwise would.  The ADF’s “casualty evacuation (CASEVAC) and mass casualty (MASSCAS) support structure is allowing Marine units to conduct multi-national military training events in the Northern Territories without sacrificing force requirements.  Without these well-established relationships in place this mishap may have been more tragic.”

The findings should have given the then Northern Territory Chief Minister Eva Lawler pause for concern.  Squadrons of personnel operating such machinery indifferent to safety would surely stir some searching questions.  But NT officials, under the eagle eye of the Canberra military establishment, aim to please, and Lawler proved no different.  She knew “that the US Marines will do the work that’s needed now to make sure that any recommendations out of any inquiry are implemented in full.”

In a statement of unconvincing worth, the Marines insisted that they remained “unwavering” in their “commitment to the world class training of our aircrews and ensuring their safety”.  And that commitment, not to mention the type of training, is precisely what we should be afraid of.

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

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Maryland Gov. Wes Moore recently signed the Gift Card Scams Prevention Act of 2024, creating the country’s first law aimed at curbing a rising form of gift card fraud called card draining.

Card draining is a scheme in which thieves remove gift cards from stores, capture their numeric codes or swap them out for counterfeit cards, and place the products back on display. When an unsuspecting customer loads money onto a tampered or counterfeit card, criminals access it online and steal the balance.

The Maryland law marks a milestone in the growing government effort to combat card draining, which escalated dramatically during the pandemic thanks to the ingenuity of Chinese organized crime rings. ProPublica recently reported that late last year, after a spate of consumer complaints and arrests, the Department of Homeland Security launched a task force to address card draining.

“We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars, potentially billions of dollars, [and] that’s a substantial risk to our economy and to people’s confidence in their retail environment,” Adam Parks, a Homeland Security assistant special agent in charge, told ProPublica.

The Maryland law is the first in the nation to mandate secure packaging for most gift cards sold in person. The bill’s packaging requirements sparked industry pushback that at one point threatened the bill’s passage, according to Sen. Ben Kramer, the Maryland state senator who sponsored the legislation.

Here’s how the battle unfolded, who was involved and why the Maryland bill is poised to change gift card packaging nationwide.

When big box retailers and pharmacies remained open during pandemic lockdowns, criminals saw that stores displayed hundreds of gift cards with little or no supervision. Crooks affiliated with Chinese organized crime began stealing unloaded cards and learned to remove and replace the security stickers and packaging that conceal card codes.

“It gave a lot of time and opportunity for people to figure out the flaws” in card security, said Jordan Hirschfield, who covers the prepaid card industry for Javelin Strategy & Research.

An estimated $570 billion is loaded onto gift and prepaid cards each year in the United States, Hirschfield said. While it’s difficult to know how much of that money has been stolen, even a 1% fraud rate would result in $5.7 billion in annual consumer losses, according to Hirschfield’s data.

One quarter of U.S. respondents said they had given or received a card with no balance, presumably because it had been stolen, according to a 2022 survey of about 2,000 adults by the AARP, the nonprofit advocacy group for people over age 50.

Hirschfield and law enforcement say that “open-loop” gift cards are particularly popular with draining gangs. Such cards use the Visa, Mastercard or American Express networks and can be spent at any business that accepts debit payments. They’re more versatile than “closed-loop” gift cards, which can be spent only at a single business, such as Target or Applebee’s.

Among other measures, Kramer’s bill required open- and closed-loop cards purchased in person to be sold in secure packaging that conceals their codes and shows signs of tampering when opened.

Citing a rise in consumer complaints and lawsuits, Kramer told ProPublica that the legislation was needed to protect consumers.

“This has been going on for several years now, and the industry was not addressing it,” Kramer said.

Kramer’s bill elicited almost instant industry pushback.

“Clearly all hell broke loose within the industry,” he told ProPublica. “At first everybody was just trying to discourage me from doing anything.”

Lobbyists from Walmart, Target and Home Depot contacted Kramer, as did companies that manufacture gift cards and stock them in retail stores, including Blackhawk Network. Kramer said that new card packaging would cost companies money to design and manufacture.

Eventually, many national retailers and manufacturers came together through the Maryland Retailers Alliance to advocate for amendments, including allowing businesses to forgo the new packaging rules if their closed-loop gift cards are stored in a secure location accessible only to employees.

Then a lobbyist for InComm Payments, a payments technology provider that manages gift card programs for major retailers, asked the committee to change the open-loop card requirements. The lobbyist proposed removing the bill’s reference to “secure packaging” and eliminating the requirement that open-loop cards conceal their activation codes. Along with managing card programs for partners including Walmart and CVS, InComm, via a subsidiary, sells its own popular line of Vanilla open-loop gift cards.

The company’s amendment would have gutted a major protection against card draining, according to Kramer. InComm “was trying to scuttle the bill,” he said.

InComm said its proposed changes were intended to give companies the flexibility to adapt card packaging in order to combat new fraud techniques. It added that it proposed removing the bill’s reference to secure packaging because the bill’s language “was not fully reflective of industry security best practices.”

“To be absolutely clear, all of our lobbying engagement related to the Maryland bill had the end-goal of empowering the industry to implement the most impactful secure packaging techniques that are in the best interest of consumers — now and in the future,” the company said in an emailed statement.

InComm’s proposed amendment kicked off what would become a key point of conflict: how to display activation codes.

A gift card’s activation code is scanned at the point of sale to turn on the card and load its cash balance. It’s different from a redemption code, PIN or CVV, which are used when a customer uses a card to make a purchase. InComm, the Maryland Retailers Alliance and Kramer all agreed that redemption data and related codes should be fully concealed. But InComm argued that activation codes didn’t need to be fully covered to prevent fraud.

InComm patented a type of packaging in 2017 that prints the activation code across both the packaging and the card. The company said in a statement to ProPublica that this method, which it calls split-barcode packaging, is more secure than fully covering an activation code.

“If attempts to tamper cause the card and external barcode to become misaligned by a fraction of a millimeter, it prevents the barcode from being scanned and activated,” the company said.

InComm declined to say what percentage of Vanilla cards use split barcode packaging but said that “every Vanilla Gift Card released in 2024 has new and innovative security enhancements included.”

The jockeying over the Maryland bill came as InComm is facing government scrutiny over card draining.

Last November, David Chiu, the city attorney of San Francisco, filed a suit against the company’s card division, InComm Financial Services, and three of its banking partners alleging that InComm has been aware of card draining for roughly a decade and showed negligence by not fixing Vanilla packaging and by failing to refund consumers.

“InComm is selling these prepaid gift cards that it knows are susceptible to rampant theft due to inadequate packaging and security,” Chiu told ProPublica and alleged in the complaint.

InComm Payments said it “vigorously denies the baseless claims” in the San Francisco city attorney's lawsuit. It filed a motion in May to dismiss the case, saying the California court lacked jurisdiction over the company, which is registered in South Dakota. Three of its banking partners similarly moved to dismiss the claims against them. A California Superior Court judge is slated to meet with attorneys in September.

The lawsuit caught the attention of a federal lawmaker, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. In December, he asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate InComm Financial Services, charging that its alleged “neglect and refusal to implement improved security features have unjustly harmed consumers.” (An FTC spokesperson said it “can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any investigation” into InComm.)

“I remain concerned that fraudsters are continuing to take advantage of InComm’s lacking security features of their prepaid gift cards — ultimately inflicting financial harm on consumers across the country,” Blumenthal said in a statement to ProPublica.

The company said it is not currently the subject of a memorandum of understanding, consent decree, or cease-and-desist from any regulator. It declined to say whether it had been contacted by the FTC in the past year or if it is currently the subject of an investigation from a government body.

“InComm Payments has been at the forefront in developing innovative solutions to continuously combat emerging fraud threats over the past 30 years, and maintains that vigilance today by leveraging new technologies, packaging techniques, monitoring systems and other security practices to help protect consumers,” the company said.

As Kramer’s gift card bill advanced through the Maryland legislature, another industry trade group, the Retail Gift Card Association, floated a new proposal: allow the state attorney general’s office to decide whether a company’s packaging was sufficiently secure.

Three days later, InComm proposed a new amendment to allow activation data to be revealed if the packaging “is more secure than it otherwise would be if the data were fully concealed.”

Both ideas resonated with state Del. C.T. Wilson, the chair of the House Economic Matters Committee, who examined InComm’s packaging design.

“It's not that I was totally convinced that the thing that they showed me was the silver bullet. It definitely wasn’t,” he said. “But what I did not want to do was stop people from looking for more ways to secure the system.”

Wilson incorporated language from InComm’s amendment and added oversight by the state attorney general’s office. The bill passed in April.

The new packaging rules take effect next June, so companies have a year to come into compliance. While the law applies only to cards sold in Maryland, it’s likely the packaging changes will be rolled out nationwide because companies prefer to use the same cards across all states, according to Kramer and Cailey Locklair, the president of the Maryland Retailers Alliance.

“It will change packaging nationally — it is not just a Maryland bill,” Locklair said. She predicted the new packaging will begin appearing in stores by the holidays, typically the peak time for card draining.

A Blackhawk spokesperson declined to comment on any packaging changes it plans to make but said the company “will comply with any and all legislative requirements.” InComm also declined to share details on potential packaging changes, saying it wanted to avoid aiding criminals. But it said its split-barcode packaging “fully complies with the Maryland law.”

“I think of a bill like this as the first domino” in combating gift card fraud, Kramer said, adding, “I think we ended up with a great consumer protection bill.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Craig Silverman.

Rebecca Ness, Self Portrait with a Cat (after Laserstein), 2024, oil on linen, 50 x 40 inches / 127 x 101.6 cm, photo by Lance Brewer.

There’s so much detail in your paintings, and you say you want people to read the paintings like a book. Why is that?

I’ve always loved stories and children’s storybooks. I think what led me on this path is I’m definitely more of a visual thinker. My father is an architect, and growing up, he would have us at the kitchen table on Saturday mornings, and he would take this big brown craft paper, and he would make these huge illustrations of cross sections. For example, we had the Titanic or something, so we would have the outside of the story, the plot of the book, so to speak, but we would create little rooms, and the little things happening in each room are like walking the deck and stuff like that. I think that kind of visual storytelling is how my brain was formed and was teaching me a different and new kind of storytelling. That followed me ever since and that’s why I look a lot to children’s books and illustration in my own paintings.

I love Where’s Waldo?, too. Waldo has a lot to do with [Pieter] Bruegel and [Hieronymus] Bosch, and the I Spy books. Those are really smart, and they’re also really accessible. I think that’s how my neurons were connected early on. As you grow and become more aware of art history and of yourself, I think these little things that we grew up with, the little sparks in the beginning of our life, kind of blossom.

You say what you do is “unconventional portraitist.” What do you mean by that?

I was very lucky to be able to go to this after-school oil painting and life drawing program, called Acorn Gallery School of Art in Marblehead, Massachusetts, where I grew up. I made portraits and figure painting from life, and conventional portraiture was a big part of the first 20 years of my life. It was something that I had a firm grasp on and did in my undergraduate program.

The unconventional portrait stuff happened when I had the break to think in between undergraduate and graduate school. You don’t have a traditional studio, you don’t have classes, so you are able to take a break and take stock of yourself and be like, “Okay, what is being an artist look like? And how do you live as an artist, what do you do? How do you work?” Having that break allowed me to think, “I have this education, I have these quote unquote skills. It was like, I know the algebra, how do I do the calculus now? How do I get on to the next thing?”

Rebecca Ness, Cubbyhole, 2024, oil on linen, 70 x 100 inches / 177.8 x 254 cm, photo by Lance Brewer.

I was never going to be the best portrait painter, and I was not interested in that. I always wanted to do something else, so I thought about what makes me excited to pick up a paintbrush. All these little moments in between conventional art history are the moments in painting that give me the most joy, like when I look at how someone painted a fingernail or a reflection. Those are the moments that remind me of doing the giant blueprints on the family table, and of thinking, “Okay, we see the grand story, but what’s happening in the alleyway to the side?”

In your show, Portraits of Place, some items like the backpack and the bike showed up in a few pictures. It reminded me of callbacks in comedy, and there’s something so satisfying about it. What made you want to do that?

I used to paint a lot listening to comedy. I think what makes good comedy and good painting and good writing is there are these kinds of rules and structures, but you know someone’s doing it well when you don’t see the structure anymore. Like this just works, right? It leads us on a story where there is a beginning, middle, and end or a callback, or I think of an hour long set for a comedian. You don’t really know if the stories are made up or real life. It’s just kind of like a friend talking to you, and there are callbacks to previous jokes or previous stories before. I do kind of liken the idea of the show being a set. They all have to be connected. There are maybe different acts, there’s different characters, and there is some sort of structure, but hopefully, when you experience it, it’s pretty organic, and it doesn’t feel didactic.

How do you arrange your day? What time you go in to the studio and when do you leave?

I’m not chaotic in terms of my personality, but I think my schedule is pretty chaotic. The more work and — knock on wood — success I get, I am forced to be a little bit more structured. I have a couple assistants, and I have to be structured for them.

Usually, I get up around eight or nine, and depending on if I sleep at my house or my partner’s house, then there’s the whole I have to feed the cats, and I have to feed myself, and bike back and get my stuff. But I hope to be at the studio on work days around 10:30. Then I always have a bit of a midday slump. I like to just work the whole day, which is probably not great for me, but I don’t really take breaks, which is probably why I get the slump. I usually watch something on my phone or take a nap. I like to take naps on my studio floor on bubble wrap because if I had a couch, I would just fall asleep too much.

I try to go home around six or seven, but depending on the flow, it could be later than that. I try not to go in anymore on the weekends. I have learned through a lot of trial and error that left to my own devices, I’ll just work myself into, I don’t know, a fiery burnout, and beautiful people in my life have been like, “Have you tried having a normal Monday through Friday schedule?” But that doesn’t mean I don’t think about art or make art. It’s just maybe I work in my home studio, or maybe I work on drawing or go to museums. Lately I have been trying to structure my life so I can do this forever, not just a short, crazy stint. I’m trying to have some longevity to this because I’m not really good at anything else, and I don’t really want to do anything else.

Rebecca Ness, My Bedroom, 2023, oil on linen, 70 x 100 inches / 177.8 x 254 cm, photo by Lance Brewer.

So going to museum is something you do on the weekend to nurture yourself as an artist?

I love to go to museums. I love MoMA. I love the Met. I also try to see shows in the city. Or just see my friends who are artists and when you hang out with other artists, you’re going to end up talking about art. I try to fill my cup in other ways. I think the fact that I’m alone in my studio all day Monday through Friday makes me socially hungry, and it really gets at you, and I find that weekends are my time to step into the art world and see work other than my own. I understand what my work does in the world more when I see other paintings or have some sort of social connection to art.

Rebecca Ness, Browsing the Bookmill, 2023, oil and oil pastel on linen, 90 x 80 inches / 228.6 x 203.2 cm, photo by Lance Brewer.

How do you decide what to paint?

I have a lot of ideas that mull in my head for years. A couple years ago for Art Cologne, I did this series of works called Heartbreak at Gingers, which is a story about being single and lonely and meeting somebody at a bar, and you go away to do something, and then you realize that she’s got somebody else. That’s a story that I think is pretty universal, and that a lot of people have experienced probably many times, including myself.

That kind of story has happened to me as long as I’ve been dating in the world, so that the idea of a three-part story in three acts has been mulling around in my head for years. I just don’t think I had the time or the space or the chops to do it before. But then I got my really big studio, and I kind of settled in and found a bar that felt like I could tell the story there, a bar that has many different distinct spaces, that would be good for three different acts.

Also I felt I had a certain amount of painting skills and chops that were specific to the story I wanted to tell, so I was like, “Oh, now’s the right time.” I think I don’t really come up with an idea and then paint it. It’s usually ideas I’ve been lusting after for a really long time at a time where I don’t really remember how I came up with the idea. Or sometimes I look through my old sketchbooks and I have lots of ideas jotted down, and it could be just—I’m looking at one right now—“feral cat at night.”

Do you start your paintings with one character? Or do you sketch it all out?

I make thumbnail sketches that are very loose. It’s a rough sketch with a lot of labels like this blob is this person, this blob is this person. Then once I figure out what dimensions I want the work to be, in my iPad, I can set up a square rectangle with those exact dimensions. Then I start taking reference photos or making drawings, then I make a collage of that in my iPad that consists of cut out images. I take 99% of my own reference photos. I do site visits and take photos, that kind of thing. Then I can cut out digitally line drawings in my in my sketchbook. I make a collage of that. And then I have something that’s ready, that is at the perfect ratio that I need, and I transfer it onto a canvas and start there. What goes on to the canvas in the first pass is very loose. I don’t really like to have everything figured out because I find that kind of boring.

Rebecca Ness, U-Haul, 2023, oil on linen, 90 x 80 inches / 228.6 x 203.2 cm, photo by Lance Brewer.

What do you do if you get stuck on a painting?

I get really mad, and I’m like, “Well, I have to solve it.” I think of these things sometimes even as math problems. I take a photo of it, I turn it away, and I look at it in my phone a lot. An image becomes much less scary to solve when it’s not eight feet tall, but it’s eight centimeters tall. When I’m going to bed, I’m obsessively in the finger drawing app on my phone, and I try and figure out what to do with it. Eventually, I’ll figure out the answer, and then turn the painting back around and fix it, but it’s way harder to do when you’re just staring at the giant thing.

Rebecca Ness, Crossing Manhattan Bridge, 2023-2024, oil and oil pastel on linen, 100 x 70 inches / 254 x 177.8 cm, photo by Lance Brewer.

What do you feel are the greatest rewards of being a painter?

I think there’s nothing better than making a painting you really like that took a really long time. That’s how I feel about the painting of the bookstore in the show. That painting probably took me eight months. Not just working on it just for eight months, but in between other things. It went through a million different iterations, and only the left side of the painting, is what has stayed. I worked on it in my phone in bed at 3am a lot. And there’s nothing better than going through all of that and being like, “I solved it, I solved the problem.”

There’s also the fun part of thinking about what your work does when you don’t have any control over it anymore. A collector I love has a painting of mine in his kitchen. He has two kids, and that’s where his kids eat breakfast every day. These two kids are going to grow up with memories of my painting in a safe, beautiful place where they eat breakfast before they go to school. That to me is a really satisfying, beautiful thing about being a painter is that my work is in the core memories of other people.

Can you tell me how you came to portraits of places? It seems like you’ve done it seems like a lot with people’s objects, but why did you want to do place?

I was making very conventional portraits. Then I came out when I was 20 or so, and when you’re a newly out person, you’re like, “Okay, how do I do being gay right? How do I dress? How do I navigate in the world?” I first noticed that a lot of other queers were wearing button ups [shirts] all the way up to their neck. So I’m like, “Oh, this is interesting. This is a portrait of ways that we present ourselves.”

Years back I made a bunch of buttoned-up paintings, or I asked people to send me photos of themselves in things that really illustrates who they are. Than I thought about what is a portrait of a person without their body, just by kind of the “We are what we keep” kind of mentality, like the tchotchkes, the objects, what we hold that shows others what we are like. I could walk into your house without you even being there and be like, “Okay, this is who she is.”

Rebecca Ness, Wild Side West, 2023, oil and oil pastel on linen, 80 x 90 inches / 203.2 x 228.6 cm, photo by Lance Brewer.

I went through in my head things I had done that were unconventional portraiture. I realized I hadn’t done places yet. As I was saying, my father’s an architect, so places and spaces and buildings, I was taught early on, tell a lot about socioeconomics, about time, about politics, about history of people, and history of communities and countries.

How the first one came about was I wanted to paint gay bars. There were a lot of lesbian bars that were dying, and a few years ago, I thought, “I’ve got to paint these before they all die.” Then I realized there are tchotchkes in there, there are people in there who go there every night. Making a portrait of a space is a summation of all the unconventional portraits I’d been doing before. There’s the people dressed in certain ways that tell you about what kind of community they’re in. There are objects that have been collected for years and years and years. It is everything I had been doing before, kind of wrapped up in one bow and encapsulated, literally, in a space.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Emily Wilson.

This new CAP analysis of NLRB elections data has found that:

• In 2023, the union win rate in NLRB elections broke 70 percent for the first time in 15 years.
• The NLRB has won 54 percent more reinstatement offers for illegally fired workers since 2021 than during all four years of the previous administration. This success happened as the NLRB instituted new rules that make it easier for workers to exercise their right to join a union.
• The union win rate has been consistently higher under the Biden administration than under the previous administration.

The Project 2025 policy playbook offers instructions for future administrations to neuter the NLRB’s enforcement capacity and turn it against unions by firing key agency leaders, making it easier to decertify unions, and closing off established ways of forming unions.

“The NLRB has been a key part of the Biden administration’s strategy for empowering workers to ensure they have a fair shot at forming a union,” said Aurelia Glass, policy analyst for the Inclusive Economy team at CAP and author of this analysis. “Crucial appointees are holding lawbreaking corporations accountable and helping reverse a decadeslong trend that allowed bad actors to bust workers’ unions before they could form. Project 2025 offers a playbook for how an administration could jeopardize the NLRB’s ability to protect organizing workers and threatens rolling back unions’ success over the past four years.”

Read the analysis: “Project 2025 Would Undo the NLRB’s Progress on Protecting Workers’ Right To Organize” by Aurelia Glass

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

During his decades as a wealthy businessman, Trump clashed with unions repeatedly.  And, upon becoming President, he appointed people much like himself―from corporate backgrounds and hostile toward workers―to head key government agencies and departments.  Naturally, an avalanche of anti-union policies followed.

Under Trump, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)―the federal agency enforcing the nation’s fundamental labor law, the National Labor Relations Act―led the charge.  Instead of following the intent of the 1935 legislation, which was to guarantee the right of workers to union representation, the Trump NLRB widened the basis for denying that right.  According to the NLRB, the nearly two million Uber and Lyft drivers, as well as other workers in the gig economy, were not really workers, but independent contractors and, as such, not entitled to a union.  The NLRB also proposed depriving graduate teaching assistants and other student employees at private universities of the right to organize unions and collectively bargain.

When it came to the reduced number of workers still eligible to form a union, the Trump NLRB adopted new rules making it more difficult for them to win the employee elections necessary for union representation.  The NLRB hindered union activists’ ability to organize workers during non-working hours and, also, allowed employers to gerrymander bargaining units.  In March 2020, the Trump NLRB used the excuse of the Covid-19 pandemic to suspend all union representation elections and, thereafter, allowed mail ballot elections only if the employer agreed to them.

Unlike their Trump-appointed managers, many NLRB employees, as career civil servants, resented the agency’s shift toward anti-union policies and sought to enforce what labor rights remained under the National Labor Relations Act.  But the new management undermined their ability to protect workers’ rights by refusing to fill vacancies, thereby hollowing out the agency.  As a result, the number of NLRB staff members dropped by nearly 20 percent.

Major federal departments moved in the same anti-union direction.  Trump’s Department of Education scrapped collective bargaining with the American Federation of Government Employees and unilaterally imposed a contract curtailing the union rights of the department’s 3,900 workers.  Trump’s Department of Labor removed requirements that employers disclose their use of “union-busting” law firms (a practice in 75 percent of union representation elections at an estimated annual cost of $340 million).  And the Department of Justice, in a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in the Janus case, delivered what was expected to be a devastating blow to public sector unions.

Janus v. AFSCME Council 31 was the culmination of lengthy efforts by big business and reactionary forces to cripple unions representing teachers, firefighters, and other public servants by slashing their source of income: union dues.  In the past, the courts had ruled that, even if a public worker chose not to join the union, the worker, in lieu of union dues, would still have to pay “fair share fees” to cover the costs of collective bargaining and administration of the union contract.  In the Janus case, though, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, prohibited public sector unions from charging fees to nonmembers for representation.  In this fashion, the narrow Court majority (including all three of Donald Trump’s appointees) established a significant financial incentive for millions of workers to stop paying union dues and become “free riders,” securing union benefits without paying for them.  To widespread surprise, though, union-represented workers simply stuck with their unions and went on paying union dues, thereby foiling this Trump administration gambit.

In addition to relying on his appointees, Trump took direct action as president to undermine American unions.  Kicking off Labor Day in 2018, he denounced the nation’s top labor leader, Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, stating that Trumka’s policies explained “why unions are doing so poorly.”  In 2020, after the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act―billed by the AFL-CIO as “the most significant worker empowerment legislation since the Great Depression”―Trump blocked the legislation from moving any further by threatening to veto it.

Trump’s disdain for the American labor movement continued in the years after he left office.  In August 2023, attacking the newly-elected, dynamic leaders of the United Auto Workers (UAW), he told UAW members that “you shouldn’t pay those [union] dues because they’re selling you to hell.  Don’t listen to these union people who get paid a lot of money.”  That October, he insisted:  “The auto workers are being sold down the river by their leadership.”  In fact, though, that November, UAW president Shawn Fain and his team led one of the most impressive nationwide strikes of modern times, securing wage raises for auto workers of at least 25 percent, as well as boosting retirement contributions and other benefits.

Not surprisingly, the UAW doesn’t have much respect for Donald Trump.  In January 2024, the 400,000-member union endorsed Joe Biden for re-election, with Fain remarking that Biden “stood with the American worker,” while “Trump has a history of serving himself and standing for the billionaire class.”  These remarks echoed Fain’s comments of a few days before, when he called Trump “a scab” who “stands against everything we stand for as a union.”

The AFL-CIO, which unites most of America’s unions, delivered a similar appraisal in a press release (“Donald Trump’s Catastrophic and Devastating Anti-Labor Track Record”) the preceding September.  “Trump spent four years in office weakening unions and working people,” it maintained.  “We can’t afford another four years of Trump’s corporate agenda to … destroy our unions.”

If Trump expects significant union support this November, it’s merely another of his many illusions.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Lawrence Wittner.

I was a deeply shy child, and my parents wanted me to find my tribe and my passion. Early on, they sent me to a Montessori school, and I really connected with that way of learning. Actually, the self-directed model resonated with me at a young age, which is essentially foreshadowing me becoming freelance. When I was in second and third grade, there was a big book of masterpieces of the 20th century, and I would just faithfully draw them, so my parents were like, “I think she likes art.”

They sent me to this art camp when I was 13. It was like a magnet for artsy, creative kids in Western Mass. I instantly developed this huge crush on the photo counselor. He took me under his wing and taught me how to develop film in a dark room. I was just enthralled and it felt like magic. I think because I came to it really young, there was an element of the process that I couldn’t fully understand. And for that reason, it felt kind of like alchemy and really bewitched me.

I was too nervous to photograph people, even though that’s really what I wanted to capture. Instead, I photographed clouds and developed this body of work where I just took rolls of film of clouds. I was uncharacteristically really confident about them and felt like there was something really powerful and true about these photos. When we had an exhibition at the end of the summer, I was incredibly proud and I wanted something to happen with [the photos]. I was just like, “This is my life’s work.” That experience was so catalyzing for me as a young artist.

It’s often said that artists rehash the same themes over and over in their work and that there’s strength in that. I am so compelled by variation and the infinite combinations of nature and mankind.

I felt that my feelings about variation were summarized effectively by this quote in the Agnes Martin retrospective at the Guggenheim a couple of years ago, where she talks about how she’s celebrated and well-known for her repetitive and geometric compositions. She spent a month studying cloud formations and looking for echoes and repetition to see if nature ever repeats itself. And she concluded it never does. I just felt that spoke directly to Subway Hands and my interest in the captivating singularity of the individual.

I love how that summer you had as a kid led to something so fundamental to your day-to-day life now.

Kids are little geniuses.

What has been the most surprising part of Subway Hands?

I’ve always thought of this project as this somewhat quirky hyper-fixation of mine. It’s been notable the way Subway Hands has resonated with artists and non-art alike. I think that came as a surprise to me because I have this background in art history and a lot of my references come from paintings, and at first, I didn’t see the human interest angle.

There are people who respond to the photos and don’t necessarily think about them as art. They find them emotionally resonant, which really moves me. I routinely get messages from artists asking if they can draw my photos as hand references for their art or their paintings. That feels like a more expected connection. But its broader resonance has been incredibly shocking, gratifying, and really affirming.

You mentioned that in a lot of the images that you make, you’re referencing different paintings. Do you set up the images thinking about a certain piece in mind, or are they taken more spontaneously?

They’re all spontaneous, but I think any project has a constellation of inspirations. I was in an art history class and I saw these portraits of Georgia O’Keeffe taken by her partner Alfred Stieglitz, and the photos were strictly of her hands. There was one photo where you see her face partially, but her hands dominate the image. That moment was really profound to me because I realized how flexible portraiture can be and how the emphasis doesn’t have to be on the face. And I think because of my early anxiety around photographing people or making people uncomfortable, that was really freeing and really powerful.

Over the course of our lives, we project these masks with our faces when we don’t want to reveal our inner emotions. And those masks can be really effective and really disinteresting to photograph. On the subway, when I first moved to New York, I was frustrated by how blank and vacant people’s faces were and immediately noticed this high contrast between faces and hands and how so much of that energy was pulled in gesture and activity in people’s laps.

That’s interesting. I’ve never thought about how hands might reveal even more than their face, especially on the subway, depending on their mood or what’s going on.

The other day, I was stuck on the train for 30 minutes. There was no service, and it was one of the few moments where people’s faces were as expressive as their hands. And I was so tickled by that. [laughs]

How do you nourish your creative side when you’re not working? There’s a blurred line between working and not working when you’re a freelancer, but maybe you can speak on that too.

In recent years, I’ve realized how precious our creativity is and how it needs to be proactively protected in a world that’s exhausting and wearying. I’ve made a concerted effort to create artistic habits that are private and I don’t share online. I’ve started to paint again, which has been so nourishing and exciting. When you’re an artist who’s sharing much of your work publicly, it is easy to fall into the trap of collapsing your relationship with your work and the way it’s received, so I have tried to create more space in my practice for private art making. I also have a lot of friends who are artists. Two of my dear friends and I have a monthly critique group.

Oh, interesting! Are you all photographers or do you work on different mediums?

Different mediums. My friend Jack is a playwright and Robbie is a performance artist. We alternate sharing our work. I think I find it so energizing, especially the way that we’re grappling with a lot of the same larger questions in our work. I think it’s a distillation of why I have connected with teaching so much. Talking to other artists about their work is so compelling and fascinating to me.

I’d love to hear more about that. How did you get into teaching and how has it been?

I was approached during the pandemic to teach a class at the International Center of Photography on the iPhone, using the phone as a fine art artistic tool. Around the same time, I had a photographer friend ask me to speak with his class. These opportunities cohered into speaking about my work more formally. I found that my work as a photographer, documenting strangers, is quite solitary and siloed. In many ways, I am a really social person, and getting to add this layer of connection to my practice and my habits has been so gratifying and has been like a counterbalance to my way of working.

Yeah, I love that. I think it’s always good to have different modes and different contexts for your work, whether you’re making it or sharing how you make it or teaching.

Time to talk about money! How do you juggle the demands of making money with the desire to make meaningful work?

I have historically never made consistent money off of my art. My practice has been very self-directed and self-generated. I only became a professional photographer when that path had basically presented itself to me by getting offered these opportunities.

Before those opportunities were offered up, you never thought this was what you wanted to do?

No, and I think it was a crisis of confidence, somewhat. Now that I am a full-time artist and have to somewhat shape my work to the whims of the market, I have realized how much pressure that puts on your art-making. I feel so fortunate to be making a living as an artist for the moment, but I still have the mentality of someone who doesn’t make money off of their art.

It makes sense that you’re operating from that place because we live in such a precarious society. Even if you’re doing well now, that doesn’t necessarily guarantee much for the future because of how things are set up.

Totally. I think to an extent, being a freelancer can feel like you’re on borrowed time. I try to stay very present with my gratitude for making a living. But it never feels guaranteed.

How has your approach to photography changed since the pandemic?

I’ve realized how much more community-concerned and political my work has become. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I know that’s not a coincidence. During the pandemic, I came to teaching and was really motivated to create meaningful connections and invest in relationships outside of my work. I also started photographing social movements. My Subway Hands photos are very emotional and not without a political ideology. The first photo that I took for that project was born of this conviction that every person is worthy of a closeup. And there’s something very hierarchical about a lot of street photography where it prioritized faces and kind of like really striking faces.

I’m also trying to document New York and all of its multiplicity and layers of experience and class. During the pandemic, I teased out that thread of using photography as this tool to platform the work of activists and organizers and really emphasize their devotion and sacrifice.

I’ve really resonated with the recent protest photography you’ve been doing. The images are so intimate and powerful.

I’m interested in personalizing the sacrifice and commitment of organizers. In this era of increased political awareness, I’ve noticed myself becoming somewhat averse to a certain frame and lens for documenting social movements. So I’ve been trying to react to that by finding new ways to look for the detail and texture that reveals the individuals who are working so tirelessly.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Lore Yessuff.

Borrell, the high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, told the European Parliament that the European External Action Service was “appalled” by the “unprecedented” number of journalists and media workers killed in the six months of war. “Journalists are civilians and their voices are crucial to keeping disinformation at bay and citizens being informed,” Borrell said during a debate on the EU’s response to the Israeli Defense Forces’ killing of humanitarian aid workers, journalists, and other civilians in Gaza.

Borrell also expressed concern about newly adopted legislation allowing Israeli authorities to prevent foreign media networks from operating in Israel. “This, coupled with the lack of access to foreign media to Gaza, raises further concerns about what we know about what is going [on] there,” he said.

Read the full text of the debate here and a January letter to Borrell from CPJ and other partner groups here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

The National Park Service plans to cut most of the trees surrounding these Giant Sequoias in the Lost Grove within a Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks Wilderness area. Photo by René Voss.

“With regard to areas of wilderness, we should be guardians not gardeners.”

– Howard Zahniser, Wilderness Act author

Last September, Wilderness Watch, Sequoia ForestKeeper, and Tule River Conservancy filed a lawsuit against the National Park Service (NPS), challenging the agency’s unlawful decision to implement extensive and motorized tree cutting and burning across thousands of acres of designated Wilderness within Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California. The original complaint was amended in November to also challenge the NPS’s unlawful decision to implement extensive tree planting across designated Wilderness within the same national parks. At that time, the John Muir Project was also added as a plaintiff group. The lawsuit is now awaiting action in the federal courts.

The National Park Service authorized the fuel reduction and tree planting project through an October 2022 decision memorandum that was styled as constituting “alternative arrangements” for compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). However, the agency short-circuited NEPA’s requirements for public involvement and environmental review. Furthermore, the thousands of acres of tree cutting with chainsaws and other motorized activity directly contravenes earlier plans implemented by NPS, which acknowledged the ways in which such activity is unlawful within Wilderness.

The Wilderness Act prohibits NPS from intentionally altering natural processes in designated Wilderness areas and specifically prohibits the use of motor vehicles and motorized equipment (helicopters and chainsaws) by which the agency plans to implement its tree cutting, burning, and planting project. Nonetheless, NPS made the now-challenged decision to intensively reconfigure the forest structure in and around sequoia groves deep within the Wilderness areas.

The National Park Service decided to forego the environmental analysis and public engagement process typically required by NEPA. Instead, the agency fashioned its project authorization as “emergency” activities, citing certain provisions applicable to NEPA that allow agencies to act quickly in the immediacy of discrete emergencies and to thus adjust the mode with which they then satisfy their NEPA obligations.

The National Park Service’s approach to “fuels reduction” and tree planting in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks does not fit the mold of a qualified emergency. Instead, the agency’s project spans tens of thousands of acres of landscape-scale modifications, with planning that was framed prospectively to be implemented over an indefinite period of years. Our legal challenge focuses on the detriment to the public in allowing federal agencies to shield large-scale and controversial projects from public involvement under the guise of “emergency.”

Abundant natural regeneration of giant sequoia seedlings in a large high-intensity fire patch in the Redwood Mountain Grove within the Sequoia-Kings Canyon Wilderness, one of the groves the National Park Service claims is not regenerating and in need of artificial plantings. Photo taken September 29, 2023 by Doug Bevington.

Additionally, experts from outside the NPS, like Dr. Chad Hanson of the John Muir Project, have noted that mortality of the mature sequoias from recent fires has not been as extensive as the NPS first reported. Dr. Hanson and his team have also seen that natural regeneration in many of the burned sequoia groves in designated Wilderness has been quite robust, just as the sequoias have evolved to do after fire. Dr. Hanson has walked among thousands of sequoia seedlings already pushing up from the forest floor, absent any NPS meddling.

The National Park Service often demonstrates a certain arrogance and hubris toward the 1964 Wilderness Act and designated Wilderness. “The National Park Service,” quipped one of my colleagues, “thinks it answers to a higher calling than those pesky laws like NEPA and the Wilderness Act.” That seems to be the case in the agency’s plans to log, burn, and plant in the designated Wilderness portions of Sequoia and Kings Canyon.

In September of 2024, we will celebrate the 60^th anniversary of the signing of the 1964 Wilderness Act into law. Given humanity’s ever-increasing onslaught to damage, develop, and manipulate natural landscapes, the need for the Wilderness Act is greater than it has ever been.

That’s why it’s so important to defend those precious areas that Congress has designated as Wilderness, and at times, to protect them even from the agencies that administer them. And that’s why wilderness advocates will continue to fight to protect the wild, unmanipulated, and untrammeled Wilderness of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks from the Park Service’s misguided plans.

The post Protecting Wilderness in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kevin Proescholdt.

Stand Up America’s Senior Associate of Policy and Political Affairs, Tishan Weerasooriya, issued the following statement:

"Relentless provides this MAGA Court another opportunity to undermine our fundamental rights and freedoms. If the MAGA justices of the Court overturn another decades old precedent it will greatly reduce the ability of scientists and experts at government agencies to defend every Americans’ right to clean water and air, worker protections, healthcare, and more.

“In the past, the MAGA justices on the Court have opted to side with wealthy special interests over expert guidance. Billionaires and elite corporations have been gunning to overturn this precedent for years, hoping to increase their profits even further if experts and scientists are no longer setting safety standards. If the Roberts’ Court overturns Chevron, it will continue to erode our fundamental freedoms and safety in deference to the wealthy and corporations.

"Everyday Americans deserve a Court we can trust. This MAGA Court must stop the relentless attack on our freedoms. Congress must also pass commonsense reforms to the Supreme Court including the TERM Act, the SCERT Act, and adding new justices to restore balance to this ultra-conservative Court.”

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

I noticed while I was in grad school that a lot of my work was very story-based. It was very narrative. So in grad school, I actually took some writing classes. I took one that’s on personal essay, which I really liked, because it can be fiction, it can be nonfiction. It’s short. I love a lot of short stories written by Murakami. Because they’re short, it really requires you to set up the characters and the scene.

I love having a writing practice. It’s a very different story from my painting. I never actually illustrate anything that I write, and I never write about anything I’ve painted—but they all have the same sentiment, the same sense of longing, loss, melancholia, and the same way of using metaphor.

Have you thought about exploring other mediums?

I think painting is my major medium. It’s like a language that I speak in. Writing supplements my painting practice. I’ve never published any writing. A lot of times I’ll just have random thoughts and I’ll jot it down. I wouldn’t call it a formal practice. I don’t want to diminish what other writers do in comparison. They do it as a profession. I don’t want to say I am a writer just because I’m writing.

Wrecker, 2023, oil on linen, 36 × 48 inches

How did painting became a profession for you?

I’ve always wanted to be a painter. I never thought about anything else. I started doodling when I was four or five, and I was always been pretty good at drawing as a kid. I took art classes and went to an art school with special art program, went to an art undergrad. It’s been that throughout my life, that’s where I focus. Basically, my whole meaning of existence centralized around painting. I never really considered other professions. I hate to call it a career, but I love to call it a vocation. Because it’s something that I want to do throughout my life and it has nothing to do with whether I’m getting paid or not.

How do you balance your creative direction with the demands of professional life?

I think that was a difficult lesson to learn as a young artist because school definitely did not prepare me for that. Career was kind of taboo, especially in my undergrad.

I have a slogan in my studio that helps me. It’s always hanging in my studio since my first studio in undergrad, and it says “Paint Whatever the Fuck You Want.” Recently I added another sign that says “Leave the Art World Bullshit Outside of the Door.”

I definitely think I insisted on some stuff that probably isn’t very strategic career-wise. I turned down some shows. It’s just what I had to do. I moved out of my New York studio, too. I moved to a Jersey City studio. I didn’t move to Brooklyn. One of the reasons besides rent, was so that I could get some distance. I could hide out in Jersey City like a hermit. When I want to go into Manhattan and socialize, I can, but for my studio, I’m protecting it. I turn down studio visits when I’m not ready, because I know whatever they say, it’s going to get to my head.

Eight Thousand Layers, 2023, oil on linen, 60 x 48 inches

What is going through your head when you’re making that kind of decision? How do you arrive at that place where you say, “Oh, I actually can’t take on another show this year”?

My top priority is to make sure I have good work. My work is the foundation. If I do not have the work, I can socialize every day, but it still will not get me anywhere. No one is blind. So for me, the moment all the art world stuff starts to get into my work, that is the moment I say, “No, I can’t.”

Another thing I’ve noticed about this art world circus is that it will get into my head even when people say nice stuff. When people say, “Oh, Yuri, I love your work. This work is fantastic.” Even that will affect me in a negative way.

For example, someone might say, “You’re so good at using blue. I love this blue color in your painting.” So the next time when I’m painting, when I pick up a blue, that’s what my mind will remember. I become more hesitant to pick up an orange tube of paint because, well, maybe I should just stick to what I know.

So I’ve noticed that even when galleries or collectors have the best intention, they love your work, it can still negatively affect my mindset. That’s why I say no to a lot of studio visits or shows. I’m trying not to overexpose my work before it’s ready.

How do you deal with those experiences when they happen? Are there things you do going into that space to shield yourself creatively?

I usually like to imagine myself having three hats: the artist hat, the business hat, and the philosopher hat. When I’m wearing my artist hat, I’m never thinking about career, shows, gallery. I’m just focusing on, is this shape the right shape? Is this the right color? A lot of the conversations I have as the artist are in the studio. There I can have more meaningful conversation around the work, and that really helps me to grow my practice.

But when I’m wearing the business hat, I understand I’m doing this as a career. I can’t deny that part of this. So when I work with a gallery, I have a professional hat. I know that’s what I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to be at the opening. I’m supposed to talk to people about the work. It is definitely not my favorite thing to do, but I still enjoy the conversations.

And the third hat is the philosopher hat, which I wear when I think deeply about why this work needs to exist in this world. It’s about my emotions and my story, but how is it going to help other people? What can other people get from it? Where does this work exist in this world?

Lost in Translation, 2023, oil on linen, 60 x 48 inches

So having these three different personas is one way of protecting yourself from that experience of praise or criticism.

If you go into the opening wearing the artist hat, you’re going to get hurt. When people say crazy stuff, you may get hurt. Because the artist’s persona is way too vulnerable to talk to the rest of the world. But the business person will be okay.

Have there been moments where it was difficult to distinguish between those things

I think, over the years, I’ve trained myself to separate them well so that I wouldn’t be hurt, because I did go through art school.

And I had this helpful conversation with a curator from Whitney Museum, Chrissie Iles, who I really, really like, and I asked her when I was a student, “Do people care? Do these people actually care what I have to say?” She said, “Well, I want to say 80% or 70% of them don’t.”

To a lot of people, art is just a form of investment. “Painting is basically money on the wall,” to quote Larry Gagosian. They are more interested in buying young artists as stocks.

But for the 20% to 30% people who actually care, who are very invested in you as a person, as an artist, who want to see you grow and are very interested in what you have to say and your interpretation of the world, just those people alone are enough for all of us to give our 200% to this.

How did your experiences at SAIC and Columbia shape you as an artist?

SAIC taught me how to paint. Columbia taught me how to be an artist. SAIC is a very fine art school. We have a very good collection in the museum. So besides having a lot of artists that I can study with, I also went to the museum a lot and just learned from the top painters. When I was stuck in my studio, I would just walk over to the museum hoping someone would give me the answer. Maybe Manet will, or Degas. That was a very good experience for me because I definitely believe in looking at paintings in person. There’s just no match. And in that four years, I basically only took painting classes.

At Columbia, you really get to know what the art world is and how artists function socially in this circle. I learned a lot about how to be an artist and the importance of developing your own community. I have a very strong support system from my classmates still.

The downside I’ll say is that I don’t understand why art school needs to be so expensive. It’s very difficult. I had to work almost every single job possible. In undergrad, I had three or four jobs. At Columbia, too, I had three or four jobs.

So whenever people ask me, “Hey, do you think I should do MFA?” I don’t know the answer. I don’t know. Not everyone can make a living out of it. I’m still paying the debt I owe, the loans I owe from going to school.

Any Way The Wind Blows (After Jules Breton), 2023, oil on linen, 72 x 60 inches

How did you decide to make that financial commitment? Especially at the MFA level?

One of the main reasons was very realistic. It’s because I’m an immigrant. I was on a student visa, so I was only given one year of internship before I would have to leave the country. And it’s almost impossible for anyone with a higher degree to stay here as an artist, to get an artist visa. It would be very difficult to get an artist’s visa fresh out of undergrad because I didn’t have any shows. I can’t prove that I’m a professional artist. So I applied to a few grad schools and chose Columbia.

How have you managed the transition out of school? What does a typical day look like for you now?

At Columbia, it was so structured. There were a lot of studio visits. You have to do the visits even when you are not ready. I definitely feel like me and my peers felt like our works were overexposed to other people’s opinions and voices.

I like being on my own right now. Outside of school, I can be very selective about who I invite for student visits. I can invite people I truly think will be helpful, that I really admire, and I don’t have to expose my work outside of that.

And the second thing is that being overexposed to theory can be a problem in an MFA. Sometimes people try to focus on making art, not painting. They let go of their genuine emotions, their own vulnerabilities, what makes the work true and what makes the work resonate to other people.

There’s this sense of apprehension and waiting that’s present in your new work. Why do those emotions interest you right now?

I think a lot of those emotions originated from my own experience of growing up in different places. I was born in China. I grew up in Singapore and went to Chicago for undergrad. Now, I moved to New York. Because I’m moving places every few years, I’m constantly saying goodbye to people I know, to people I love. Constantly having to tell them, “I really miss you, but I can’t come back this year.” I haven’t been back to China for four years now. So a lot of the work comes from that place, that emotional place. I’m not illustrating me missing my family, I’m tapping into the emotions of missing, and also anticipating the unknown. What’s going to happen next? Who’s going to come into your life? You don’t actually have a say in those things.

The paintings originate from my experience, but they’re not about my experience. I’m not illustrating what I went through. I’m creating a space to process what I’m feeling, and hopefully the viewers, when they see the paintings, can resonate with that, but they don’t need to know my origin story. They don’t need to know where I have lived. I don’t think that’s necessary or helpful.

Blood Sun, 2023, oil on linen, 30 x 40 inches

Do you feel pressure to articulate the experience of being from China, coming to the US? Do you feel pressure to articulate that experience in your painting?

I do get asked a lot about my background, my identity, but because my work is not about that the conversation isn’t as frequent, which I appreciate.

And I definitely feel like “tokenization” can be a thing. I don’t want to be a token, so whenever we phrase press releases with my galleries, I would say just “Yuri Yuan is an artist. She was born in China.” It’s a lot better than “Yuri Yuan is a Chinese artist.” My artistic identity should come first before my nationality, race or gender, anything else. For me, at least in this space, I’m existing professionally as a painter. That should be first.

I’d love to dig deeper into cultural identity rather than just staying on the surface. For example, the movie Past Lives, which I really liked, is very much about the veiled emotions between two people. There’s no explicit expression. I think my work can represent that too because that, to me, is very Asian. We don’t like to say stuff out loud. We like to say it more poetically or metaphorically. Asian parents never tell their kids, “I love you. I love you so much.” They’ll be like, “I made you your favorite dish.” Something like that. I think that’s part of our culture that’s less obvious.

I don’t want my paintings to function as slogans or propaganda. They’re not telling you, “You should think this way. You should behave this way.” They’re providing you a space for you to reflect.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Claudia Ross.

With its recently launched Operation Prosperity Guardian, the United States is leading a multinational military coalition to occupy the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab, where oil tankers and commercial vessels have come under attack by Houthi militants in Yemen. The U.S.-led military intervention has brought the United States into direct conflict with the Houthis, who insist that they will continue their attacks until Israel ends its military offensive in Gaza.

“This is about the protection of one of the major commerce routes of the world in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab,” a senior official in the Biden administration said.

Strategic Waterways

For years, the U.S. military has played a central role in the Red Sea, a large waterway between northeastern Africa and the Arabian peninsula that facilitates regional commerce. In April 2022, the U.S. military oversaw the creation of Combined Task Force 153, a multinational naval partnership to patrol the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandab, and Gulf of Aden.

“As everyone can appreciate, those waters are critical to the free flow of commerce throughout the region,” Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, the regional U.S. naval commander, explained at the time.

The Red Sea is a vital shipping route, accounting for nearly 15 percent of all seaborne trade. It facilitates commerce between Europe and Asia, enabling commercial ships to save time by passing through the Middle East rather than taking a longer route around Africa.

The Red Sea is also a major transit route for the world’s oil and natural gas. Significant amounts of oil from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and other countries in the Persian Gulf are routed through the Red Sea to markets in Asia, Europe, and North America. Overall, the Red Sea accounts for 8 percent of global trade in liquefied natural gas and 12 percent of seaborne trade in oil.

“The Red Sea is a vital waterway,” White House spokesperson John Kirby said at a January 3 press briefing. “A significant amount of global trade flows through that Red Sea.”

Of particular concern to U.S. officials is the Bab al-Mandab, a strait at the southern end of the Red Sea. Only 18 miles wide at its narrowest point, the strait forms a chokepoint that forces commercial vessels into tight shipping lanes. As of early 2023, an estimated 8.8 million barrels of oil passed through the Bab al-Mandab every day, making it one of the world’s most significant chokepoints.

“The Bab al-Mandab Strait is a strategic route for oil and natural gas shipments,” the U.S. Energy Information Agency notes.

Operation Prosperity Guardian

Now that the Houthis are attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea, the United States is establishing a larger military presence in the region with Operation Prosperity Guardian. Under this new initiative, the United States is working with its coalition partners to establish what U.S. officials call a “persistent presence” in the southern Red Sea, meaning that coalition warships and other military assets will remain actively spread out across the area in a kind of military occupation.

“Together, we now have the largest surface and air presence in the southern Red Sea in years,” Cooper said at a January 4 press briefing.

As part of the operation, warships from France, Great Britain, and the United States are positioned throughout the southern Red Sea. They have been reinforced by the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, which is located in the Gulf of Aden.

Already, the U.S.-led military coalition has engaged in hostilities with the Houthis, including one incident on December 31 in which U.S. forces sank three Houthi small boats, killing 10 fighters.

“It’s up to the Houthis to halt the attacks,” Cooper insisted. “They’re the instigator and initiator.”

The United States and the Houthis

This is not the first time that the United States has come into conflict with the Houthis. For years, the United States supported Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen against the Houthis. Both the Obama and Trump administrations provided a Saudi-led military coalition with advanced weaponry and military advice, even as it repeatedly committed war crimes by striking civilian targets.

The Saudi-led military intervention sparked one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, leading to the deaths of more than 377,000 people. A temporary truce that began in April 2022 led to a reduction in hostilities, but the war has never ended, creating fears that it could reignite at any moment.

“Nobody should believe that the current state of affairs with relatively low levels of fighting is going to last,” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) noted late last year.

Throughout Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen and Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, the United States has been the main power behind the scenes, arming its allies while their military operations have caused tremendous harm to civilians. Officials in Washington have insisted that they have sought to minimize civilian casualties, but their priority has been to prevent the wars from disrupting commerce in nearby waterways, especially in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab.

“There’s no question in my mind that this is very important, not only to the countries in the region but globally,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said last month, referring to the need to ensure freedom of navigation. “What the Houthis are doing affects commerce around the globe.”

U.S. Considerations

As several powerful companies have begun halting their operations in the Red Sea, some current and former U.S. officials have been calling for stronger military action, such as military strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. The United States previously took direct action against the Houthis in October 2016, when a U.S. warship fired cruise missiles against radar sites in Yemen.

Still, high-level officials have been careful about taking the war directly to the Houthis. So far, President Biden has decided against striking Houthi targets, even after being presented with military options.

A major concern in Washington is that any kind of escalation against the Houthis could reignite the war in Yemen, which has already left the Houthis with the upper hand. When former CIA analyst Bruce Riedel considered the prospect of a U.S. war in Yemen late last year, he questioned whether the people of the United States would support such a war.

“I would venture that if you ask 100 Americans, ‘who are the Houthis?’” Riedel said, “99 percent of them would say, ‘the whats, the whats?’”

Another major concern is that a U.S. war against the Houthis would create further complications for the United States and its allies. If the United States attacked the Houthis, then the Houthis might respond by bringing the war to areas beyond the Red Sea, such as Israel. Already, the Houthis have launched drones and missiles toward Israel.

Officials in the Biden administration have been so concerned about the implications of going to war against the Houthis that they have not accused the Houthis of attacking the United States, even as the Houthis have repeatedly fired drones and missiles in the direction of U.S. warships. Administration officials have claimed that they cannot conclude with certainty that the Houthis have deliberately targeted U.S. military forces.

Additional members of the current U.S.-led military coalition share similar concerns, with some even going so far as to refuse to disclose their participation in the U.S.-led military coalition. Whereas some are concerned about retaliation, others fear what people might think about their participation in a military operation that is indifferent to the suffering of the people of Gaza.

“Not all want to become public,” Kirby acknowledged.

Implications for Gaza

While officials in Washington weigh their options, they are doing little to address the core issue, which is Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza. The Biden administration opposes a ceasefire, even as it repeatedly demands that the Houthis end their attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea.

Essentially, the Biden administration is engaging in a form of imperial management, as its works to help Israel continue its military campaign in Gaza while limiting its effects on regional dynamics and global markets. Rather than backing a ceasefire, the Biden administration is hoping to minimize the repercussions of Israel’s offensive for the global economy and contain any movement toward a wider war.

What the Biden administration has shown, in short, is that it cares far more about protecting fossil fuels and the world’s most powerful businesses than it does about protecting the people of Gaza.

The post U.S. Officials Care More About Protecting Oil Tankers Than Palestinians appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Edward Hunt.

Welcoming the rule—set to take effect in March—the Teamsters said on social media that "it's long past time for American employers to recognize and respect their employees, to stop exploiting loopholes to pay workers less and deprive them of benefits, and to honor every worker's right to organize and collectively bargain a union contract."

Economic Policy Institute (EPI) president Heidi Shierholz highlighted that the rule rescinds a Trump-era policy and, like Su, stressed how "employer misclassification of workers as independent contractors robs workers of labor rights and threatens their economic security."

"Many workers are harmed by employer misclassification—particularly those in the lowest-wage and most difficult jobs, such as nail salon workers, truck drivers, and construction workers," Shierholz said. "A previous EPI analysis found that in 11 commonly misclassified occupations, workers misclassified as independent contractors lose out on thousands of dollars in earnings and benefits per year, compared with workers doing the same job with employee status."

"Since this rule was proposed, opponents of this rule have waged an all-out misinformation war, claiming that independent entrepreneurs and business owners will now be forced into employee status against their will," the economist noted. "The reality is that if the Trump administration's rule was allowed to stand, workers with far less power to actually set the terms and conditions of their employment—not bonafide contractors—would have continued to lose out on basic worker protections, earnings, and benefits to which they should be entitled."

The Washington Postreported Tuesday that "the rule is expected to face an onslaught of legal challenges from companies. It has faced extensive criticism from businesses and industry groups, including those representing Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and other ride-share and delivery platforms. But labor officials say they have carefully considered possible litigation and are confident that the rule would withstand a court challenge."

Some Republicans in Congress are already taking aim at the policy, with U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Ranking Member Bill Cassidy (R-La.) threatening to challenge it under the Congressional Review Act.

Meanwhile, Senate HELP Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime labor rights advocate, praised the administration's new move to "stop unscrupulous employers from deliberately misclassifying their workers and cheating them out of hard-earned wages," adding that "when 60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, workers need labor laws that protect them, not allow them to be ripped off."

Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) also offered praise, saying that "I am thrilled to see the Biden administration continuing to put its pro-worker commitment into action with this new final rule."

"With gig work playing a larger role in our economy, it's more important than ever that workers are protected under federal law and have access to all the rights to which they're entitled," she said. "This new policy will ensure that the workers who have fallen through the cracks—from rideshare and delivery drivers to janitors and home care workers—will finally be able to access Social Security benefits and unemployment insurance and be guaranteed overtime and minimum wage pay."

"The rule is also an essential check on large, wealthy corporations who have skirted their obligations to these workers even as their labor makes the companies" profits possible," she continued, adding that the CPC looks forward to working with President Joe Biden and Su to ensure it "is implemented fairly and equitably across the country and industries."

The department's announcement came a day after Biden renominated Su as labor secretary—a decision also celebrated by progressives, including Jayapal and Sanders, who called on the Senate to stop stalling.

"Julie Su has spent her career as a dedicated public servant, fighting tirelessly for working people, especially the lowest-wage workers, domestic workers, immigrant workers, and workers of color," Jayapal pointed out. "She deeply understands how the Department of Labor should work and the needs of our modern economy."

"There is so much work still to do to raise wages, lower costs, and fight for the working people of this country, and we need Labor Secretary Su to achieve it," the CPC leader added. "We urge the Senate to move swiftly and finally confirm this extremely qualified nominee."

Sanders said that "I strongly support Julie Su's renomination to serve as Secretary of Labor. Her strong pro-worker track record as acting Secretary shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is the right person for the job. Her tireless and consistent work for working families across the country should continue as secretary of labor and I urge my colleagues to support her nomination."

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

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

Sônia Guajajara is Brazil’s first Indigenous cabinet minister and the country’s first-ever minister of Indigenous peoples. We recently sat down with Guajajara at the COP28 summit in Dubai to discuss the role of Indigenous communities in the rapidly developing climate crisis. She discussed her work within the administration of Brazilian President Lula to stop Amazon rainforest deforestation and to wrest back Indigenous governance from extractive industry. “We have little time left,” Guajajara warned. “We’ve lost more than 60% of our native plants in the forest. So climate change is not just a problem of the future. We’re experiencing the consequences right now.”

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

On any given summer day, most of the nation’s farm workers, paid according to their productivity, grind through searing heat to harvest as much as possible before day’s end. Taking a break to cool down, or even a moment to chug water, isn’t an option. The law doesn’t require it, so few farms offer it.

The problem is most acute in the Deep South, where the weather and politics can be equally brutal toward the men and women who pick this country’s food. Yet things are improving as organizers like Leonel Perez take to the fields to tell farm workers, and those who employ them, about the risks of heat exposure and the need to take breaks, drink water, and recognize the signs of heat exhaustion. 

“The workers themselves are never in a position where they’ve been expecting something like this,” Perez told Grist through a translator. “If we say, ‘Hey, you have the right to go and take a break when you need one,’ it’s not something that they’re accustomed to hearing or that they necessarily trust right away.”

Perez is an educator with the Fair Food Program, a worker-led human rights campaign that’s been steadily expanding from its base in southern Florida to farms in 10 states, Mexico, Chile, and South Africa. Although founded in 2011 to protect workers from forced labor, sexual harassment, and other abuses, it has of late taken on the urgent role of helping them cope with ever-hotter conditions. 

It is increasingly vital work. Among those who labor outdoors, agricultural workers enjoy the least protection. Despite this summer’s record heat, the United States still lacks a federal standard governing workplace exposure to extreme temperatures. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, the agency has opened more than 4,500 heat-related inspections since March 2022, but it does not have data on worker deaths from heat-related illnesses. 

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Most states, particularly those led by Republicans, are loath to institute their own heat standards even as conditions grow steadily worse. In lieu of such regulation, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, through its Fair Food Program, has adopted stringent heat protocols that, among other things, require regular breaks and access to water and shade. Such things are essential. Extreme heat killed at least 436 workers of all kinds, and sickened 34,000 more, between 2011 to 2021, according to NPR. Some believe that toll is much higher, and efforts like those Perez leads are providing a model for others working toward broader and more strictly enforced safeguards. 

“We look to [the Fair Food Program] for best practices in terms of how can agricultural employers already begin to implement these kinds of protections,” said Oscar Londoño, the executive director of WeCount, which has been pushing for a heat standard in Miami-Dade County. “But we also believe that it’s important to have regulations and forcible regulation that covers entire industries.”

The Fair Food Program works with 29 farms, which raise more than a dozen different crops, and the buyers who rely upon them. In exchange for guaranteeing workers basic rights, participating growers and buyers, including Walmart, Trader Joe’s, and McDonald’s, receive a seal of approval that signals to customers that the produce they are buying was grown and harvested in fair, humane conditions.

To protect workers, the guidelines require 10-minute breaks every two hours and access to shade and water. The program also extended the time frame during which those things must be offered, from five months to eight, reducing the amount of time that workers are exposed to the worst heat of the year. Growers also must be aware of the signs of heat stress and monitor workers for them. Such steps are vital, particularly in humid conditions, to prevent acute heatstroke and safeguard employees’ long-term health. Repeated exposure to extreme temperatures can cause kidney disease, heat stroke, cardiovascular failure, and other illnesses.

“Having time to rest and cool down is very important to reduce the risk of death and injury from heat stress, because the damage that heat causes to the body is cumulative,” said Mayra Reiter, director of occupational safety and health at the advocacy organization Farmworker Justice. “Workers who are not given rest periods to recover face greater health risks.”

Such risks were very real for Perez, who worked various vegetable farms around Immokalee and along the East Coast before becoming an educator and advocate. Because most farm workers are paid according to how much they harvest, few feel they can spend a few minutes in the shade sipping a beverage. 

“The difficulty of the work makes you feel like it takes years off your life,” Lupe Gonzalo, a member of Coalition of Immaokalee Workers, wrote in a public blog post. High humidity makes things worse, and those who rely upon employer-provided housing often find no relief after a day in the fields because many accommodations lack air conditioning, she wrote.

Abusive conditions can compound the deadly conditions. A 2022 investigation by the Department of Labor revealed poor conditions, including human trafficking and wage theft, at farms across South Georgia. Two workers experienced heat illness and organ failure, and others were held at gunpoint to keep them in line as they labored. 

Many were workers holding H-2A visas in a program that has its roots in the Mexican Farm Labor Program, launched in 1942, that sponsored seasonal agricultural workers from Mexico. (Currently, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issues those visas.) Because of their reliance on employers for housing, visa sponsorship, and employment, many workers experience abuse, an investigation by Prism, Futuro Media, and Latino USA found earlier this year. 

It doesn’t help that federal labor law, including the National Labor Relations Act, doesn’t cover agricultural workers in the same way it protects employees in other sectors, said James Brudney, a professor of labor and employment law at Fordham University. Additionally, language barriers, fear of retaliation, and workers who come from a variety of backgrounds and cultures keep many from speaking out.

Perez remembers having only bad options for dealing with adverse working conditions: Deal with it, complain and risk being fired, or quit. The Fair Food Program gives workers recourse he never had, and builds on protections against forced labor, sexual harassment, and other abuses it has achieved with workers, growers, and buyers, which have agreed not to buy from farm operators with spotty records, since 2011. 

Workers are regularly informed of their rights, and violations can be reported to the Fair Food Program through a hotline for investigation. Heat-related complaints have grown increasingly common in recent years, and often lead to a confidential arbitration process. Such inquiries may lead to mandatory heat safety training and stipulations growers must abide by. Findings of more serious allegations, such as sexual harassment, can lead to a grower being suspended or even removed from the program. Such efforts protect workers, hold employers accountable, and allow the program to know what’s most impacting laborers, said Stephanie Medina, a human rights auditor with the Fair Food Standards Council.

“With the record heat, every summer has definitely, I think, gotten a lot more difficult for workers out there,” Medina said. “I think that is one of the reasons why we put so much emphasis on getting the heat stress protocols together and implemented in the program.”

Growers must report every heat-related illness or injury, which is investigated by Medina’s team or an outside investigator depending on severity. Her team visits every participating grower annually. Many of them go beyond the program’s requirements to ensure worker safety, by, say, providing Gatorade and snacks and regularly checking in on those who have experienced heat-related illness, she said. Workers, too, are being more assertive in protecting themselves, reporting any violations because they know they cannot be retaliated against. 

Though no growers or farmer’s associations responded to Grist’s requests for comment, some at least appear happy with the organization’s work. “The Fair Food Program is giving us structure and is a tool for better understanding in a workplace that is multicultural and multiracial,” Bloomia, a flower producer and FFP participant, said in a statement on the program’s website.

Still, some farm workers’ organizations, while supportive of the program’s work, doubt that farm-by-farm solutions will ever be enough to protect a majority of farm workers. Jeannie Economos, of the Farmworkers’ Association of Florida, said comprehensive policy-level solutions are required. She noted that even in Florida nurseries, greenhouses, and other growers of ornamental plants employ thousands of people who are not yet covered by the Fair Food Program. Although they one day may be, federal, state, and local regulations are needed to ensure sweeping safety reforms. 

“So what do we think of the Fair Food Program? It’s good,” she said. “But it’s not far-reaching enough.” 

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‘Nothing’s predictable’: Extreme weather is ruining farmers’ crops, and their finances

Lois Parshley

Other campaigns are working toward legislative solutions. An effort called ¡Que Calor! in Miami-Dade County, led by WeCount, has been pushing the issue for years, and in many ways is inspired by what the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has accomplished, Londoño told Grist. 

“Miami-Dade is on the verge of passing the first county-wide [standard] in the country, and it would protect more than 100,000 outdoor workers in both agriculture and construction,” he said “In the absence of a federal rule, and in the absence of state protections, local governments can play a foundational role in piloting policies that states and the entire federal government can take on.”

¡Que Calor!, has, like the Fair Food Program, been led by workers. Including them in drafting policies can help ensure they are effective because “they know what their risks and the threats to their well being are better than anyone,” Brudney, the Fordham University professor, said

Yet even jurisdictions with strict labor laws can see their protections undercut because they often rely on employees, who may face reprisals, to report violations. Miami-Dade’s proposal skirts that by creating a county Office of Workplace Health with broad powers to receive complaints, initiate inspections, interview workers, and adjudicate investigations.

Amid such victories and a mounting need to protect workers, the Fair Food Program plans to expand its reach. It has cropped up at tomato farms in Georgia and Tennessee; crept up the East Coast to lettuce, sweet potato, and squash farms in North Carolina, New Jersey, Maryland, and Vermont; and sprouted on sweet corn farms in Colorado and sunflower farms in California. Organizers from the Fair Food Program have in recent weeks met with growers and workers in Chile eager to bring its efforts there.

The organization hopes to see its principals embraced more widely, and continues to pressure more companies, including Wendy’s and the Publix supermarket chain, to buy into the effort. Medina says such an effort will require staffing up, but she’s confident in its chances of success. 

Many growers willfully neglect the rights and needs of workers, making such efforts essential, Perez said. The need for victories like those already seen on farms that work with the program will only grow more acute as the planet continues to warm. Even if federal heat standards are adopted, Perez believes local worker-led accountability processes will still be needed to ensure growers follow the law.

“What we see the Fair Food Program as is both a method of education and a way to share information with workers about these risks,” he said, “and at the same time as a tool for workers to protect themselves against the worst effects of climate change on a day to day basis.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How Florida farm workers are protecting themselves from extreme heat on Oct 27, 2023.

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

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Eva Bonilla grows furious when she thinks about how Latino voters are treated by the Republican power structure in Texas. At 74, the small business owner watched the GOP Legislature pass a series of measures like a voter ID law that she felt would make it harder for Latinos to cast ballots or run for public office.

Two years ago, serving as the leader of a Hispanic women’s group in Fort Worth, she decided to strike back. The Republican Legislature had just pushed through new election maps that carved up Latino communities and made it even harder for them to elect candidates of their choice. So Bonilla joined other minority voters as plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit alleging intentional discrimination in the 2021 redistricting plan.

“I wanted to see the right thing done, and this is just not right,” she said.

Then Bonilla waited.

In 2022, an election came and went with districts based on the challenged maps. It has now achieved a dubious distinction: Of the 87 lawsuits filed over the 2021 congressional and legislative redistricting plans nationwide, it has dragged on the longest without having held a trial. As another election looms, a trial date has not even been set.

The reason? Republican leaders asserted their rights to block the most routine give-and-take of lawsuits, resisting handing over documents, providing discovery or submitting to depositions — in effect squashing Bonilla’s efforts to uncover how the 2021 maps were drawn. The lawmakers have done so by the rigorous use of two forms of privilege: the better known attorney-client privilege and what is known as legislative privilege, which allows elected members of state legislatures to deliberate in private.

As the Texas case drags on, legislatures across the country are making new and expansive claims of privilege to keep electoral maps in place and prevent the public from finding out how they made their decisions and why.

Texas lawmakers did not stumble upon these tactics on their own. A national GOP redistricting group helped train Republican lawmakers in Texas on how to approach lawsuits and raised money to pay legal costs. The lawmakers also passed a new law to further protect their deliberations. In addition, they put an outside political operative on the state’s payroll so that the legislative privilege could shield his activities. Finally, they relied on GOP map-drawers who worked for law firms, which allowed lawmakers to assert that the maps were “legal advice.”

Throughout, the Texas lawmakers have contended they did not discriminate against Latino voters.

In Louisiana, North Dakota and elsewhere, Republicans have resisted challenges to their maps by asserting privilege. In Washington, Democrats have done the same. Legal experts say the expanding use of privilege robs plaintiffs of key insights. To succeed in court, plaintiffs in many cases have to show legislators intended to discriminate. Without access, explained Harvard Law School professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos, it becomes “very difficult to prove intent even where it was actually present.”

The concept of legislative privilege is protected under the U.S. Constitution’s speech and debate clause, and 43 states have embedded it in their constitutions. Originally intended to protect legislators from criminal or civil claims for things they said on the floor, it has come to encompass lawmakers’ work-related communications. In theory, affording such protection allowed for frank conversations.

But in the past, people who wanted to scrutinize a legislature’s activities had another, if narrower, way to find out what was going on: They could file open records requests to get access to interactions lawmakers had with outside third parties, such as consultants or political operatives. In Texas and elsewhere, Republicans have succeeded in shielding even these once-public interactions.

Conservative judges in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers several states including Texas, and the 8th Circuit, which covers the Dakotas, have recently sided with state legislatures that have used expanded privilege claims to prevent public review. Recently, Arizona Republicans appealed to the 9th Circuit to shield their deliberations.

Partisan battles have long been a staple of redistricting, which happens every 10 years. But as more states craft their new maps out of public sight, the fights are ending up in drawn-out court cases, with enormous consequences for voters. The lawsuits are taking so long to resolve that six states conducted their 2022 elections under maps that had been ruled illegal by lower courts, according to a recent analysis by Democracy Docket, a progressive website that tracks redistricting cases. They await resolution. Lawsuits challenging maps in seven other states were still awaiting court action when the elections took place.

The Texas GOP undertook its mapmaking effort as the state was undergoing a significant demographic shift. Latinos now slightly outnumber non-Hispanic white people in the state, and they and other minorities account for almost all population growth in the last decade, according to census data. Many of these new residents will likely vote for the Democratic Party. Through aggressive redistricting, however, Republicans have been able to maintain control of the Legislature, all major statewide offices and the state’s congressional delegation. And they grabbed one of the two new seats in Congress gained through the population increases.

“Elections can’t really be unwound. You can’t go back and change the composition of the Texas Legislature from 2022,” said Yurij Rudensky, senior counsel with the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan legal institute. The center represents a separate group of minority plaintiffs who are challenging the state’s maps. The Justice Department has joined the plaintiffs. “So using discriminatory districts cuts to the heart of our democracy.”

To reconstruct how Texas Republicans stalled the legal fight over their redrawn districts, ProPublica used federal court records in six states as well as interviews with experts, voters and former state officials. Combined they provide the fullest account yet of how state lawmakers hobbled the opposition and hidden their activities.

Keith Gaddie, a former bipartisan litigation consultant, said that in his experience, lawmakers keep their methods secret when they are aggressively gaming the process for political gain. “The more egregious the gerrymander, the less information can be made available about the process,” he said. “It’s a nasty, nasty business.”

Redistricting in Texas was two years away when leaders of the Virginia-based National Republican Redistricting Trust flew into Houston for a poolside briefing for GOP supporters.

Established in 2017 to counter a similar Democratic Party redistricting operation, the NRRT and its nonprofit affiliate, Fair Lines America, had many Texas ties. Senior leadership included powerful Texan Karl Rove, a former White House official and longtime consultant to Texas governors.

At the closed event in 2019 in a Houston suburb, Texas GOP Chairman James Dickey mingled with party loyalists to discuss the two or three new seats they should get in Congress as the state’s population boomed, according to social media accounts and interviews. A young supporter took selfies with Washington influencers like James “Trey” Trainor, a Texas lawyer whose nomination by President Donald Trump to the Federal Election Commission was being blocked by Democrats because of his criticisms of campaign finance laws. On Instagram, the supporter described it as a helpful session on the “threats and opportunities redistricting presents.”

The NRRT’s executive director is Adam Kincaid, a former Republican National Committee strategist. Kincaid had become the go-to conservative voice on redistricting within the party. Soon, he would take a hands-on role in drawing Texas’ congressional map. Kincaid declined to comment on his work in Texas “due to ongoing litigation.”

On a party podcast, Kincaid had pushed Republicans to counter what he described as the Democrat’s plan to “sue till it’s blue.” The NRRT distributed talking points asserting that “Democrats are sitting back counting the cash they plan to use on their trial lawyers to fund their strategy of endless litigation,” according to a document secured by the watchdog American Oversight.

In the podcast, Kincaid said the NRRT, which does not have to disclose its donors, would send resources to states facing challenges. Separately, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas promoted a super PAC that raised money to hire redistricting experts and legal counsel and brought in $500,000 in a single day.

Texas had been mired in voting rights litigation for almost a decade. Groups representing Latino and Black voters had sued after the 2010 census too, making similar allegations to today. Then, a district court judicial panel rejected the state’s map, ruling that large portions of it were unconstitutional racial gerrymanders and ordering maps to be redrawn. Republicans tried to assert legislative privilege over internal emails, but judges rejected the arguments and ordered the documents released.

Emails exposed GOP staffers plotting about how to draw maps to maximize Republican influence in Latino areas, or as one staffer put it: creating “Optimal Hispanic Republican Voting Strength.”

A state lawyer dismissed their plan in Spanish, “No Bueno,” slang for “No Good.” He warned them not to create a paper trail. The court found discriminatory intent.

The state appealed. Ultimately, the Supreme Court in 2018 reversed the lower court and sided with the Republicans in a 5-4 ruling.

Having been embarrassed after 2010, GOP leaders promised transparency this time around. Instead, they took the opposite tack, said Glenn Smith, an author and longtime Houston reporter and Democratic consultant: “Hide as much as possible.”

A leader in the buildup to the 2021 redistricting was Republican state Rep. Phil King, a lawyer who has championed religious liberty and Second Amendment issues. King chaired the House Redistricting Committee and set up a tutorial for members in 2019 featuring Ryan Bangert, a hardliner who was appointed by Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. It was obvious, said one attendee, that King was “preemptively trying to make sure members covered their tracks.” King’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

In his presentation, Bangert raised what he called “caution flags,” according to a tape of the meeting. While judges had differing interpretations of privilege, it was generally waived if information was shared with outside third parties like lobbyists. “Be very careful,” he said, of tweets or barroom conversations. Bangert now advises a conservative legal group. His spokesperson said that he had no further redistricting involvement.

King was the ideal person to lead the fight. He had star billing in 2019 at two sessions of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group of state lawmakers, lobbyists and executives that works to draft and spread conservative legislation. King, a national board member of the council, spoke on a panel that delivered a primer on redistricting challenges. Drawing maps favorable to the GOP while preserving minority rights was tricky, party leaders said at the sessions.

GOP strategist Cleta Mitchell, who later took a lead role in Trump’s 2020 election denial effort, worked with the council’s redistricting committee. She moderated King’s panel at the annual convention, telling the audience sarcastically that it would teach them “how to gerrymander.” Slate, which posted leaked audio, said the speakers encouraged “trashing potential evidence.”

The legislators did not want to rely solely on their own discretion, however. In May 2019, a Republican House member from Fort Worth used a routine housekeeping bill to mount a sweeping assault on open records. He slipped a provision into the bill that closed off public access to internal redistricting records. It passed before transparency advocates noticed.

The bill shielded lawmakers’ communications with staff, even interns, as well as outside contractors who might normally be considered third parties. Other legislatures have adopted similar measures. Florida has exempted redistricting documents from its Sunshine Law since 1993, and North Carolina’s Republican-led Legislature recently buried a similar exemption in its 625-page budget bill. The Democratic-led Legislature in Washington is under a court challenge for using a loophole in the state constitution to exclude lawmakers from open records requests related to redistricting.

In addition to passing the law, Texas Republicans assembled legal heavy hitters who, in turn, hired subcontractors who could work behind attorney-client privilege. The House paid more than $1 million to Butler Snow LLP, which hired a Virginia-based demographer to draw maps for the state House of Representatives. (The legal contracts were obtained by American Oversight through an open records request sent before the law was passed.)

Then, for the national congressional seats, 22 GOP members of the Texas Legislature hired Chris Gober, former general counsel for the state Republican Party. It’s not unusual for states or members to retain outside counsel. But what Gober then did was hire the NRRT, an outside party, paying the group a mere $5,000. That secured Kincaid’s map-drawing services, according to Gober’s deposition. He said Kincaid “had the mouse” on the computer drawing congressional maps.

Gober said he is not proficient with redistricting software and hires subcontractors to work under his direction. “That arrangement — and our assertion of attorney-client privilege — is not any different than the other circumstances where our firm hires subcontractors,” he said.

In the Texas case, NRRT legal counsel Jason Torchinsky argued that Kincaid should not have to give a deposition because it would “deter full and honest discussions” between NRRT and partners. After a year of wrangling, a judge ordered Kincaid to answer questions and a deposition is scheduled for early November.

Torchinsky himself has become a key figure in helping Republicans with redistricting. In 2022, he helped devise a new congressional map for the office of Gov. Ron DeSantis. The governor’s plan, which faces a federal lawsuit, reduced the voting power of Black residents. A state judge has since ordered the map redrawn. Torchinsky did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

While Kincaid focused on drawing a map for the state’s congressional seats, GOP map-drawer Adam Foltz arrived from Wisconsin in 2021 to assist the local effort. By then, Republican state Rep. Todd Hunter had succeeded King as House redistricting chairman. Hunter had a checkered history in redistricting; judges in 2011 had criticized him for drawing maps that undermined Latinos, according to The Texas Tribune. Hunter gave Foltz a $120,000-a-year state job, the Tribune reported, and he enjoyed such high-level access that Democrats noticed his car parked in a special driveway for members. Foltz, whose work also fell under the umbrella of privilege, drew a state salary even after map drawing concluded, and he recently got a $6,000 cost-of-living increase.

Foltz had a similar arrangement in Wisconsin, a state lawyers often cite as a poster child for improper government secrecy and prolonged litigation in its 2010 redistricting cycle. Working from a private law firm, Foltz drew maps that later were thrown out, according to local press reports. Foltz remained in a $50,000-a-year state job during litigation. He later gave testimony that a judicial panel called “almost laughable.” Foltz declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation. Hunter’s office did not respond.

Foltz’s deposition in the Texas case remains sealed by order of the court. He is still asserting legislative privilege to try to prevent giving access to his mapping work to the Justice Department, which joined the plaintiffs who are challenging the maps.

The fight carried over to the Texas Senate as well. Republican-led redistricting helped end the Senate tenure of Beverly Powell, a Democrat. She said she knew she had a target on her back from the time she was elected, unseating a Tea Party Republican in 2018.

Powell’s Senate District 10 in Tarrant County, an unpredictable swing district in recent years, was one of several seats Republicans wanted to reclaim to consolidate their power.

She expected a bad result when the Republican chair of the Senate Redistricting Committee, Joan Huffman, secluded herself to draw a new Senate map. When Powell was finally called in to view it, what she saw outraged her. Her district’s minority communities had been split up, diluting their voting strength, while largely white rural counties had been added.

“I know exactly what you are trying to do,” Powell said she told Huffman. She dashed off a warning to other senators that Huffman’s plan was discriminatory.

The district previously represented racially diverse communities near Fort Worth, but it now encompasses portions of sprawling rural counties with mostly white constituents.

Huffman insisted her map was “race-blind.” Her plan sailed through, with a notable dissent from former redistricting chair Sen. Kel Seliger, a Republican then feuding with some fellow Republicans. The Amarillo senator later testified that Huffman’s map “violated the Voting Rights Act.”

Powell tried unsuccessfully to convince a court to delay the 2022 primary election. She dropped out of the race for reelection, and the powerful House veteran King took her seat.

Powell’s complaint about the district is now part of LULAC v. Abbott, the redistricting case now awaiting trial. Her case stands out because “she has much more information about what happened than any of the rest of us do,” said Nina Perales, vice president of litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Republicans have asserted privilege in the Senate mapping fight as well. Overall for all the mapping, their claims cover about two-thirds of the documents the Justice Department wants, including drafts of maps, emails and calendars that reflect protected “thoughts, opinions and mental impressions,” documents show. The legislature has disputed that estimate.

The case stalled for a year while the 5th Circuit weighed privilege in another Texas case. Written by Trump appointee Judge Don R. Willett, its decision defended legislative privilege “even when constitutional rights are at stake.” The 8th Circuit also ruled in June in a North Dakota redistricting case that privilege “protects the functioning of the legislature.”

Judges in the redistricting case are weighing how these decisions impact 22 outstanding motions for documents and depositions.

For her part, Bonilla, the Fort Worth small business owner, says she’s given up hope. “The system has failed,” she said.

Josh Kaplan contributed reporting. Alex Mierjeski and Gabriel Sandoval contributed research.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Marilyn W. Thompson.

The Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) says it is “deeply concerned” at reports that Western Australian police are demanding the ABC hand over footage about climate protesters filmed as part of a Four Corners investigation.

“As researchers and teachers of journalism, we uphold the ethical obligation of journalists to honour any assurances given to protect sources,” said JERAA president Associate Professor Alexandra Wake in a statement.

“This obligation is imperative in supporting the Western democratic tradition of journalism and to investigative journalism in particular.”

• READ MORE: Media union condemns WA police demand for footage
• Escalation: Climate, protest and the fight for the future

The ABC case relates to an investigation due to be broadcast on Four Corners tonight: “Escalation: Climate, protest and the fight for the future”.

“I’m going to remember this for the rest of my life.” Video: ABC Four Corners

WA police are reported to have demanded footage via “Order to Produce” provisions of the WA Criminal Investigations Act. The law compels organisations to comply.

One of JERAA’s core aims was to promote freedom of expression and communication, said the statement.

“The association is concerned that the WA police action represents a direct threat to media freedom and the practice of ethical investigative journalism,” Dr Wake said.

“We join the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) in urging the ABC to stand firm and not hand over footage which could potentially undermine assurances by the Four Corners team to their sources.”

The union for Australian journalists said it was alarmed at the reports that WA police were demanding the ABC hand over footage featuring climate activists filmed as part of the television investigation before it had even aired.

• “Escalation” reported by Hagar Cohen goes to air tonight, Monday, 9 October 2023, at 8.30pm AEST on ABC TV and ABC iview.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

The post Protecting Democracy From Itself:  Can the Fourteenth Amendment Save the Republic? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by David Schultz.

The post Weasel Words in Aviation: Protecting the Flying Kangaroo appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

In various large-scale industries, companies can find themselves in the pink with governments keen to underwrite their losses during times of crisis while taking a soft approach to their profiteering predations in time of prosperity.  The former is a policy that socialises losses, thereby throwing public money after deals gone bad; the latter is simply called, absurdly, the free market (another weasel term), where corporate gains are put down to entrepreneurial genius.

There is no evident sign of that genius in the global aviation market.  In Australia, with a market typically in the stranglehold of a handful of firms, its absence is conspicuous.  In one of the world’s most concentrated markets in the field, two operators reign: Qantas and Virgin.  This classic duopoly has made the idea of reduced airfares a dreamy nonsense, an aspiration of the deluded.

The picture from an international perspective is also dire.  Despite its appalling conduct over the last two years, be it towards ground staff, the gruff cancellation of flights, the stubbornness in refunding them, and the squeezing of extortionate fares, Qantas was privileged by a government decision to block an offer by another carrier to operate more flights into Australia.  The move also had the faint odour of protectionism, made somewhat stronger by the A$2.47 billion in profits registered by the only aviation outfit that was generously cushioned by Commonwealth government funding during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In July, Canberra rejected a bid by Qatar Airways to add 21 extra flights per week into Australia’s three largest cities: Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.  These would have supplemented the 28 weekly flights currently on offer.  But it took till August for the government to cook up a feeble justification for having made a decision that will annually cost the Australian economy, according to one estimate, between A$540 million and $788 million.

According to federal Transport Minister, Catherin King, speaking to Parliament, “We only sign up to agreements that benefit our national interest, in all of its broad complexity, and that includes ensuring that we have an aviation sector, through the recovery, that employs Australian workers.”

Given that Qantas has relished sacking workers – in certain cases illegally – the comment was not only patently wrong but distasteful.  But King seemed happy enough to continue distastefully, claiming that an agreement to furnish “additional services is not in our national interest, and we will always consider the need to ensure that there are long-term, well-paid, secure jobs by Australians in the aviation sector when we are making these decisions.”

The decision was at least perplexing enough to excite the interest of such Labor Party stalwarts as former Australian treasurer Wayne Swan. In his view, expressed as the party’s current national president, an “appropriate review” of the whole matter was necessary.  (Reviews, in such cases, is code for identifying the damnably obvious.)

The rejection certainly drew baffled consternation from the inaugural chair of the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC), Alan Fels.  “It’s really a bad decision by any standards, especially if the government is talking about doing a competition review.”  Prices, he noted, were already 50% higher than they had been before the pandemic.  “They would come down a lot if Qatar entered.”

Much the same view was expressed by another former ACCC chair, Rod Sims.  “What we see now particularly in Australia is very high airfares internationally and not enough capacity.  If there was a time to allow new entrants in, this is it.”

The federal government’s decision is also a curious one in light of policies pursued by the State governments.  Queensland, for instance, made a decision to attract airlines to the state drawing from a fund worth $A200 million.  The scheme yielded agreements with some 25 international airlines.

While this was happening, the ACCC was marshalling its resources to launch an action in the Federal Court of Australia alleging that Qantas, has “engaged in false, misleading or deceptive conduct, by advertising tickets for more than 8,000 flights it had already cancelled but not removed from sale [between May and July 2022].”  The ACCC is also alleging that, for more than 10,000 flights scheduled to depart between May and July 2022, the company continued selling tickets on its website for an average of more than two weeks.  In certain cases, this persisted for up to 47 days after flights were cancelled. Not content with robbing actual ticket holders, the carrier is happy to advertise tickets for spectral journeys.

There is nothing to suggest that more flights will automatically reduce prices, per se.  As Karl Marx documents with expansive brilliance, markets tend towards concentration.  In time, companies, much in the manner of hoodlums carving up neighbourhoods for their drugs trade, will divvy up their share and keep prices lucratively high.  Miserable customers make for happy shareholders.

In the Qantas-Qatar Airways affair, the basic motivation to at least moderate the pricing regime in the short term is simply not there.  Threatened, Qantas would have to respond.  To date, given its traditional, enduring dominance, the approach of the Flying Kangaroo has been to stomp and box competitors into the ground, always aware that it has the backing of the Commonwealth government.  That’s the sort of private enterprise its outgoing CEO, Alan Joyce, is most pleased with.

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

Livestock like cows, goats, sheep, pigs, and others are susceptible to the same types of heat-related illnesses as humans, including dehydration, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke. As temperatures have climbed in recent years, so too have their impacts on the country’s vast livestock populations. Last summer in Kansas, a heat wave killed over 2,000 cattle when temperatures hit 104 degrees Fahrenheit. This summer, hundreds of cattle have died in Iowa in late July because of extreme heat and humidity. 

By mid-century, America’s heartland could form part of an “extreme heat belt” that stretches from Texas to Chicago, up the central United States, experiencing heat index conditions of 125 degrees F or more, according to the nonprofit climate research organization First Street Foundation. Scientists also estimate that losses from livestock heat-stress could reach almost $40 billion per year by the end of the century. Add worsening drought conditions and its impact on food availability, and livestock and the farms that own them have a difficult stretch ahead.

Farmers are now searching for solutions on how to keep their animals safe. One such method is something known as silvopasture, which incorporates trees — often harvestable fruit or nut trees — and grazing on the same land, Grist contributor John McCracken reports today. 

Shade during extreme heat is crucial to keeping core body temperatures low enough to maintain vital systems. This is as true for livestock as it is for humans. For beef and dairy cows, of which there are 89.3 million in the U.S., ideal body temperatures range from 44 to 77 degrees F, according to the Department of Agriculture, or USDA. Above those, heat stress causes cattle to produce less milk and decreases their fertility.

In Missouri, farmer Josh Payne is introducing shade in the form of chestnut trees, planting 600 of them across the same fields his cattle graze. The trees are a long-term solution and will take time to reach their full shading potential, so in the meantime, Payne is using mobile shades to protect his animals. But he’s counting on the trees to protect his farm and animals in the long run — both from extreme heat and as a way to help counter climate change. 

Silvopasture can improve soil health and increase a field’s uptake of carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. An estimate from the nonprofit climate solutions organization Project Drawdown predicts that the method could sequester five to 10 times more carbon dioxide than a pasture without trees.

A USDA survey from 2017 showed that only 1.5 percent of U.S. farmers practice any kind of agroecology, the ancient regenerative farming movement that includes silvopasture. In Illinois, the nonprofit Savanna Institute has been funding projects to help farmers better understand how to do silvopasture more effectively, and uses similar methods to Payne’s, notably planting chestnut trees. 

As McCracken writes, “Planting trees in a field seems almost too simple as a way to keep livestock safe and healthy in a hotter world.” But researchers know better, he notes.  Silvopasture is complicated, as it requires a delicate balance between planted trees, natural forests and brush, and livestock. But as farmers grapple with worsening extreme heat, it can be successful because of its flexibility. 

“Silvopastures are not a silver bullet, but at this point, I don’t think we have any silver bullets anymore,” Ashley Conway-Anderson, a researcher at the University of Missouri Center for Agroforestry, told McCracken for Grist.

By The Numbers

A recent study in the journal The Lancet examined the economic damage heat stress will have on cattle under various climate scenarios. The animals comprise a key part of the agricultural sector, accounting for 17 percent of industry revenues in 2022, according to the USDA.

Data Visualization by Clayton Aldern

What We’re Reading This Week

A loneliness epidemic is causing heat waves to be more deadly: Americans are now more socially isolated than ever before, with only 3 in 10 people knowing their neighbors. In a crisis, though, neighbors and friends can be the first line of defense to help. As this summer’s record-breaking heat continues, my colleague Akielly Hu looks into how isolation and extreme heat are killing people, and some possible solutions that cities are taking to tackle the issue. 

Read more

Arizona declares extreme heat emergency: Governor Katie Hobbs of Arizona declared a state of emergency on Friday, due to the state’s sky-high temperatures. In Phoenix, the city’s longest-lasting heat wave spanned the entire month of July. The declaration will free up funding from the state for cities and municipalities to tackle the issue of extreme heat, Jessica Boehm reported for Axios. Additionally, as my colleague Zoya Teirstein reported last week, extreme heat has inundated the city’s emergency rooms, with people experiencing burns from falling on the sidewalk, severe dehydration, and other heat-related illnesses

Read more 

A long-lasting marine heat wave is endangering ocean ecosystems: 

Starting in 2013, a phenomenon known as “the Blob” formed in the northern Pacific Ocean, with ocean temperatures increasing by 4 to 10 degrees F. It was the largest and longest marine heat wave on record and caused havoc for fisheries. Salmon, cod, crabs, and many other species declined as temperatures rose, causing billions of dollars in economic damage. As my Grist colleague Max Graham reports, marine heat waves such as the Blob are becoming more common and more severe, endangering not only marine life, but also the coastal communities reliant on fisheries for their livelihoods.

Read more 

Extreme heat could threaten unborn children: Researchers have long known the serious toll that extreme heat can have on the human body, but until recently, two groups remained largely understudied: unborn children and pregnant people. New research finds connections between scorching temperatures and a slate of health concerns for these vulnerable populations, from preterm birth to low-birth weight to other conditions, like stillbirths. One study from 2022 found that for every 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees F) of warming, there was a 17 percent increase in fetal stress, usually an increased heart rate or decreased blood flow, Grace Browne reports for WIRED.

Read more 

Does extreme heat spell the end of the European summer vacation?:  Record-breaking heat in Europe this summer has been interfering with travelers’ plans, Ceylan Yeginsu reports for the New York Times. Yeginsu herself experienced 113 degree F temperatures when attempting to vacation in Turkey, and travelers in Italy and Greece have also faced scorching heat. This summer marks the latest in a few years of hotter summers for the continent, with last year’s heat wave killing an estimated 61,000 people, according to a study I reported on earlier this summer.

Read more 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Protecting livestock from heat on Aug 15, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Siri Chilukuri.

The post The “Protecting America’s Rock Climbing Act” is Still an Imminent Threat to Wilderness  appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Dana Johnson.

Congress originally passed the Indian Child Welfare Act in response to requests from tribal leaders, and other advocates for Native Americans, to stop state governments from removing an alarming number of Native children from their families. Before the law took effect, state social welfare agencies were removing between 25% and 35% of all Native American children, and 90% of those removed were sent to be raised by non-Native families.

The Indian Child Welfare Act recognizes the government-to-government relationship Native American nations have with the United States. It covers certain child placements and sets uniform standards for state and tribal courts to follow when they decide American Indian child welfare cases. These standards include provisions that ensure that tribal governments are aware of and can have a say in the placement of Native American children. They aim to reduce the trauma of family and tribal separation by instructing courts to make active efforts to keep families together.

In 2017, the state of Texas and non-Natives seeking to adopt or foster Native American children challenged provisions of the law. They argued that the law exceeds Congress’ constitutional powers, impermissibly tells state officials what to do, and illegally discriminates against non-American Indians.

Writing for a 7-2 majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote, “the bottom line is that we reject all of the petitioners’ challenges to the statute.”

As a result of the ruling, Native nations’ most valuable resource – their children – will continue to gain the benefits of growing up knowing their own Indigenous cultures and communities.

Court and Congress diverge

As my research has shown, Congress and the Supreme Court have increasingly diverged in how they view the laws that relate to Native American tribes.

The court has not consistently deferred to Congress but rather has increasingly claimed the power to be the final arbitrator of American Indian policy. In doing so, it has undermined congressional policies meant to foster tribal governance and protect tribal lands and bodies.

The petitioners in the current case, Haaland v. Brackeen, seized on this trend. They questioned Congress’ ability to enact laws affecting tribal governments and their citizens. They argued that Congress lacked the constitutional authority to enact the Indian Child Welfare Act.

From my perspective as an expert in federal Native American law, the court’s decision is significant because the court affirmed Congress’ constitutional power over American Indian affairs.

Congress’ role in Native American affairs

The majority of the justices responded to the petitioners’ arguments by reiterating the court’s longstanding characterization of Congress’ power over American Indian affairs as “plenary and exclusive.”

Writing for the majority, Barrett stated, “Congress’s power to legislate with respect to Indians is well-established and broad. Consistent with that breadth, we have not doubted Congress’s ability to legislate across a wide range of areas, including criminal law, domestic violence, employment, property, tax, and trade.”

Barrett relied on earlier cases to find that Congress’ power over American Indian affairs comes from and remains limited by the U.S. Constitution. “We reiterate that Congress’s authority to legislate with respect to Indians is not unbounded,” she wrote.

The majority concluded, “If there are arguments that [the act] exceeds Congress’s authority as our precedent stands today, petitioners do not make them.”

Open questions remain

The majority reaffirmed Congress’ broad authority over Native American affairs but left other questions unresolved.

The Texas attorney general and the other litigants claimed that the Indian Child Welfare Act discriminates against non-Native Americans by making it harder for them to adopt Native children. The law instructs courts to place children with their relatives – either Native or non-Native, someone in their tribe, or an American Indian family if possible.

The litigants said this preference for placement with an Native family is racial and violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution, which requires government policies to be racially neutral. Tribal nations counter that federal laws and previous court decisions have defined Native status as a political, not racial, designation. The Court did not deal with this claim.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately to emphasize the seriousness of these claims. He stated, “[t]he equal protection issue remains undecided.”

Kavanaugh’s words may invite future challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act and to the political status of American Indians as citizens of tribal governments.

In the meantime, the court’s decision ensures that Native children will continue to experience the social and health benefits of being raised in their tribal cultures.

More importantly, the court’s decision acknowledges the vital, constitutional role that Congress plays in Native American affairs and defers to a congressional policy protective of Native nations and their people.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kirsten Matoy Carlson.

Morris Pearl, chair of Patriotic Millionaires and former managing director at BlackRock, issued the following statement in response:

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

Samuel Levine serves as Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Before assuming this role, he served as an attorney advisor to Commissioner Rohit Chopra and as a staff attorney in the Midwest Regional Office. Prior to joining the FTC, Mr. Levine worked for the Illinois Attorney General, where he prosecuted predatory for-profit colleges and participated in rulemaking and other policy initiatives to promote affordability and accountability in higher education.

We announced what we call a “click to cancel” rule. And this is a rule about subscription plans. What the proposed rule says is that companies – vendors – should make it no more difficult to cancel a subscription than it is to sign up… It’s very easy for consumers to sign up for these services. We want to make it just as easy for consumers to exit these services.

Samuel Levine Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the FTC

Earlier this year, we announced a market study sending subpoenas to major social media platforms to ask them what they’re doing to stop the huge proliferation of fraudulent ads over social media. We’re also doing a study now on the franchise relationship and the potential power asymmetries between franchisee and franchisers. We’re looking at the cloud computing market. We have a whole host of initiatives right now that are not geared around law enforcement but are geared around shining a light on often opaque industries to help shape public policy and eventually shape FTC law enforcement as well.

Samuel Levine, Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the FTC

Dr. Michael Carome is an expert on issues of drug and medical device safety, FDA oversight, and healthcare policy. He is the director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group.

In 2002, Congress passed for the first time what’s called the Medical Device User Fee Act… So, the companies now pay the FDA for the review and oversight of their products. Those user fees fundamentally changed the relationship between the FDA, the regulatory agency, and the medical device companies that are regulated by the agency. And that relationship which should be in part an adversarial relationship now is viewed as a partnership by both the agency and the medical device industry. The agency even in some of their documents refers to these companies as “partners,” as “customers.”… Customer satisfaction is key for the FDA and their customers in their eyes - rather than patients and the public - are the companies.

Dr. Michael Carome, Director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group

The FDA in our view had a very rigorous process for requiring the testing of those (Covid 19) vaccines… And we ourselves looked independently at the clinical trial data… We quickly concluded that independent of the FDA and any corporations that these vaccines were highly effective and very safe… Since then, there have been hundreds of millions of doses received by hundreds of millions of people across the world and they really have prevented serious complications and probably prevented millions of deaths with some very limited and rare adverse effects.

Dr. Michael Carome, Director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group

Squishing the federal cop on the corporate crime beat is a prime priority for lobbyists in Congress.

Ralph Nader

In Case You Haven’t Heard w/ Francesco DeSantis 1. In Arlington, Amazon has halted construction of their much-vaunted second headquarters – or “HQ2” according to the Washington Post. Some may remember the race to the bottom in terms of corporate tax cuts and subsidies that ensued across much of the country in 2017 and ‘18 when Amazon suggested cities and states could compete for this development. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez famously opposed these giveaways to Amazon and was pilloried for that in the mainstream press. Turns out, she was right on the money. Despite the fact that Amazon is postponing the construction of this facility, they are still poised to reap over $150 million in taxpayer subsidies from the state of Virginia.

2. Harvard University has accepted a $300 million donation from hedge fund manager and right wing billionaire donor Ken Griffin, according to the New York Daily News. In exchange, Harvard will rename their Graduate School of Arts and Sciences to the Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

3. In Palestine, trade unions have issued an open letter calling for global solidarity. This letter urged global publics to eliminate procurement from companies complicit in Israeli apartheid and the occupation, divest pension funds from State of Israel Bonds, and specifically called on “port workers and their unions to refrain from loading/offloading Israeli ships, as was done in Oakland, California,” noting that many port workers and unions did the same when combating apartheid in South Africa.

4. The American Prospect reports that in Florida, nursing home interests are dumping money into the campaign coffers of Republican state leadership to grease the wheels for a bill which would immunize themselves from lawsuits related to wrongful death in their facilities. As David Dayen tweeted, “Ron DeSantis's War on Woke masks his actual War on Lawsuits.”

5. NorthJersey.com reports that a new law in New Jersey has gone into effect, guaranteeing workers a week of severance for every year of service when large employers issue mass layoffs. This law was enacted following the Toys R Us bankruptcy, wherein longtime workers were only granted severance after a massive public pressure campaign.

6. Dashcam videos obtained by WIRED show how self-driving cars – currently being recklessly tested in San Francisco – are clogging streets, delaying public transportation, and creating dangerous conditions on the roads. “Autonomous cars in San Francisco made 92 unplanned stops between May and December 2022—88 percent of them on streets with transit service, according to city transportation authorities, who collected the data from social media reports, 911 calls, and other sources, because companies aren’t required to report all the breakdowns.”

7. In a novel approach, CODEPINK is using digital tools to crowdfund an ad in a major newspaper. This ad urges President Biden to play peacemaker and “End the War in Ukraine.” Supporters can view and donate to the ad at CODEPINK.org.

8. A recent article in the climate-focused magazine Grist covers the choices facing the Biden administration regarding the Colorado River. The administration has put forward two bleak plans: “One …would dry up Arizona to preserve California's strong water rights; the other would spread cuts among the states and risk litigation from California.”

9. Ben Jacobs reports that, in a speech to the NRA convention, former President Trump appeared to endorse ending home rule in Washington, DC. In typical Trump prose, he said “I think we have to take it over, take over management of our capital." This is a continuation of the assault on DC’s sovereignty which recently came to a head when President Biden chose to join with Republicans to block DC’s revised criminal code.

10. UNITE HERE, the hospitality workers union, grew 18% in 2022, per Bloomberg Law. This stunning growth is second only to the Teamsters, which we covered on this segment last week. As the reinvigorated labor movement continues to expand, we might expect to see this kind of growth among other major unions, such as the United Auto Workers.

11. Checking in on out of control police practices, two stories stand out: In New York, Ars Technica reports that the city has begun rolling out “hulking, 400 lb” police robots after being forced to withdraw the project over civil liberties concerns in 2021. Mayor Eric Adams recently slashed budgets for city services like libraries, yet each of these robots will cost around $75,000. In Memphis, the MPD is facing backlash after unveiling a new unit which will “arrest unaccompanied minors that sell food, play loud music, are 'inappropriately dressed' or dancing in the street in Downtown Memphis" per Commercial Appeal. Cardell Orrin, the executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Stand for Children, compared this to the “Pre-Crime Unit from [the movie] 'Minority Report,'” and added that “targeting minors for a subjective concept like ‘inappropriate clothing’ is a coded criminalization of Black culture and Black youth.”

12. A bombshell new report from the Corporate Research Project at Good Jobs First reveals that since the year 2000, large companies in the United States have paid “$96 billion in fines and settlements to resolve allegations of covert price-fixing and related anti-competitive practices in violation of antitrust laws.” The companies that have been forced to pay the most include Visa Inc. – at a whopping $6.2 billion – along with Deutsche Bank, Barclays, MasterCard and Citigroup, though the report makes clear that price fixing occurs in many sectors ranging from automotive parts to power generation to healthcare services. Philip Mattera, who authored the report, is quoted saying “Large corporations which are supposed to be competing with one another are often secretly conspiring to set prices…In doing so, they cause economic harm to consumers and contribute to inflation.”

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

This year’s United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is focusing on human, territorial and planetary health. The Permanent Forum is in its 22nd session. 

A recent report, “Indigenous Determinants of Health,” is a culmination of 20 years of work that the Permanent Forum has been doing. It was released this session. The Permanent Forum lasts two weeks and consists of interventions, which are essentially calls to action, and side events on various issues.  

Many Indigenous leaders have spoken about how planetary health and the health of Indigenous people and communities are intertwined, becoming ever more important as the world experiences irreversible damage caused by climate change. 

A report like this by the U.N. is the first of its kind. 

The study was meant to inform non-Indigenous policy makers about how to approach health and wellness for Indigenous communities and to fill the gap in U.N. literature that previously did not address the holistic, historical and political aspects that encompass Indigenous health, in comparison to other minority groups.  

This report was in some sense a response to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a U.N. agenda that seeks to “end poverty and hunger, realize the human rights of all, achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, and ensure the lasting protection of the planet and its natural resources,” according to its website. The agenda has 17 concrete goals to achieve by 2030. 

“The past seven years, however, have shown the urgent need for guidance on – and a proper understanding of – Indigenous Peoples’ needs, separate from the general minority and diverse population approaches,” the report states. “The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic highlighted the entrenched inequities faced by Indigenous Peoples in all 17 Goal areas and how the severe lack of cultural competence within the 17 Goals negatively impacts Indigenous Peoples’ health.”

The report uses the framework of the World Health Organization’s definition of social determinants of health, meaning the social, political, economical and cultural factors that affect a person’s health. One specific example would be the lack of access to grocery stores on the Navajo Nation and how not having access to fresh foods impacts a person’s health.  

“We tend to look at measures like poverty or poor educational attainment or inadequate housing as determinants of bad health outcomes,” Dr. Donald Warne, one of the authors of the report and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health, told ICT. “But we also know that there are strengths as well, particularly with Indigenous cultures. We know that language preservation, cultural connectedness, participation in ceremony, are actually protective of health. We want to think of Indigenous determinants of health as not just the causes of health disparities, but the sources of strength to overcome some of those challenges.” 

The Indigenous determinants of health runs parallel to this definition by acknowledging the unique challenges, worldviews and political status of Indigenous nations. More importantly this report is a call to action.       

“This study is intended to create tangible outcomes for Indigenous peoples at the local level. Everything we do here should be focused on improving the health and wellness of our local Indigenous peoples through these interlinked determinants of health, whether it be climate change, planetary and territorial health, mental health, maternal and child health, primary care, and more,” Geoff Roth, Standing Rock Sioux descendant, elected member of the Permanent Forum, said in his speech at the U.N. headquarters

There are 37 other recommendations that could be immediately implemented on the collaboration between Indigenous nations and local health agencies. It ranges from reinforcing Indigenous identities to supporting and protecting the use of medicinal plants. 

“My role was mainly on the intergenerational holistic healing component and there’s 15 recommendations just within that one component,” Warne said, who is Oglala Lakota. “A couple of things that I think are very important is to recognize that as a medical educators, we are not doing a good job in medical education and public health education, or really any health science, in understanding the impact of historical trauma, the impact of colonization, and the need for more trauma-informed care.”

Next month at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Brazil will present a resolution that acknowledges Indigenous peoples’ right to health care and to govern their own health care facilities. The World Health Assembly is composed of 194 member states that address global health emergencies. Brazil’s resolution will also call for the World Health Organization to create a plan that addresses Indigenous peoples health by next year. 

“We ask you to encourage your member states to support this resolution that will be offered by Brazil at the upcoming World Health Assembly in Geneva,” Roth said. 

Member states, meaning countries like the United States or Canada, are represented by an appointed delegate to the U.N. For example, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield represents the United States in the U.N. General Assembly, the policy making arm of the organization.   

Ultimately this report seeks to explain that Indigenous health encompasses more than just access to care. 

“Member States must recognize that there are unique determinants of health specific to Indigenous peoples, our cultures, histories, political status, spirituality, and our current experience,” Stacy Bohlen, executive director of the National Indian Health Board, said. “All Indigenous peoples’ interactions and connections to spirituality, social life and environmental elements are substantively distinct from those of all other populations around the globe. Indigeneity as an overarching determiner of health is the foundation of our work.”

“One of the strongest suggestions that we make is that the (World Health Organization) and (Pan American Health Organization) incorporate the concept of Indigeneity as an overarching determinant of health in all of their work, policies, body of knowledge and initiatives,” Roth said. “As such, Indigeneity would encompass all of the specific circumstances included in the Indigenous determinants of health study that we are presenting today.”

The Global Indigenous Youth Caucus, that represents youth from all seven regions of the U.N., has called on the Permanent Forum and General Assembly to create permanent intergenerational, Indigenous advisory groups for all bodies of the U.N., including the World Health Organization, make violence against Indigenous women a thematic mandate, meaning a specific issue of human rights, and encourage member states to support traditional health practices in accordance with the United Nations Declaration of Indigenous Rights.

“Create binding resolutions in regards to climate actions,” Lahelo Mattos, a member of the youth caucus, said. “Climate change is indeed one of the largest threats to the peace and security of all nations and peoples.”

Lahelo Mattos, 23, was flanked by a handful of her peers from the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus, one hand on her shoulder, as she addressed hundreds of people from around the world on Tuesday. 

“For Indigenous peoples, wellness is defined through the interconnectedness and balance of physical, mental, cultural and spiritual health,” Mattos, Native Hawaiian, said in her speech at the United Nations. “We urge the general assembly to include the rights of Indigenous people as a social determinant of health as Indigeneity is a determinant of health. Returning lands and waters, lands and waters stewardship and honoring the rights of Indigenous peoples improves human and planetary health and is a solution to the climate crisis.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline UN: Protecting Indigenous health also protects the environment on Apr 20, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Pauly Denetclaw.

Download a PDF of Fortress Conservation: A Legacy of Violence.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How protecting the Earth became an excuse for murder on Apr 12, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Gord Hill.

The decade-long study looked at the health impacts of wildfires in the Amazon and the amount of dangerous particles absorbed by the rainforest. It found the Amazon can absorb nearly 26,000 metric tons of dangerous particles released each year — with Indigenous territories responsible for absorbing nearly 27 percent of that pollution.

Rainforest foliage acts as a biofilter for air pollution and improves air quality by reducing the concentration of pollutants produced by fires, like dust, soot, and smoke. According to researchers, ecosystems with less trees, greenspace, and organic protection from airborne pollutants, like cities, see higher rates of health disparities, including general respiratory irritation, bronchitis, and heart attacks. 

In the Brazilian Amazon, wildfires are often set by cattle ranchers, illegal miners, and other land-grabbers working to expand their businesses, exacerbating deforestation and threatening Indigenous territories. In 2020, land conflicts in Brazil hit 1,576 cases — the highest number ever recorded by the Catholic Church-affiliated Pastoral Land Commission since it first began keeping records in 1985.

Researchers found that the particles released by those fires traveled hundreds of miles to distant cities, penetrating the tiny sacs in lungs and passing directly into residents’ bloodstreams.

The study concluded that protecting Indigenous territories from wildfires and land grabs could help prevent thousands of diseases. Research suggests that when Indigenous peoples are given financial and legal support for land management, as well as property rights, forests have better outcomes.

Under former president Jair Bolsonaro’s four-year administration, deforestation in the Amazon rose 56 percent, with about 13,000 square miles of the land destroyed. While Indigenous peoples have lost an estimated 965 square miles of their traditional territories due to Bolsonaro’s policies.

Indigenous leaders are urging current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to follow through on promises he made during his campaigning to create new Indigenous reservations in the Amazon and continue reversing his predecessor’s policies.

“This study reinforces what Indigenous peoples have been saying for ages,” Dinamam Tuxa, executive coordinator of the Association of Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples told the Agence France-Presse.

“It demonstrates the importance of our territories in fighting dangerous pollution … and climate change.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Want to protect your health? Start by protecting Indigenous land. on Apr 12, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lyric Aquino.

Prologue

The world in 2023 is in deep trouble. The United States and other countries act as if they care less about the future. They scarcely pay attention to the evolving horrors of climate change, ecological impoverishment of the planet, and rapidly growing population, which is surpassing 8 billion humans. Should most of these people ever reach the “lifestyle” of privileged Europeans and North Americans, it would be necessary to have several Earth-like planets to supply the materials and water and food of the entire human population.

Ecopolitical governance

I have spoken before of the need of an international institution to bring order to the current chaos in international relations. People cannot go on increasing their numbers. If religions are behind this prolific multiplication of the human species, take away the tax privileges of those religions. Unchecked burning of fossil fuels will kill us and all life on Earth. I dreamed this world institution might put some sense of urgency in the brains of world leaders before it’s too late. I called that institution World Environment Organization, WEO.

The mission of such a global environment institution would be to protect life on Earth. It should bring world resources and scientific and technological talent for the protection of biological diversity on land, rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans. In addition, WEO should protect the Earth and its people and their civilization from rapid and dangerous population growth and climate change and toxic chemicals and pollution.

It would be to the interest of all states to support this organization, but its main political sponsors should be the European Union, the United States, Russia, China, and India. It just happens that these powerful states have large populations and are the worst offenders of the global environment. They emit the overwhelming amounts of greenhouse gases warming the planet and causing the dreadful climate chaos afflicting the Earth. If the existing climate emergency brings them together to face a common climate enemy, humanity has a chance to at least tone down the ferocity of the climate onslaught and resulting chaos.

Such a potential political partnership for human survival and security would transform international relations from wrestling to dancing. Time for geostrategic competition is over. We must cooperate to end wars and preserve peace. At a time when the Earth is on fire lighted by humans, there’s no need for superpowers showing off their nuclear muscles.

WEO should bring the war in Ukraine to an end and dissolve NATO that caused the war. President Joe Biden must admit he erred in arming Ukraine. And just like Mikhail Gorbachev abolished the military alliances of the Soviet Union / Russia in the late 1980s, Biden can do the same thing with NATO. Biden also needs to abandon his Cold War against China. Taiwan is a Chinese island. Let China and Taiwan resolve their differences. Stop arming Taiwan.

The European Union can take care of its own defence. Even without the United Kingdom, it’s probably the strongest economic and technological powerhouse on Earth. Small states would no longer be afraid of being invaded by larger enemies. EU, the US, China, India, and Russia would guarantee international borders and peace. Russia would also feel secure to stop its war against Ukraine.

If the WEO came into being, there would be a dramatic decline in military spending, showing that civilisation matters. What if those saved vast sums of money, currently put to fighting wars and planning slaughter and destruction, could be put to peaceful use? Like jointly addressing the existential threat of climate change and the social and ecological problems unsettling the US, EU, Russia, China, India and the rest of the world? Imagine an ecological and political alliance between North America, Europe, Russia, India, and China that materializes the mission of the World Environment Organisation for diminishing the threats of climate change and the protection of human and environmental health. Imagine that nothing in international relations, including world trade, could take place if it caused ecological harm.

People would learn to respect nature as the very foundation of life on Earth. That’s what ecological civilization is all about.

Imagine such an organisation funding substantive program aimed at reversing the environmental decline of the planet, banning plastics, cleaning the plastic pollution of the seas, and, particularly, slowing down climate change, which threatens all life on Earth. This task would be both daring and demanding because, as in the golden age of Greece, the human effort of the twenty-first century must be to invent a new science and a new politics to solve human problems, but without destroying the world.

Twentieth-century science and economic development (in the unitary capitalist models in use in the twenty-first century) are obsolete and dangerous: they have been tainted and moulded by the violence of the nuclear bomb and the chemicals-depended one-crop agriculture.

Factory farming

Industrialised agriculture is a paradigm of the application of bomb-inspired science. It is a gigantic mechanical enterprise contemptible of the natural world. It is fuelled by Earth-warming petroleum. It has brought into being systems of death rather than life. It threatens and destroys ecological civilization. Its immense one-crop plantations are artificial deserts that devastate insects, birds, and wildlife. Plantations annihilate biological diversity. They are copies of feudalism, enslaving farm workers, grabbing (for example, in the United States) more than 80 percent of the drinking water, and producing food tainted by carcinogenic and neurotoxic chemicals. In other words, this form of farming poisons both the natural world and humans eating its crops.

The poisons that farmers spray over crops control insects, diseases and grasses only as an afterthought. This is because these toxins are primarily political. They enable landowners or states to be sole masters of huge territories while, at the same time, emptying rural areas of small family farmers, peasants, and indigenous people.

Animal farms make up the top of the pyramid of agribusiness. In the United States, they are feeding about 9 billion of frightened and abused domesticated animals fattened for slaughter. Domesticated animals exist in high-tech factories resembling sterile concentration camps. They house thousands of pigs, chicken, and cattle.

These animals live their short lives in extremely crowded conditions resembling sardine cans. Animal farms are filthy, generating diseases, which the owners try to control by adding antibiotic drugs to the feed they give the animals.

The large quantities of urine and excrement from the penned animals give off ammonia, methane, and viruses, some of which become pandemics. Moreover, these wastes are not treated for toxicity and deseases. Farmers spread some on land and hold the rest in lagoons. When it rains or a storm causes flooding, these toxic and pathogenic wastes end up in groundwater, rivers, lakes, and the seas where they cause ecological devastations like the dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.

Industrialised farming is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. It also rivals climate change in its global deleterious effects. It is converting everything to a machine.

In the US, agribusiness has abolished rural America, turning it into a colossal, mechanised plantation with enormous powers. Agribusiness is also employing genetic engineering in undoing food itself, scrambling the genetic stuff of corn and soybeans and other crops to bring all food and crops under the dominion of a handful of global corporations. That is why we need to embrace agroecology, a science that is not tainted by the nuclear bomb and the political power of billionaires. Agroecology merges traditional agricultural knowledge with the latest discoveries of ecology. Ethics and ecological civilisation are the context of agroecology.

Aristotle argued that cataclysms repeatedly reduce human societies to a point where it is necessary to search in the rubble to rediscover human culture. We are not yet the refugees of a global catastrophe, but we are headed in that direction. Industrialised agriculture is the first step in that decline and fall. Climate change follows in the footsteps of giant farming.

Slow down climate change

Extracting and burning petroleum, natural gas, and coal are responsible for greenhouse gases causing climate change. These invisible toxins of our industrialised culture are warming the planet, making it slowly unfit for life. Alaska’s permafrost is thawing. The Arctic is releasing “enormous” amounts of methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas causing climate chaos. Massive chunks of ice on mountains and seas, including the Arctic, are disintegrating. President Joe Biden accelerated that destructive process with his approval, in March 2023, of oil extraction from the Arctic of Alaska. Fires are destroying forests, including the Amazon. Storms are threatening cities and farming. Heat waves are changing the chemistry and temperature of the seas. This change is becoming inimical to fish and aquatic life. Commercial overfishing adds more stress on already overstressed life in the seas and oceans.

It is probably impossible to stop entirely the warming of the Earth. But we can slow it down, diminishing its chronic cataclysmic effects by steadfastly eliminating and ending the use of fossil fuels. We also must end our onslaught on the planet.

Epilogue

Are we clever enough, but not moral enough to avoid committing suicide?

Yet there’s a way out of our current killer policies: first, solar and other forms of renewable energy suffice in replacing oil, coal, petroleum and nuclear power.

Second, organic family farmers and peasants are willing to and capable of raising all the food we need, if only we dismantle the monstrous agribusiness plantations and animal factories.

Expanding the variety of our food crops from the rich diversity of traditional agriculture will go a long way to improving our diet, and lessen the need to dam rivers for irrigation. Such a change of direction would give a new lease on life to millions of villages while bringing back the culture, democracy and nutritious food of prosperous small family farmers and peasants.

If the US, EU, Russia, China, and India sign on a version of this modest proposal, we boost ecopolitical civilization and human survival. We really need a World Environment Organization to set the world in order and harmony between humans and wildlife. Half of all the waters and land of the planet should be set aside for wildlife and biological diversity. One-child per family is necessary to reduce the exploding population. I urge the EU, US, India, Russia, and China to embrace this idea for a better, more peaceful, and safer and healthier world of ecological civilization.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Evaggelos Vallianatos.

Today, the House passed H.R. 1, better named the "Polluters Over People" Act, which paves the way for corporate polluters to develop new fossil fuel infrastructure backed by taxpayer-funded subsidies, hindering a just transition to affordable and reliable clean energy.

The Polluters Over People Act is a clear reflection of the fossil fuel industries' influence over elected officials who have backed a bill that would increase profits for Big Oil & Gas and fail to act on climate, jobs, and justice:

• Instead of stabilizing the economy, H.R. 1 would increase the deficit over the 2023-2033 period by roughly $2.4 billion by reducing direct spending by $4 billion and reducing revenues by $6.4 billion.
• H.R. 1 attacks half a decade of environmental protections, including provisions in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Clean Water Act, and Clean Air Act, compromising public input processes on federal energy projects that can hurt the communities and Tribes who live beside toxic projects.
• By fast-tracking and rubber-stamping approvals for pipelines, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) exports, oil & gas leases on federal lands, and mining on public lands, the Polluters Over People Act maintains our overreliance on unstable and costly fossil fuels to the benefit of industry profit margins.
• H.R. 1 is a clear attack on the climate by repealing the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, Methane Emissions Reduction Program, and investments in home electrification rebates, tools to reduce climate change-causing pollution.

In contrast to the Republican energy plan, Progressives have a path forward for our country that would reduce the cost of energy for everyday people, create new, local jobs for working families, and mitigate the climate crisis at the scale of action needed, all while reducing the national deficit by $252 billion.

In response to the House passage of the Polluters Over People Act, the Green New Deal Network—a coalition of 15 national organizations and 25 state tables—is demanding that Senator Schumer, Senate Democrats, and President Biden halt the progress of a bill that will undo decades of action on climate, jobs, and justice:

"The bottom line is that the Polluters Over People Act is nothing more than an inflation-causing and national debt-raising cash cow that explicitly benefits the fossil-fuel industry and corporations that are resisting the transition to clean energy. Republicans and the supporters of H.R. 1 are making it abundantly clear they're beholden to the fossil-fuel lobby over protecting frontline communities that need government action on the climate crisis and environmental injustices," said Kaniela Ing, National Director at the Green New Deal Network. "President Biden and Democrats in the Senate must hold the line on rejecting H. R. 1 by acting to protect our progress on climate action and rejecting Republicans' campaign to enrich their fossil-fuel industry buddies."

"At a time when toxic and climate disasters are on the rise, the need to protect bedrock environmental protections could not be more urgent. Yet, those backed by fossil fuel lobbyists in Congress continue to cater to their corporate sponsors rather than their own constituents. The passage of the Polluters Over People Act (HR1) in the House is simply another handout to dirty industry that will only fast track and expand harmful polluting projects in frontline communities," said Marion Gee, Co-Executive Director at the Climate Justice Alliance.

"H.R. 1 is a laundry list of giveaways to greedy, polluting corporations. Republicans are working with fossil fuel polluters to push harmful, dirty energy while undoing bedrock environmental protections for their monetary gain. Frontline communities are fighting back against dirty energy and harmful false solutions that we don't need and don't want. We stopped Manchin's dirty energy deal, and we will stop this heinous package that endangers frontline environmental justice communities," said Adrien Salazar, Policy Director at Grassroots Global Justice. "To deter the worst impacts of climate change requires a full phase-out of fossil fuels immediately, and we call on our climate champions in the Senate to uphold their promise to stand with our communities, oppose this terrible bill, and fight for real climate solutions that protect and invest in communities."

"The impacts of climate change are indisputable, and the perpetuation of toxic, chemical harms from oil and gas companies at the expense of people and the environment, as shown in the repeals and loopholes of this dangerous energy package, cannot be allowed passage," said Oscar Villalobos, Coalition Coordinator at the Green New Deal for DC Coalition. "Although House leadership deliberately places profits over people and disregards the gravity of the climate crisis, our members and allies stand unified in calling for the rejection of this wrong-headed legislation and champions a renewed commitment to the American people from our government by halting bailouts and political expediencies for the fossil fuel industry, and strengthening equitable climate justice for our future."

"H.R. 1 is a big step in the wrong direction. Republicans are putting the interests of Big Oil above communities, stripping protections against pollution in the Clean Water Act and cutting over $20 billion from last year's landmark climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act," said Sophia Cheng, Climate Justice Campaign Director at People's Action. "In 2022, Chevron alone raked in $6.3 million per hour and the five largest Big Oil corporations made a record $200 billion in profits. H.R. 1 paves the way for bigger profits for Big Oil at the expense of our land, water, and health. Senate Majority Leader Schumer must hold firm to defeat this bill and President Biden must follow through on his commitment to veto any version of this dangerous policy."

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

U.S. Sen. Ed Markey on Thursday introduced legislation to outlaw the marketing of firearms to children amid growing outrage from federal lawmakers, gun violence prevention advocates, and parents over a weapon for kids inspired by the AR-15.

The Massachusetts Democrat's Protecting Kids From Gun Marketing Act would direct the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to create rules to "prohibit any manufacturer, dealer, or importer, or agent thereof, from marketing or advertising a firearm or any firearm-related product to a minor in a manner that is designed, intended, or reasonably appears to be attractive to a minor."

The bill would also empower state attorneys general and private individuals to take legal action for violations of the rules.

"Imagine the public outcry if the alcohol or tobacco industries introduced child-friendly versions of their adult products."

The proposal follows recently renewed criticism of Illinois-based WEE1 Tactical for its JR-15. After coming under fire last year for branding that featured pacifier-sucking baby skulls with gun sights for eye sockets, the gunmaker scrapped the images and now says the firearm represents "a great American tradition," a "small piece of American freedom," and "American family values."

Markey led a May 2022 a letter calling on the FTC to investigate WEE1 Tactical for unfair or deceptive marketing tactics and last week, in the wake of a series of mass shootings, he joined a press conference during which senators repeated that demand.

"I am once again calling on the FTC to step up and use its authority to crack down on gunmakers who market their deadly weapons to America's youth," he said last week. "The deceptive and deadly marketing behind the 'JR-15' is grotesque and reflects the depth of the gun industry's moral depravity."

Markey also took aim at WEE1 Tactical's gun on Thursday, declaring that "a junior version of the AR-15 has no place in a kid's toy box."

"America's gun violence epidemic is claiming tens of thousands of lives each year as gunmakers, dealers, and vendors alike continue to put sales over safety by targeting kids with advertising of a deadly weapon," he said. "It's shameful, irresponsible, and dangerous. The FTC must act immediately to prohibit the marketing of these weapons to children, a step that could save lives."

The legislation is co-sponsored by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

The bill is also supported by the organizations Brady, Everytown, Giffords, March For Our Lives, and the Violence Policy Center—whose executive director, Josh Sugarmann, said that "few Americans are aware that there is an ongoing, coordinated effort by the gun lobby and firearms industry targeting America's children and teens. Imagine the public outcry if the alcohol or tobacco industries introduced child-friendly versions of their adult products."

Giffords federal affairs director Adzi Vokhiwa stressed that "the gun industry's deceptive and reckless marketing practices have real consequences: Our nation's gun violence epidemic is worsening while the gun industry's profits soar. Promoting weapons to young people is especially heinous considering that guns are now the number one cause of death for children."

"It's time for Congress to take a stand and defend young peoples' lives against an immoral industry practice."

Just over a month into 2023, at least 154 children across the United States have been killed by gun violence and another 364 have been injured so far, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Last year, the totals were 1,675 and 4,479, respectively.

"There's no world in which deadly firearms manufacturers should advertise guns to children," said Zeenat Yahya, policy director, March for Our Lives, which was formed by students after the 2018 high school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

"Unsecured access to guns has killed far too many children and young people over the years," Yahya continued. "The very idea that gun manufacturers want to take advantage of young people by targeting young people who aren't even old enough to drive with ads that sell deadly weapons is sickening."

"It's time for Congress to take a stand and defend young peoples' lives against an immoral industry practice," she added, "and we're pleased to stand with Sen. Markey and our congressional partners in the introduction of this bill."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Today, Earthjustice joins with a broad and unified coalition of Tribes, Bristol Bay residents, commercial and sport fishers, environmental organizations, businesses, and many others to celebrate the Environmental Protection Agency’s Final Determination protecting the Bristol Bay watershed under Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act.

The EPA’s Final Determination is a hard-won victory by all those who have been fighting for decades to stop the Pebble Mine project. It follows an earlier decision by the Army Corps of Engineers to deny a key permit to Pebble Mine. Collectively, these decisions effectively spell victory in the decades-long fight to protect Bristol Bay from Pebble Mine.

Earthjustice is honored to stand with Tribes and other regional leaders – the United Tribes of Bristol Bay, Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation, Bristol Bay Native Association, Bristol Bay Native Corporation, local Tribes and municipalities, village corporations, non-governmental organizations, nonprofits and more – in thanking the EPA and the Biden Administration for listening to concerns raised by local and national stakeholders and taking this important step to protect this critical watershed and people it supports.

Two out of three Alaskans oppose the Pebble Mine and support these protections. If today’s Final Determination is challenged in court, as expected, those plaintiffs will not be representing the wishes of most Alaskans or many Americans.

Today’s decision is an important step in preserving Bristol Bay and its residents’ way of life. It will now be more important than ever for elected leaders to continue fighting to ensure Bristol Bay and its ecosystem will thrive and provide for future generations.

The following statements from Earthjustice and our clients were issued in response to today’s news. For additional quotes from the Bristol Bay region or to be connected with the Bristol Bay Defense Fund coalition, please contact Grace Nolan at grace@team-arc.com.

Bonnie Gestring, Northwest Program Director, Earthworks:

“We’re thrilled to see the Environmental Protection Agency fulfill its commitment to the people of Alaska to provide enduring protection for Bristol Bay, its economy, its salmon, and its people from the dangerous and destructive Pebble Mine. Congratulations to the Biden administration and EPA for seeing this landmark decision through. We are proud to stand in support of the Bristol Bay Tribes and commercial fishermen whose lives and livelihoods depend on this thriving fishery.”

Marc Fink, Senior Attorney, Center for Biological Diversity:

“We applaud the EPA for taking this critical step to protect the irreplaceable ecosystems of Alaska’s Bristol Bay. From salmon and grizzly bears to the rare Iliamna Lake seals, a remarkable array of wildlife depends on this watershed. This should be the final nail in the coffin of the disastrous Pebble Mine proposal, but we’ll keep fighting until this watershed is permanently protected.”

Erin Colón, Senior Attorney, Earthjustice:

“After a fierce, decades-long battle waged by the people of Bristol Bay and so many others, EPA today followed the law and science to establish enduring protections for the Bristol Bay watershed under the Clean Water Act. This is a major victory worth celebrating, but we cannot rest until even more permanent protections are in place. The Bristol Bay watershed is one of the world’s great ecosystems, and the way of life and the abundant future it supports is worth the fight. Earthjustice is committed to continuing to represent those who oppose unlawful and destructive mining projects like the proposed Pebble Mine.”

Background

Pebble Mine, a vast, open-pit copper and gold mine proposed in prime salmon habitat in the Bristol Bay watershed, has for decades threatened the way of life for the region’s residents and all others who depend on its abundant salmon populations. Today’s Final Clean Water Act Determination issued by the EPA should spell the end of the Pebble Mine proposal.

Years of litigation by Earthjustice and others on behalf of both regional and national clients have supported the coalition’s efforts to stop the Pebble Mine.

In 2010, six Bristol Bay Tribes asked the EPA to protect the Bristol Bay watershed from the Pebble Mine. An initial assessment released by the EPA in 2014 concluded a mine could have unacceptable impacts. Later that year, the EPA issued a Proposed Determination restricting the use of parts of the watershed to dispose of material from mining.

Unfortunately, Pebble Mine developers challenged those actions in three lawsuits against the EPA, asking the courts to throw out both the assessment and the Proposed Determination. Although those lawsuits did not succeed, EPA was temporarily blocked from finalizing the proposed protections.

Then in 2017, under the Trump administration, the EPA settled with the Pebble developers, agreeing to consider withdrawing its prior determination. Again, tens of thousands of concerned members of the public told the EPA to protect the Bristol Bay watershed. EPA reversed course and withdrew its prior determination to put protections in place.

In 2019, Earthjustice, representing Earthworks, joined Tribes, Tribal organizations, and many other Bristol Bay champions in a lawsuit challenging that withdrawal. Ultimately, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed that the withdrawal was unlawful and reinstated the agency’s Clean Water Act decision process, clearing the way for EPA to follow the extensive scientific record supporting the need for protections. Earthjustice filed comments on behalf of Earthworks, Friends of the Earth U.S., and the Center for Biological Diversity urging EPA to finalize robust protections. Today’s Final Determination marks the culmination of that process.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — the federal agency leading the process to permit the Pebble Mine — denied the key permit for Pebble Mine on Nov. 25, 2020. The Corps decision highlighted many of the concerns that opponents of the project, including Earthjustice, have pointed out all along. That denial is under appeal by the Pebble Partnership.

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

Citing section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act, the EPA will ban waters in the South Fork Koktuli River and North Fork Koktuli River watersheds from being used as disposal sites for material tied to the proposed mine.

In response, Peter Morgan, senior attorney with the Sierra Club's Environmental Law Program, released the following statement:

“For decades, Pebble Mine has faced nearly universal and overwhelming opposition from all sides. Finally, this terrible idea can be put to rest, so we can protect the world-class salmon runs and treasured and abundant wildlife on which local communities depend. We must protect lands and waters like Bristol Bay, not sell them off to Big Polluters, and we welcome the Biden Administration’s action to preserve this iconic place."

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

Several House Republicans are threatening to block the lifting of the country's borrowing cap—an arbitrary and arguably unconstitutional figure set by Congress—unless Democrats agree to slash government spending, including on vital social programs

Notably, Capitol Hill's deficit hawks oppose reducing the Pentagon's ever-growing budget and rescinding former President Donald Trump's tax cuts for the wealthy.

The U.S. government's outstanding debt officially hit the statutory limit of $31.4 trillion last Thursday, at which point the Treasury Department started repurposing federal funds.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently told congressional leaders that "the use of extraordinary measures enables the government to meet its obligations for only a limited amount of time," possibly through early June. She implored Congress to "act in a timely manner to increase or suspend the debt limit," warning that "failure to meet the government's obligations would cause irreparable harm to the U.S. economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability."

A 2011 debt ceiling standoff enabled the GOP to impose austerity and led to a historic downgrading of the U.S. government's credit rating, but the country has never defaulted on its debt. Economists warn that doing so would likely trigger chaos in financial markets, resulting in millions of job losses and the elimination of $15 trillion in wealth.

Aware that an economic calamity is at stake, many Republican lawmakers "have announced that they will not support an increase in the debt ceiling without concomitant reductions in spending, possibly in the form of reductions to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid," Kelley wrote in the letter sent earlier this week.

"The White House says it will not negotiate such an arrangement," he added. "AFGE strongly supports the administration's refusal to negotiate on this matter."

"No negotiation that puts these programs or any aspect of federal employee compensation at risk should be considered."

In a Wednesday speech from the floor of the upper chamber, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) criticized "the House GOP's reckless approach to the debt ceiling" and challenged Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) "to level with the American people" on which popular programs his party wants to cut.

"The debt ceiling is a subject of the highest consequence, and using it as a bargaining chip, using it as brinkmanship, as hostage-taking, as Republicans are trying to do is exceedingly dangerous," said Schumer.

"If the House of Representatives continues on [its] current course and allows the United States to default on its debt obligations, every single American is going to pay a terrible and expensive price," Schumer continued. "The consequences of default are not some theoretical abstraction; if default happens, Americans will see the consequences in their daily lives."

"Interest rates will go soaring on everything from credit cards, and student loans, to cars, mortgages, and more," he added. "That's thousands of dollars for each American going right out the door, and it will happen through no fault of their own."

As many observers pointed out repeatedly in the wake of the midterm elections, Democrats had the power to prevent this high-risk game of brinkmanship altogether by raising the debt ceiling—or abolishing it completely—when they still controlled both chambers of Congress.

Despite ample warnings from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups, conservative Democrats refused to take unilateral action during the lame-duck session.

On Wednesday, Schumer pleaded with GOP lawmakers to simply raise the debt ceiling without demanding policy concessions in exchange.

"I'd remind my Republican colleagues that they did it before when Trump was president three times; no Democratic obstruction or hostage-taking," said Schumer. "We did it once together when Biden was president. And much of this debt comes from spending when Trump was president, voted on by a Republican House and a Republican Senate."

"It's a bit of hypocrisy now to say that they can't do it again, and they are holding it hostage and are playing a dangerous form of brinksmanship," Schumer argued. "It shouldn't matter who is president. It's still bills we already incurred that must be paid for the good of all Americans."

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

“Brazil has made good progress in terms of how much protected areas have grown, but Indigenous territories and protected areas need more resources if we want them to maintain their capacity to strengthen forests,” said Xiangming Xiao, a University of Oklahoma biology professor and the report’s primary author. 

Between 2000 and 2021, roughly 27 million hectares of forest in non-protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon were lost. However, between 2018 and 2021, the relative rate of gross forest loss was higher in protected areas and Indigenous territories, nearly double that of non-protected areas. That increase, the report says, is likely related to economic development and loosening of environmental conservation policies championed by former president Jair Bolsonaro’s administration beginning in 2019. 

“Indigenous lands and protected areas are vulnerable in a different way from the non-protected areas,” Xiao said. “The forest in these areas are mostly primary forest. They have more biomass, more biodiversity, and if they are lost that will have a disproportionate impact in terms of biodiversity, conservation, and carbon storage.”

Between March and September 2020 alone, Brazilian legislators passed 27 acts that weakened environmental regulations and fines for violating conservation laws dropped by 72 percent in the same period. Under the Bolsonaro regime, mineral prospecting and mining increased with applications currently pending for roughly 100 million hectares with nearly 20 percent of those applications in protected areas, Indigenous territories, or regions with strict conservation regulations. Nearly half a dozen proposed bills could reduce federal authority over protected areas and loosen constraints on economic activities in Indigenous lands. 

In 2020, satellite data revealed record highs in illegal mining and primary forest loss. The report says COVID-19 has also had impacts, hitting Indigenous communities hard and making it easier for illegal loggers and miners to encroach on their land. Currently, the Brazilian Supreme Court is trying a case that could limit what lands can be identified as Indigenous – allowing only areas possessed by Indigenous peoples in 1988 to be granted ownership. 

The study also shows that not all protected areas are created equally. Strictly monitored protected areas lost more forest than protected areas that were designed for sustainable use, where humans are allowed to live and work. Xiao speculates that even though areas with strict protections are expected to be better preserved, they might have different systems and less capacity to deal with the pressures of industry growth, COVID-19, and economic development  over the past few years. 

But the more interesting part, Xiao said, is showing that protected areas designed for sustainable use are still effective. 

“Sustainable use is good and effective for conservation,” Xiao said. “That raises a question in how we address forest conservation and human development. It shows we maybe want to build protected areas that carefully consider how to fit the needs of people in that area. Protection must balance the needs [of the forest and of people].”

Xiao says Brazil’s recent presidential election could herald tighter forest regulations. The satellite images used in the report show fluctuations in the country’s deforestation rates that parallel changes in administration. The period of least deforestation, roughly 2004 to 2010, coincides with president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s first administration, which prioritized conservation in the Amazon. With his return to office and recent environmental initiatives, including selecting the Indigenous leader Sônia Guajajara, of the Guajajara tribe and born on Araribóia land, to head up a new Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, Xiao says Lula da Silva’s history of strong environmental policy may lead to reduced deforestation.

“There will be challenges of course,” Xiao acknowledged. “But we’re already working with satellite data from 2022 and will see how governments and policies impact conservation. We’ll be able to see whether they help or not.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Brazil keeps protecting Indigenous land in the Amazon. It’s not stopping deforestation. on Jan 6, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Maria Parazo Rose.

“The FTC’s action today is thrilling. The rule was long in the making but the strength of this proposal makes the wait worthwhile. If finalized in this form, the rule would be wide ranging, applying to independent contractors and requiring an employer to actively inform workers that existing noncompete clauses are no longer in effect. The legal backing for the rule is also an exciting and overdue use of the FTC’s power to police unfair methods of competition using authority granted by Congress in Section 5 of the FTC Act.

“The agency is once again taking bold action where necessary to protect competition in the labor markets. As stated in the consumer advocates letter encouraging the FTC to move forward, ‘Employers’ use of non-compete clauses inflict real and substantial harms on the American worker and the overall U.S. economy without any legitimate justification.’ The FTC should issue a final rule that mirrors the quality of this initial effort.”

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

"Imagine a car accident with many injured and ambulances forced to take them to hospitals in another region. At some point there will be no more ambulances available."

Under the new rules, migrants must also declare while aboard a rescue ship whether they wish to apply for asylum, and if so, in which European Union country.

Captains of civilian vessels found in violation of the rules face fines of up to €50,000 ($53,500) and confiscation and impoundment of their ships.

"With the new rules imposed by the Italian government on NGO vessels, we will be forced to leave relief areas in the Mediterranean Sea unguarded, with an inevitable increase in the number of dead," Doctors Without Borders Italy said in a statement. "Imagine a car accident with many injured and ambulances forced to take them to hospitals in another region. At some point there will be no more ambulances available."

"In recent years we have tried to fill the void left by the absence of a state aid system," the group noted, "but if they make the task more difficult, if not impossible, who is going to save lives?"

The NGO continued:

The captains and crews of the ships will be faced with an ethical dilemma, between the duty to provide rescue according to the law of the sea, and that of respecting the rules by heading to port after having carried out the first rescue. And to think that, until 2017, when our help was considered precious and there was a tested rescue mechanism, it was often the [Italian] Coast Guard who asked us to stay at sea one more day to cover an area and make up for their lack of means.

Oliver Kulikowski, spokesperson for the Berlin-based rescue group Sea-Watch, said in a statement that "the Italian government's new decree is a call to let people drown."

"Forcing ships into port violates the duty to rescue should there be more people in distress at sea," he added. " We will also resist this attempt to criminalize civil sea rescue and deprive people on the move of their rights."

"The politically motivated allocation of distant ports endangers the health of rescued people and is intended to keep rescue ships out of the Mediterranean for as long as possible."

Sea-Watch medical coordinator Hendrike Förster asserted that "the politically motivated allocation of distant ports endangers the health of rescued people and is intended to keep rescue ships out of the Mediterranean for as long as possible."

"The Italian government thereby makes itself directly responsible for health consequences on board the rescue ships," Förster added.

Since being elected three months ago on a xenophobic, anti-migrant platform, Meloni and her government have cracked down on rescue ship activity, claiming humanitarian groups are boosting, if not working with, human traffickers.

Within 48 hours of entering office, Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi issued a directive prohibiting two rescue ships, Humanity 1 and Ocean Viking from entering Italian ports. Humanity 1 was allowed to dock in Catania, Sicily in November.

After being denied permission to disembark in Italy, Ocean Viking, which is run by the group SOS Méditerranée, sailed for France, where, amid a diplomatic row between the two countries, more than 200 migrants were allowed to come ashore after weeks at sea.

Ocean Viking has returned to Italy with another 113 rescued migrants aboard and is being forced to travel 900 nautical miles around the "boot" of Italy to Ravenna on the Adriatic coast in the country's northeast.

The Italian Interior Ministry says around 102,000 asylum-seekers have disembarked in Italy this year, an increase from about 66,500 in 2021. In 2016, the figure was 181,000. Migrants, who often undertake the perilous voyage from North Africa in inflatable dinghies or rickety wooden fishing boats, are fleeing wars and other armed conflicts, the climate emergency, hunger, and economic privation in their home countries.

According to the International Office on Migration (IOM), more than 2,000 migrants died attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea this year. Since record-keeping began in 2014, IOM says that over 25,000 migrants have gone missing while crossing the sea.

Migrant rescue organizations have been the target of Italian government surveillance and infiltration for years. Following an undercover sting operation based at least partly on the conspiracy theory that rescue groups are funded by "globalist elites" in league with Libyan traffickers, four members of the German NGO Jugend Rettet were arrested and are on trial in Sicily for aiding and abetting illegal immigration. The activists—who deny the charges—face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Twenty-one people in total—including the crews of the Jugend Rettet's Iuventa rescue ship and members of groups including Sea-Watch, Save the Children, and Doctors Without Borders—stand charged with colluding with human traffickers to bring migrants into Italy in 2016 and 2017.

Jugend Rettet saysIuventa's crew rescued 2,000 people in the summer of 2016 alone.

"Instead of sea rescuers being charged for saving lives, Italian and European politicians should be charged with crimes against humanity," a lawyer for the defendants toldOpen Democracy last year. "It is really the world upside down, and we will make it right."

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

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Kateryna Semchuk.

Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• Thousands gathered to watch President Biden sign a historic law protecting same-sex and interracial marriages.
• The January 6 Committee will hold one more public hearing – next Monday December 19 – at which it will vote on making criminal referrals to the Justice Department, perhaps including former President Trump.
• The Department of Energy celebrates a breakthrough in fusion energy – critics say it’s not the clean renewable energy source that advocates make it out to be.
• A devastating Congressional hearing lays out rampant sexual abuse by correctional staff against prisoners in the federal carceral system.
• A clear majority of San Francisco Supervisors want to push through safe injection sites after the mayor pulls back her support.

Image: LGBTQ Pride flag, Free public domain CC0 photo.

The post Biden signs historic law protecting same-sex and interracial marriages; Critics warn fusion energy breakthrough does not produce clean energy source; A devastating Congressional hearing lays out rampant sexual abuse by prison guards appeared first on KPFA.

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

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with THE CITY. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

In November, we published a story about three New York City teenagers who struggled to get mental health services that the city’s public schools are legally obligated to provide. We identified one of those teenagers by her full name and the second by his first name only. For the third teenager, we agreed to use just his middle name and — unlike the other two — to refrain from naming a parent at all.

We followed families’ stated preferences for their children’s privacy. But in doing so, we wrestled with difficult questions about how to best serve readers and the kids we were writing about.

The standard in journalism is to identify sources by their full names whenever possible. Readers deserve to know who’s talking, particularly when a source is accusing a person or a public system of wrongdoing. And it’s part of our job, as reporters, to demonstrate why we deserve a reader’s trust. Especially in investigations, credibility is the most important currency we have, and we try to earn it by being as transparent about our reporting as we possibly can.

In writing about kids with mental health challenges, however, things get complicated. Over the year that I’ve been working on this series about access to mental health care for kids in New York, I’ve found myself writing about some of the most intimate, painful moments in the lives of people who aren’t old enough to give informed consent.

In many cases, I’ve been able to speak directly to the kids I’m writing about, on or off the record. In other cases, that wasn’t possible — either because the kids were in crisis, or away in a residential program, or just because they were so tired of the whole subject that they had no interest in rehashing it with me. Young people in the mental health system are often required to discuss their worst memories — or the worst things they’ve ever done — with what can seem like an endless succession of intake specialists, new therapists, school principals, deans, probation officers and so on. There’s a limit to how many times anyone wants to tell the story of how they attempted suicide or the time they attacked their mother.

Reporting for my most recent article posed an additional ethical dilemma: The family asking for the highest level of anonymity — that of the teenager we identified by just his middle name — was also the family with the greatest financial resources, a fact that was crucial to the story. In granting their request, were we contributing to the idea that the kid with the most money was the most deserving of privacy or that he had more to lose? Were we implying that a wealthy family should be more ashamed of mental illness than a poor one?

In the end, we stuck with the policy we’ve used from the beginning of the project — which is that we allow parents and guardians to decide how identifiable or anonymous their children will be.

Parents’ decisions have often been fraught with worry: How will their kids feel seeing personal information published online? Will their family be publicly defined by what we write? Will the story pop up in a Google search if a future college admissions counselor or employer looks up their child’s name? Will their in-laws see it?

Some parents also worry about retaliation. The universe of care for children with very serious mental health challenges is small, and the sickest kids are often in the physical custody of outside caregivers. What if families need to put their children back in a hospital or school that they’ve publicly criticized?

There was one thing, though, that every child and parent I’ve spoken to has said about why they decided to talk to me: They all wanted to make the system better. Kids in mental health crises face a nearly universal set of problems, including underfunded programs, waitlists for services, constant staff turnover and inadequate care. And yet those problems are all but invisible to the outside world. Without exception, the kids and parents who appeared in these stories decided that they were willing to compromise their privacy in the hope that some other family wouldn’t have to endure what theirs did.

“I’m just hoping that someone will take this on — some legislator, some oversight committee, someone will really take this on,” said Tamara Begel, a Long Island parent who spent many hours this year helping me to understand her yearslong fight to get mental health care for her son. “When politicians just hear the numbers, ‘Oh it’s hundreds or thousands of kids sitting in waiting rooms or psych ERs, waiting for beds,’ it’s too easy to say ‘aww’ and move on. I want them to see that it’s real.”

When I first wrote about Begel’s family, she chose to identify herself and her son by their middle names. Shortly after the story was published, however, New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, held a hearing about the lack of access to mental health care across the state, and Begel decided to testify publicly. Since then, she’s become more outspoken in her advocacy for Long Island kids and families.

But the choice to be public with her name and story remains difficult, Begel told me recently. “I’m still not 100% comfortable. I still wake up at night wondering if I did the right thing, or if it will have a negative effect on my child. Only time will tell.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Abigail Kramer, THE CITY.

The post Why is AP Still Protecting the Source Behind its False Russia-Bombed-Poland Story? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sam Husseini.

Photograph Source: Lorenzo Tlacaelel – CC BY 2.0

Not as widely known as it deserves to be given its accomplishments and creative approach, is a small human rights civil society organization called Euro-Med Human Monitor (EMM). It was inspired 11 years ago by the oppressive conditions existing in Gaza, and founded by a group of activists led by Ramy Abdu, then a resident of Gaza while still a doctoral student at the University of Manchester.

From the beginning EMM’s dedication to the promotion of human rights spread beyond the borders of Occupied Palestine, and EMM now has offices or representatives in 17 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, known as the MENA region and Europe, it is becoming a truly international organization with headquarters in Geneva, supported by volunteers and representatives spread throughout the world. In its short lifetime EMM has developed a strong reputation for political independence, staff dedication, effectiveness and efficiency, and most of all for its distinctive way of operating.

To begin withl, EMM is youth-oriented and much of its work is done by volunteers who learn by doing and working as teams with more experienced defenders of human rights. By adopting this mode of work, EMM has avoided diversions of its energies by major fundraising efforts, preferring to move forward with a small budget offset by big ideas, an impressive record of performance, continually motivated by outrage resulting from the widespread wrongdoing of governments throughout MENA. The initial idea of Euro-Med Monitor was inspired by popular rebellions against tyranny and oppression. This spirit of resistance swept through the Arab region in 2011 and continues to make its influence felt everywhere. Euro-Med Monitor strives to support these movements by planting seeds for international mobilization and stimulating international organizations and decision-makers to focus on violations of the people’s right to expression, freedom, and self-determination.

Perhaps, one the most innovative features of EMM is its stress on empowering victims of abuse to tell their stories to the world in their own voices. A recent example was the testimony at the Human Rights Council in Geneva of Suhaila al-Masri, the grandmother of Fatima al-Masri, who told the heart-rending story of how her 20 month old granddaughter died of suffocation because her exit permit from Gaza to receive emergency treatment was delayed without reason. EMM prides itself by working with victims to recover their sense of worth in a variety of struggles against the abuses they endured in the hope of avoiding similar suffering by others. In this innovative sense the empowerment of victims is complemented by establishing sites for training young human rights defenders to go on to have a variety of societal roles as they older.

Another example of this empowerment ethos practiced by EMM involves a 22-yearr old Palestinian woman, Zainab al-Quolaq, who lost 22 members of her family in an air attack that destroyed her home in Gaza a few year ago.  Zainab herself miraculously survived despite being buried in rubble from the attack for 20 hours. EMM encouraged Zainab to write her story, but writing did not come easily to her, but it was discovered that she was a natural artist. Not only could she draw but she could depict a range of emotions, especially of torment and loss, that derived from her tragic encounter with the mass death of her family members. In what was a dramatic success story, Zainab al-Quolaq, began serious study of painting, going on to become an acclaimed artist, even holding gallery exhibitions of her work in her native Gaza, but also in Geneva, even in the United States, evoking media enthusiasm. Zainab also spoke before the Human rights Council on behalf of Euro-Med Monitor in March. EMM and UN Women helped her release her first booklet containing 9 of her paintings describing her feelings during and in the aftermath of the attack. After she was isolating herself for months following the traumatizing attack, Zainab is now more open and has begun a Master’s degree in business administration.

At this time, EMM feels its special identity is solidified by having 70% of its active staff either drawn from youth or from the ranks of those victimized by human rights abuses. The organization reaches out beyond victims of war and torture to more subtle forms of encroachment on human dignity such as prolonged refugee status or mistreatment of women. An instructive example is the encouragement of the formation of a Gaza initiative with the assertive name, We Are Not Numbers, suggesting human rights is about self-preservation of human identity under circumstances of pervasive oppression of which Gaza is the most vivid instance, but by no means the only site of such struggles within the MENA region.

It would be a mistake to suppose that EMM, despite its origins, was only concerned with the Palestinian agenda. A look at its Website or Twitter account would quickly dispel such an idea as would a glance at the titles of recent EMM reports or appearances before the Human Rights Council. Among the topic covered in recent reports are the targeting of journalists in Sudan, disguised and punitive racism toward MENA asylum seekers and immigrants from MENA, human displacement in Yemen, interferences with the freedom and safety of journalists in various countries within their scope of concern. EMM uses a network of 300 writers to tell the stories of those who have been abused when the victims themselves are not available. The overall EMM undertaking seeks to convey the issues of concern in different countries by employing what Ramy Abdu calls ‘the real discourse of the people.’

With its headquarters in Geneva, EMM is particularly active in the formal proceedings and side events associated with the Human Rights Council. It has mounted actions and testimony on such matters as opposition to EU surveillance of asylum seekers in Europe, arms exports to Yemen, and the rescue of persons who have been coercively disappeared in Yemen and Syria.

In my judgment, EMM is creating a new and exciting model for how to combine civil society activism with effective efforts to improve the overall protection of human rights. It is a young organization, but one with incredible promise, having already compiled a record to admire and emulate.

For contact Geneva@Euromedmonitor.org ; for website www.euromedmonitor.org 

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Richard Falk.

In the past week, reports have emerged of armed actors showing up at ballot drop boxes, spouting "big lie" messaging and other conspiracy theories, with the express aim of intimidation.

Their goal is to intimidate voters–to intimidate all Americans who oppose bigotry and authoritarianism. But we must refuse to be intimidated.

It's no surprise. The 2020 election was marked by the activities of bigoted groups and elected officials promoting dangerous disinformation, with Trump as their ringleader. Over the last two years, that threat has only grown. White nationalist and other bigoted and anti-democracy groups have continued to further embed themselves in our national politics, using conspiracy theories as the accelerant for their growth. Now, instances of electoral disinformation, voter intimidation, and the targeting of public officials have become disturbingly regular occurrences.

We learned in 2020 that those of us who believe in democracy cannot ignore these threats. Unfortunately, bigoted and anti-democracy actors also learned from 2020, and this time around they are more organized. Groups intent on subverting democracy have worked to install their supporters as formal election observers and organized groups of people to monitor and intimidate voters at ballot drop boxes.

Their goal is to intimidate voters–to intimidate all Americans who oppose bigotry and authoritarianism. But we must refuse to be intimidated.

I know, from years of countering bigoted and anti-democracy groups, that there is a lot we can do to resist their efforts. We need every level of government–and the full power of our civil society–to truly defend inclusive democracy, and each of us can be part of that effort, even as individuals.

First and foremost, every eligible voter must make a plan to vote. Whether the ballot is cast in person early, on Election Day in person, by mail, or by absentee ballot, figure out ahead of time which option works best and plan to get the transportation and time off needed to vote for democracy itself and against those who prefer bigotry to inclusion, authoritarianism to full representation.

Next, help friends, family, and neighbors to do the same. Speak out in your networks about democracy, inclusion, and safe voting so that people know they can ask you questions. Ask your community members if they have a plan to vote and help them make one if they don't. Ensuring that everyone–especially those with particular challenges–is familiar with the process can do a lot to remove barriers. That allows election officials to turn their attention to any surprises that pop up at the last minute. (For that matter, if you and your community can vote early, so much the better. That means shorter lines on Election Day and, again, more capacity for election workers to address shocks to the system.)

If you encounter voter intimidation, document it if it is safe to do so and report it immediately. You can contact local authorities or organizations like the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which operates the 1-866-OUR-VOTE hotline in English as well as hotlines in several other languages.

In addition to individual acts, working to support institutions to take strong action against bigoted groups is essential. White nationalist and other anti-democracy groups often act with the specific intention of undermining democratic institutions, sapping them of their legitimacy when they struggle to respond to conspiracy theories and bigoted assaults. You can help your networks understand this, and you can speak out in support of local democratic institutions when they get things right.

Similarly, in working with your community in the weeks surrounding an election, it's important to ask local elected officials and law enforcement to make proactive statements about the importance of safe and accessible voting and the consequences of intimidation and harassment. We must support our institutions to confront these challenges to democracy head-on. That's as true in advance of an election as afterwards, as we know from 2020 that some strategies of the anti-democracy coalition only come online after votes begin to be counted.

Consider emailing your city council members and asking them to consistently speak out in support of inclusive democracy and condemn attempts at voter intimidation. Community groups, clubs, or organizations should loudly set the standard that their neighborhoods, towns, and cities will not tolerate any election intimidation or harassment. If you're a member of a rotary club or any other local group, you can ask them to speak out.

Finally, and once again: don't be intimidated! While the risk of bigoted activity to our nation is serious, the chance of activity at the ballot box is very low and voting is still overwhelmingly safe. If voters stop participating in our elections, then the efforts to create a bigoted and anti-democracy country will win, so vote with pride!

And remember: the threats we're seeing to our inclusive democracy are backlash against important victories we've won through inclusive democracy. Making changes is hard, but it is happening–and participating in our democratic systems is a powerful way to make sure it keeps happening.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Lindsay Schubiner.

In the past week, reports have emerged of armed actors showing up at ballot drop boxes, spouting "big lie" messaging and other conspiracy theories, with the express aim of intimidation.

Their goal is to intimidate voters–to intimidate all Americans who oppose bigotry and authoritarianism. But we must refuse to be intimidated.

It's no surprise. The 2020 election was marked by the activities of bigoted groups and elected officials promoting dangerous disinformation, with Trump as their ringleader. Over the last two years, that threat has only grown. White nationalist and other bigoted and anti-democracy groups have continued to further embed themselves in our national politics, using conspiracy theories as the accelerant for their growth. Now, instances of electoral disinformation, voter intimidation, and the targeting of public officials have become disturbingly regular occurrences.

We learned in 2020 that those of us who believe in democracy cannot ignore these threats. Unfortunately, bigoted and anti-democracy actors also learned from 2020, and this time around they are more organized. Groups intent on subverting democracy have worked to install their supporters as formal election observers and organized groups of people to monitor and intimidate voters at ballot drop boxes.

Their goal is to intimidate voters–to intimidate all Americans who oppose bigotry and authoritarianism. But we must refuse to be intimidated.

I know, from years of countering bigoted and anti-democracy groups, that there is a lot we can do to resist their efforts. We need every level of government–and the full power of our civil society–to truly defend inclusive democracy, and each of us can be part of that effort, even as individuals.

First and foremost, every eligible voter must make a plan to vote. Whether the ballot is cast in person early, on Election Day in person, by mail, or by absentee ballot, figure out ahead of time which option works best and plan to get the transportation and time off needed to vote for democracy itself and against those who prefer bigotry to inclusion, authoritarianism to full representation.

Next, help friends, family, and neighbors to do the same. Speak out in your networks about democracy, inclusion, and safe voting so that people know they can ask you questions. Ask your community members if they have a plan to vote and help them make one if they don't. Ensuring that everyone–especially those with particular challenges–is familiar with the process can do a lot to remove barriers. That allows election officials to turn their attention to any surprises that pop up at the last minute. (For that matter, if you and your community can vote early, so much the better. That means shorter lines on Election Day and, again, more capacity for election workers to address shocks to the system.)

If you encounter voter intimidation, document it if it is safe to do so and report it immediately. You can contact local authorities or organizations like the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which operates the 1-866-OUR-VOTE hotline in English as well as hotlines in several other languages.

In addition to individual acts, working to support institutions to take strong action against bigoted groups is essential. White nationalist and other anti-democracy groups often act with the specific intention of undermining democratic institutions, sapping them of their legitimacy when they struggle to respond to conspiracy theories and bigoted assaults. You can help your networks understand this, and you can speak out in support of local democratic institutions when they get things right.

Similarly, in working with your community in the weeks surrounding an election, it's important to ask local elected officials and law enforcement to make proactive statements about the importance of safe and accessible voting and the consequences of intimidation and harassment. We must support our institutions to confront these challenges to democracy head-on. That's as true in advance of an election as afterwards, as we know from 2020 that some strategies of the anti-democracy coalition only come online after votes begin to be counted.

Consider emailing your city council members and asking them to consistently speak out in support of inclusive democracy and condemn attempts at voter intimidation. Community groups, clubs, or organizations should loudly set the standard that their neighborhoods, towns, and cities will not tolerate any election intimidation or harassment. If you're a member of a rotary club or any other local group, you can ask them to speak out.

Finally, and once again: don't be intimidated! While the risk of bigoted activity to our nation is serious, the chance of activity at the ballot box is very low and voting is still overwhelmingly safe. If voters stop participating in our elections, then the efforts to create a bigoted and anti-democracy country will win, so vote with pride!

And remember: the threats we're seeing to our inclusive democracy are backlash against important victories we've won through inclusive democracy. Making changes is hard, but it is happening–and participating in our democratic systems is a powerful way to make sure it keeps happening.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Lindsay Schubiner.

“This is an important step to protect press freedom in the United States,” said CPJ U.S. and Canada Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “These significant restraints to the Justice Department’s ability to subpoena journalists’ source material send a powerful message about the importance of reporters’ ability to protect their sources. CPJ and other press freedom organizations have long been advocating for this decision—it is heartening to see the Justice Department commit to these changes.” 

Wednesday’s decision codifies Garland’s policy change to extend the protections in July 2021, the Department of Justice said.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Last week, a new comprehensive study of almost 32,000 populations of 5,230 species around the world estimated that wildlife on earth has decreased by almost 70 percent since 1970. The mind can’t really wrap around the scale of loss conveyed by this number.

Bill McKibben framed this loss in terms of a “fast-emptying ark,” and a world growing “quieter by the day.” Another working of this metaphor would have humans crowding onto the ark, other species tossed overboard or crushed underfoot. In 2020, the weight of human-made materials surpassed the weight of all life on earth for the first time. As Atlantic writer Ed Yong wrote in an extraordinary piece on animal perception, humans have “filled the silence with noise and the night with light,” have remade the earth in fundamental ways. But like every other species, we depend on other species for our survival. We are not exempt from the mass extinction debt the earth is accruing. The question is: will we act to protect the magnificently complex ecosystems upon which everything depends? 

As climate crises and biodiversity loss accelerate, the Endangered Species Act will be a far more important tool for preserving national stability than a nuclear weapons program.

That question has no one final answer. It has already been answered thousands of times, by voters and donors and autocrats and shareholders, by soldiers and protestors and lawyers and landowners, in transfer after transfer of dollars. Brazilian voters have the chance to offer a massively consequential answer on October 30, when they will choose between presidential candidates Lula and Bolsonaro, with the fate of the Amazon Rainforest hanging in the balance. Lula reduced Amazon deforestation by 80 percent when he was last president, while Bolsonaro has accelerated Amazon deforestation by 75 percent from the previous decade. 

A Look at Endangered Species Act Appropriations

It’s worth looking at how the US government spends over a trillion and a half dollars in discretionary spending each year through this same lens. Unfortunately, even a cursory glance at federal spending makes clear that the ongoing sixth mass extinction event is barely a blip on the government’s radar. 

Last Wednesday, The Guardian reported on a new study which found that the US’s foremost law for protecting biodiversity, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, has long been undermined by inadequate resources for its implementation. Though over a thousand species are listed as endangered under the law (which is itself a gross underrepresentation of the number of species in need of protection), only 54 species have fully recovered. As it turns out, the federal appropriations process deserves a large share of the blame:

“The new report, which examined data from the Federal Register, found that since 1985, one of the main sources of funding for ESA has decreased by almost 50% when measured on a per species basis. Although the law has been shown to be effective when it comes to keeping species from going extinct (it has saved over 99% of listed species from extinction, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service), it has not been as successful when it comes to species recovery. The authors explained that typically by the time a species has received protection, it has already reached ‘dangerously low population sizes’, which makes recovery extremely difficult.”

The study looked specifically at the money allocated to the US Fish and Wildlife Service through annual congressional appropriations bills for resource management and implementing Section 4 of the Endangered Species Act. Section 4 outlines how the agency should determine species to be endangered or threatened. For 2023, the draft appropriations bills from the House and Senate would cap spending on implementing Section 4 of the Endangered Species Act at just under $26 million. 

$26 million. That’s a minuscule amount of money compared to practically any branch of the government. It looks even more devastatingly trivial in the face of the Pentagon’s profligate waste. Take the cost of one new nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile: $264 billion over its lifetime. That’s over ten thousand times the money allowed to be spent on endangered species protection under Section 4, in order to fund a dangerous and unnecessary nuclear weapon that experts say raises the risk of accidental nuclear war. 

The Project on Government Oversight highlighted last year the Congressional Budget Office’s unwillingness to even consider the “possible savings from simply scaling back (not even ending) the Pentagon’s $2-trillion, three-decades-long plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines, complete with accompanying new warheads. Scaling back such a buildup, which will only further imperil this planet, could easily save in excess of $100 billion over the next decade.” Imagine what programs that actually protect public and ecological health could do with an extra $100 billion.

Every year since 1998, Congress has put a spending cap on the amount of money that the US Fish and Wildlife Service can spend on its endangered species listing program. This spending cap has a seriously deleterious effect on the agency’s capacity to protect endangered species, and the agency knows it. In 2020, the Fish and Wildlife Service found that both monarch butterflies and northern spotted owls deserved to be classified as endangered—classification was “warranted,” they said—but the action was “precluded by work on higher-priority listing actions.” Monarch butterflies’ western population has declined a staggering 99 percent, and their eastern population by 85 percent since the 1990s; northern spotted owl populations have declined somewhere between 50 and 75 percent since 1995. Still, neither is protected by the Endangered Species Act.

These are the terrible choices that systemically underfunded agencies make. In each of these findings, the Fish and Wildlife Service published this incensed note:

“...for more than two decades, the size and cost of the workload in these categories of actions have far exceeded the amount of funding available to the Service under the spending cap for completing listing and critical habitat actions under the Act. Since we cannot exceed the spending cap without violating the Anti-Deficiency Act, each year we have been compelled to determine that work on at least some actions was precluded by work on higher-priority actions.”

A decade ago, overwhelmed by a massive backlog of petitions and lawsuits from environmental groups pushing the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect hundreds of fast-disappearing species, the agency responded not by asking Congress for increased resources, but by asking Congress to impose a limit on the number of species it had to consider for protection. Luckily, this limit didn’t come to pass. But it underscores the longstanding importance of the fight to get agencies and congressional appropriations committees alike to stop approaching non-defense agency programs with an austerity mindset. 

As climate crises and biodiversity loss accelerate, the Endangered Species Act will be a far more important tool for preserving national stability than a nuclear weapons program. Take pollinators, for instance, without whom you simply cannot grow crops. The American bumblebee population has declined by 90 percent, and nearly vanished from sixteen states. The Fish and Wildlife Service is currently reviewing whether it warrants endangered species protection. Of course, even if it’s “warranted,” it may be “precluded” by the deadly ignorance of those who write the budget. 

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Hannah Story Brown.

• Disinformation: Deliberately incorrect information shared with intent to deceive.  
• Misinformation: Incorrect information spread without malice.

Guidance for media outlets

• Consider smear campaigns against employees as an attack on the newsroom and  freedom of expression.
• Ensure that journalists are aware of how their online personal data can be used against them and help them remove it from the internet.
• Encourage robust digital security for journalists’ online accounts, including personal ones.
• Weigh the benefits of speaking out for journalists under attack. A public statement of support may be useful, according to the International Press Institute, though it may also spur further harassment in some cases.

Guidance for journalists

• Research whether other journalists covering your beat have been targeted and set reminders or automate regular internet searches to monitor disinformation about issues you cover.
• Remove or protect online personal data such as photos, addresses, and telephone numbers, since abusers can use this information to harass you.
• Secure all online accounts by turning on two-factor authentication (2FA) and creating long, unique passwords.
• Learn how to protect yourself during a targeted online attack.
• Speak with your newsroom to see what support they will offer you if you are targeted by a smear campaign.
• Online harassment can take a toll on your mental wellbeing. Consider coming offline until the attacks have died down.

Relevant CPJ Resources

Editor’s checklist: protecting staff and freelancers against online abuse

Protecting against online harassment

Protecting against targeted online attacks

Removing personal data from the internet

Online harassment and how to protect your mental health

Digital safety kit

The Committee to Protect Journalists is a member of the Coalition Against Online Violence, a collection of global organizations working to find better solutions for women journalists facing online abuse, harassment and other forms of digital attack.

Journalists in need of emergency assistance can email emergencies@cpj.org.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Madeline Earp.

It’s an inevitability, if you’re lucky enough to do this for a living. Sometimes I get caught up feeling bummed out about losing this innocent connection to music that isn’t tied to my own ego or capitalism. If I go too far down that road, I have to pull myself back and be like, “Yeah, but you get to make a living off of it. So many people don’t get to do that.” It’s this constant seesaw of feeling incredibly nostalgic for when I first started music, how exciting it felt, and surprising yourself. I don’t surprise myself as much anymore, which is sad, but that’s because you’re getting used to what you’re doing and your standards keep rising.

I think about times when I would first write a song that was actually good and the feeling of elation that came from that. Now if I write a song that I think is good, the feeling is fleeting, which is a shame. I’m still in the stage of figuring out how to connect with being a music fan. Being three albums in, I still don’t fully feel like a full-time musician. I still struggle to think of this as being the all encompassing part of my life, which it has become.

What was your childhood vision of being a full-time musician?

It’s hard to shake my initial idea of what being a musician would feel and look like. I came up around lots of people who were technically gifted and pursuing music in this mathematical way. The classical singing world is highly regimented and has no room for individuality. It’s just following the rules, which I’m grateful for because it helped me gain real vocal strength. It helped me with touring, but was also a weird place to start my relationship with music. Most of my memories are getting in trouble. I don’t remember much of it being joyful, exciting, or encouraging.

I went from the classical music world into a small city music scene full of young people desperately trying to prove themselves. Part of that is tearing each other down, which I think is most people’s experience in small music scenes. Sometimes I talk to people who came up in really encouraging scenes like, “Wow. That sounds nice.”

How has your definition of success changed over the years?

I didn’t expect to become a full-time musician in a real way because you can’t be “in” what you can’t see in terms of my scene and family. I’m not talking about representation, but in my world. I didn’t know anyone who did music full-time. I didn’t have that context or know how it worked. You don’t understand who is in the industry and have these movie ideas where you just need some guy in a suit to be in the back of the room. It’s like, “Is that how it happens?” For most people and for me, it was a very slow, tiny thing after tiny thing accumulating over time.

I remember getting a manager and him saying, “I’m going to start shopping this around to labels.” I was like, “Oh. I’m going to get signed to a label? Is that the plan?” He was like, “Obviously. That’s the plan.” I was like, “Oh, okay. Wow. That’s crazy.” One of the hardest things once you cross over into the world I’m in is trying to retain your own definition of success when so many people around you are feeding you their definition bit by bit. If you’re not careful, it’s going to chip away at your definition of success until it’s completely replaced by theirs.

I’d imagine their messaging gets louder and more frequent.

I’ve had multiple points in my career where I felt successful, proud of myself, and then it’s swiftly undercut by, “All right. Well next time.” I played this sold out show in London and to me, that was huge. I can’t remember what venue it was, but there were 1,000 people there. It was a great show. I walked off stage and felt so at peace in my heart and soul, elated. I remember getting into the green room and there were people from my label. The conversation went straight to, “Well next time you come back to London, we’re going to get you into this next venue, which is two and a half thousand capacity.” There’s all these people in the green room I didn’t know, with champagne glasses. It was so cliché just being like, “Yeah. Onwards and upwards.”

I felt defeated and sad in that moment, it’s interesting how that happens so often. You have to try and grab onto moments where you feel successful with both hands and try not to let them go because there’s always something else you could be doing. For this album campaign, I love the record and decided to tour it, but am feeling the pressure of, “Okay. Let’s take this to the next level.” All of that feels separate to the music and to what makes me feel good.

What even is the “next level”?

I sometimes look people dead in the eye and am like, “I’m an indie singer songwriter. This is the pinnacle of success for me. What are you talking about? Just please. Tell me what you mean by the next level of success. I don’t think you know.” We’re not used to being content because it’s a business. I understand that, so I’m not pushing against it in this ignorant way. I understand that everybody on the team is making money off the work, that there are financial incentives. I respect that, but sometimes when it’s just this constant ‘next level.’ “What does that look like?” I’m not going to become a pop star. What is the next level?

What about your connection with touring?

I tour a lot for an Australian artist. Musicians kind of think, “Is Julia Jacklin okay?” They see my touring schedule be like, “Is she all right?” A lot of the time the answer would be not really. I toured a lot in the beginning because I kind of did whatever was asked of me. I didn’t really feel like I had a choice, and also didn’t know what touring was like yet. You’re only young once, etc. I’m just going to do it all. When it came to Crushing I thought, “I’m going to be better this time. I’m going to have more boundaries.” It’s not just the touring, you also have to fit in radio sessions and press stuff.

I was so depressed and tired when I filmed my KEXP session. I had this breakdown a couple of days before. That was the first time I had a panic attack on stage in Chicago, and was just so exhausted. I lost sense of myself in a hard to describe way. I remember being at KEXP and being like, “I should not be on camera right now.” Then I looked back at the session and I’m like, “Wow. It’s good. You’ve managed to do that,” which is good, but also scary because you realize how good you get at masking how you’re feeling. I was saying, “I’m going to be better,” but I wasn’t. I said yes to everything again, and I toured forever.

Because I live in Australia, a lot of the time you’re away for huge chunks of time because it’s too expensive and exhausting to fly back if you have a week or two weeks off. You end up being away for five months at a time compared to North America, where you would go away for a month and then go home.

I love playing shows. That’s the part of the job that I do really like, but towards the end of the last tour it hit home how there could be long term consequences if you’re not careful. I was very, “No. Totally ruin yourself now and then you can just recover later.” I think that level of touring permanently damaged me in terms of panic attacks. I’ve never had that before and they’re with me forever. I don’t think I respected my brain enough when I was touring that much whereas now, I’m a bit more like, “You have to look after yourself if you want to do this long term.”

You put a lot of pressure on yourself regarding stage banter. Not a lot of artists talk about how hard the in-between moments on stage can be.

That’s such a tough one. Sometimes I feel that if I don’t make the audience laugh two to three times in a set, then the show has kind of failed. Then I’m like, “Wait, I’m not a comedian. Why do you put so much value on making people laugh over just playing the music they paid to see?” There’s this weird pressure to be a show person because you’re up there for over an hour. Especially with my kind of music where I don’t have a mysterious, artsy persona where you can hide within a character, which I envy to be honest. I’m just not like that as a person. It would be inauthentic and I would find it impossible to pretend to be a closed book.

You have to be yourself, which is the most cliché shit you’ve ever heard, but it’s true. You have to feel like yourself. That can be creating a character if that’s what you need to do. When I watch younger people performing, I recognize that feeling when a song ends and you’re tuning your guitar and trying to fill that space with nervous energy. Saying stuff that you know is going to make the audience laugh. Sometimes people are saying not much at all, but the audience is primed to laugh at awkwardness. We’re doing a disservice to ourselves and our art by feeling we have to fill in those silences to keep the audience engaged.

It’s so much nicer for me personally and for my audience if I finish a song just to trust that they have me and I have them. That they are there to watch a professional, and I want them to feel comfortable, relaxed. That can come from peaceful silence, taking a breath, and not feeling that intense compulsion to jump in and fill the silence. I’ve tried to trust that we have each other’s backs in the moment. I don’t need to guide them through every second of the show.

Someone who I learned a lot from is Aldous Harding. She’s so commanding of the space, and is creating a world, not breaking it between every song in order to make the audience feel comfortable. That creates a better show. She’s taking herself seriously. She’s not breaking the spell that she’s casting. You walk out of her show feeling you’ve just slipped into some world for a second. That’s what a show should be.

An important moment came when your audience began skewing younger. When did this happen?

It happened with my second record. My first record was a shared experience of being a slightly hyped debut in the indie rock world where you get crowds skewing to cis older men with their arms crossed. Just seeing if you’re worth their scene and whatnot. People who are coming more from a place of, “Let’s see what she’s got.”

With Crushing I noticed the crowd suddenly was quite younger. It was the best thing in the world because that’s who I was writing for. Initially you’re like, “I don’t feel my music is reaching the people I wanted to reach.” When that changed, I was like, “Oh, thank god. This is who I hoped would hear this music and know that they get it.” The next part, which is even greater, is children and their parents both liking me. I’ve had that a lot lately. Young kids will message me and be like, “Me and my dad/mom love your music so much.” That is the best because parent-child relationships are so difficult especially when you’re a teenager. If I can help in any way, even if there’s just one through line for you guys, I’d be happy if that was my whole legacy. It’s an interesting experience to see your crowd transform in time especially in a way that you hoped for.

The music industry is geared towards younger people. Is ‘’having all the time in the world” a myth?

I find it funny when people say to me like, “Oh, you’ve got all the time in the world.” They’re like, “You’re going to have a long career.” I’m, like, “Can you write me a list of how many indie rock women over the age of 40 are respected, relevant? Before you say that to me, I need you to do some thinking.” Obviously that’s the dream. It is hard to look up and be like, “Well, I don’t see heaps of examples that I’m supposed to be feeling encouraged by,” especially in Australia. It is dire in Australia. I have some fanciful idea of Europe being a little less ageist, but Australia is shocking when it comes to it. That’s why I have put a lot of energy and effort into an overseas career. I know that here it would be virtually impossible. Sometimes I get annoyed when people say that to me because I’m like, “What world do you live in? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” There are some women I look up to who are still doing it.

I think about it a lot and wish I didn’t. When I was younger, I would have just been like, “Shut up,” but when you are older, it just kind of happens.I didn’t start to know what I wanted to do with music until I was 25. I didn’t feel very supported or encouraged when I was younger. It took me a long time to figure out who were the people I should not collaborate with, and how to start a band without feeling stepped on.

I came up in a scene with guys pretending they were from the 1920s, singing songs about the Virginia railroads or something in Sydney. It was horrible. Unfortunately that was my introduction to folk music, not a particularly inspiring time. It took me a while to find my place, my people, and find spaces that wanted me to succeed. These spaces are quite difficult to find. Once you find it, you’re like, “Fuck. I’ve lost so much time.”

I’m still processing that and surrounding myself with older women including Courtney Barnett. Your whole life is finding your people. You lose some, you gain some. Finding people who affirm you and make you feel like you belong, like your work is valued even if you’re, god forbid, 35 or something.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Jeffrey Silverstein.

To the Taliban, the de facto authorities in Afghanistan

1. Respect and guarantee the ability of all journalists and media workers to report and produce news freely and independently, without fear of reprisal, in keeping with the Taliban’s public commitments of August 2021.

2. End the involvement of the General Directorate of Intelligence and the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in developing or enforcing media policy, or intervening in media operations and interfering with the work of journalists.

4. Ensure access to effective remedies and due process for journalists who have been targeted for their work and penalize members of the Taliban engaging in such violations.

5. Continue interaction and engage constructively with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) Human Rights Unit to address the situation of journalists in the country.

6. Continue to engage with and facilitate country visits by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan, including the ability to meet privately with journalists and news executives.

*CPJ directs these recommendations to the Taliban as the de facto authority of Afghanistan and thereby the duty-bearers of human rights in the country. 

To all governments 

1. Accept Afghan journalists who are seeking emergency relocation and enact emergency visa programs to create a pathway specifically for at-risk journalists. 

7. Support the continuation of the human rights mandate of U.N. experts including the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and ensure adequate resources are available for human rights monitoring, documentation and accountability efforts, including on issues of press freedom.

To international organizations 

1. The U.N. Security Council should reimpose the travel ban originating from a 1988 U.N. sanctions regime on all Taliban leadership involved in human rights violations, including specifically those responsible for attacks on the press.

2. U.N. special rapporteurs should meet with journalists in Afghanistan and those living in exile and include their experiences in any reporting and engagement with the de facto authorities.

3. The International Criminal Court (ICC) should pursue investigations into crimes against journalists, as part of its relaunch of investigations into crimes committed by the Taliban and the Islamic State.

4. The Media Freedom Coalition, a partnership of 52 countries working together to advocate for media freedom and safety of journalists, should suspend Afghanistan’s membership in the body and seek meaningful, concrete steps to improve press freedom.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

Amid widespread applause Sunday for U.S. Senate Democrats' long-awaited passage of a budget reconciliation package, Indigenous and conservationist leaders declared that they were "deeply disappointed" in lawmakers' refusal to restore protections to a key region of Alaska.

"Congress has chosen to ignore the health of the Arctic and the Gwich'in way of life."

Unlike the Build Back Better Act approved by House Democrats last year, the deal negotiated by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) doesn't shield the incredibly biodiverse Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) from fossil fuel activity—which the Wilderness Society called "a grievous attack on the rights, culture, and sacred lands of the Gwich'in and Iñupiat peoples."

After the Inflation Reduction Act passed the Senate on Sunday, Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich'in Steering Committee—an Indigenous group that has long fought to safeguard ANWR's Coastal Plain—blasted the exclusion.

"In the Arctic, we're experiencing a warming climate at four times the rate as the rest of the world, yet Congress has chosen to ignore the health of the Arctic and the Gwich'in way of life by failing to stop this destructive and failed oil and gas program," she said. "We will never stop fighting to protect these sacred lands, the Porcupine caribou, and our communities."

After Manchin joined with Senate Republicans in 2017 to thwart efforts by other Democrats and conservationists to protect ANWR, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) proposed forcing the U.S. Interior Department to hold two lease sales for ANWR—legislation that was included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

When signing what critics called the GOP tax scam into law in December 2017, then-President Donald Trump said that "corporations are literally going wild over this." Murkowski, meanwhile, framed the passage of her ANWR measure as "a watershed moment for Alaska and all of America" that would "give us renewed hope for growth and prosperity."

While the first of the two required lease sales was held just before Trump left office in 2021, the event failed to attract fossil fuel giants.

In fact, as the Gwich'in Steering Committee pointed out Sunday, as global banks and insurance companies have pledged to not be involved with exploiting ANWR, the three companies with leases—Regenerate Alaska, the only oil firm that bid in the 2021 sale, along with Chevron and Hilcorp, which both held decades-old leases—have backed out.

Peter Winsor, executive director of Alaska Wilderness League, said in June that Regenerate Alaska, a subsidiary of Australia-based 88 Energy, "canceling its lease interest on the heels of Chevron and Hilcorp divesting themselves of their own Arctic refuge holdings is the clearest sign yet that there is zero interest out there in industrializing the wildest place left in America."

"We have long known that the American people don't want drilling in the Arctic refuge, the Gwich'in people don't want it, and we now have further proof that the oil industry doesn't want it either," he added.

Following the Senate's vote Sunday, Winsor joined Demientieff, the Gwich'in leader, in expressing disappointment about the package's exclusion of ANWR safeguards while also highlighting handouts to fossil fuel giants included in the legislation.

"The United States just took a big leap forward to address climate change," he said. "However, today's progress left out public lands as part of the solution, and in fact parts of the bill increased oil and gas extraction on our nation's lands and waters, including in Alaska's Cook Inlet."

"We are... doubling down on our efforts to make certain that public lands are the focus of future climate progress."

The Biden administration in May canceled three fossil fuel lease sales for the Gulf of Mexico and Cook Inlet, citing a lack of industry interest—a move welcomed by climate campaigners, who continue to call on President Joe Biden to end all offshore drilling.

Discussing Manchin and Schumer's compromise, Nicole Whittington-Evans, state director at Defenders of Wildlife, told the Anchorage Daily News in late July that "I think the Alaska provisions will really greatly reduce our achievements, in terms of climate, with this deal."

The federal government would have to make at least 60 million acres of waters available for fossil fuel leases to hold a sale for offshore wind energy projects, which Whittington-Evans said "is very significant" and "does not seem like a great trade-off for Alaska."

Winsor on Sunday pledged to keep fighting for regional protections, saying that "while we too celebrate a win today for our climate as a whole, we are also doubling down on our efforts to make certain that public lands are the focus of future climate progress."

"Tomorrow we'll be back at work," he said, "seeking to restore congressional protections for the Arctic refuge, and urging President Biden to do everything in his power to make sure the Arctic refuge is a climate solution, and not an oilfield."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Amid widespread applause Sunday for U.S. Senate Democrats' long-awaited passage of a budget reconciliation package, Indigenous and conservationist leaders declared that they were "deeply disappointed" in lawmakers' refusal to restore protections to a key region of Alaska.

"Congress has chosen to ignore the health of the Arctic and the Gwich'in way of life."

Unlike the Build Back Better Act approved by House Democrats last year, the deal negotiated by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) doesn't shield the incredibly biodiverse Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) from fossil fuel activity—which the Wilderness Society called "a grievous attack on the rights, culture, and sacred lands of the Gwich'in and Iñupiat peoples."

After the Inflation Reduction Act passed the Senate on Sunday, Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich'in Steering Committee—an Indigenous group that has long fought to safeguard ANWR's Coastal Plain—blasted the exclusion.

"In the Arctic, we're experiencing a warming climate at four times the rate as the rest of the world, yet Congress has chosen to ignore the health of the Arctic and the Gwich'in way of life by failing to stop this destructive and failed oil and gas program," she said. "We will never stop fighting to protect these sacred lands, the Porcupine caribou, and our communities."

After Manchin joined with Senate Republicans in 2017 to thwart efforts by other Democrats and conservationists to protect ANWR, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) proposed forcing the U.S. Interior Department to hold two lease sales for ANWR—legislation that was included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

When signing what critics called the GOP tax scam into law in December 2017, then-President Donald Trump said that "corporations are literally going wild over this." Murkowski, meanwhile, framed the passage of her ANWR measure as "a watershed moment for Alaska and all of America" that would "give us renewed hope for growth and prosperity."

While the first of the two required lease sales was held just before Trump left office in 2021, the event failed to attract fossil fuel giants.

In fact, as the Gwich'in Steering Committee pointed out Sunday, as global banks and insurance companies have pledged to not be involved with exploiting ANWR, the three companies with leases—Regenerate Alaska, the only oil firm that bid in the 2021 sale, along with Chevron and Hilcorp, which both held decades-old leases—have backed out.

Peter Winsor, executive director of Alaska Wilderness League, said in June that Regenerate Alaska, a subsidiary of Australia-based 88 Energy, "canceling its lease interest on the heels of Chevron and Hilcorp divesting themselves of their own Arctic refuge holdings is the clearest sign yet that there is zero interest out there in industrializing the wildest place left in America."

"We have long known that the American people don't want drilling in the Arctic refuge, the Gwich'in people don't want it, and we now have further proof that the oil industry doesn't want it either," he added.

Following the Senate's vote Sunday, Winsor joined Demientieff, the Gwich'in leader, in expressing disappointment about the package's exclusion of ANWR safeguards while also highlighting handouts to fossil fuel giants included in the legislation.

"The United States just took a big leap forward to address climate change," he said. "However, today's progress left out public lands as part of the solution, and in fact parts of the bill increased oil and gas extraction on our nation's lands and waters, including in Alaska's Cook Inlet."

"We are... doubling down on our efforts to make certain that public lands are the focus of future climate progress."

The Biden administration in May canceled three fossil fuel lease sales for the Gulf of Mexico and Cook Inlet, citing a lack of industry interest—a move welcomed by climate campaigners, who continue to call on President Joe Biden to end all offshore drilling.

Discussing Manchin and Schumer's compromise, Nicole Whittington-Evans, state director at Defenders of Wildlife, told the Anchorage Daily News in late July that "I think the Alaska provisions will really greatly reduce our achievements, in terms of climate, with this deal."

The federal government would have to make at least 60 million acres of waters available for fossil fuel leases to hold a sale for offshore wind energy projects, which Whittington-Evans said "is very significant" and "does not seem like a great trade-off for Alaska."

Winsor on Sunday pledged to keep fighting for regional protections, saying that "while we too celebrate a win today for our climate as a whole, we are also doubling down on our efforts to make certain that public lands are the focus of future climate progress."

"Tomorrow we'll be back at work," he said, "seeking to restore congressional protections for the Arctic refuge, and urging President Biden to do everything in his power to make sure the Arctic refuge is a climate solution, and not an oilfield."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

I know the exact moment I became a writer. I had come back home from school during my freshman year of college and we were in a place that was not ideal housing at all. My mom and I had also been a certain kind of sick and it was really apparent. I couldn’t really stand it. I went to the Dunkin Donuts and I stayed there for eight hours and wrote a story in one sitting. That was the day I became a writer. It became my de facto. This is where I go to be okay.

Thinking back to that day in Dunkin Donuts to now, have you developed any specific writing practices over the years? There seems to be a lot of rules in writing.

There may be a set of rules, but it’s for you and it may change all the time. So basically there is none. If there was one way of doing it that was correct, a lot more people would do it. Also that wouldn’t be art. Part of the magic is our diverse processes. Part of the magic is the ways we contour our lives around the thing.

When I’m really, really locked in, there’s time periods where I try to hit 1,000 words a day. Jami Attenberg has the 1,000 words of summer and I adopted that to get through this [new] novel. For me, the power is in switching it up. It’s similar to working out. You have to change your workout schedule so your muscles don’t get too familiar. Sometimes it might be changing the place, changing the time, changing what part of the day you do it, and for what length.

I do think consistency is very powerful. It doesn’t mean you have to sit down and write five hours every day. Reading or writing on most days is helpful to keep your brain in the tune of what you’re doing because writing has so many different phases. When you’re in the initial generative phase, it’s really important to be consistent because you’re going to keep the momentum. You need to have your brain tuned to this thing so that you can be constantly open and inspired. You can cultivate that by being consistent. There’s no one way to do magic. We all have our different ways of thinking about it.

Recently you tweeted that you wrote a book before Friday Black that you thought would be successful and save your family’s life, and it did nothing. So did you have to change your approach to your craft in order to continue after that?

Yes. That was me trying to force the will of a creative life. I thought that if I just write this book my effort would just translate to an outcome because I didn’t know anything. I wrote that book mostly on the upside down of a Red Rooster vacuum box. I didn’t even have wifi at home at the time, I had to steal the neighbor’s. I don’t think about craft actively in the process of doing, I think craft is something you cultivate over time. In the process of writing, you get lost in the magic of it. But in writing that first book, I would just knockout pages after pages after pages. I had read a lot of books, but I hadn’t studied a lot of writers I really loved. There’s a lot I did differently moving forward.

Talk about key moments: when you don’t quit, because writing is more rejection than acceptance for a long period of it. Many people teach writers fear and doom and gloom and with that tweet, I was trying to say, “Maybe that’s true, but you’re leading with that so much that you’re clipping their wings before they even try to fly.” After that book didn’t do anything, I had a two year period at school where I was getting trained by people like Lynne Tillman, who changed my life completely. I wasn’t tapped into the literary world at all. She gave me short stories. She made me close-read them and I could see what the stories were doing and why this was or wasn’t working, then she was able to talk to me about why my stories were mostly not working. I was in this conversation with the work as opposed to just trying to force a wheel to steamroll the thing. Your taste will far exceed your ability in the beginning of your forever, but especially the beginning of your thing.

I’m not naive to the realities of any artistic world, particularly the writing one. Personally, I felt very late. I wrote that first book at 19. I thought I was going to have a successful book by 20 for sure. Friday Black came out when I was 27. Of course, I was young by the standard, but I felt old and I felt very late because I had been trying the whole time. I had years of Submittable, years of red rejection bars on there. I submitted a lot and these are stories where many of them ended up in Friday Black but I had to learn to revise and really make something undeniable.

I feel in the culture of writing and beyond, there’s this stereotype of the struggling, starving artist. There is some truth in that, but do you think that that hinders the craft by people latching onto that stereotype?

Definitely. On the back end, it makes you think that you don’t deserve this or that. It brings something very dead and weird to the magic and alive part. Those numbers, the statistics, all those are nothing. You’re trying to make life with your soul using this particular medium and that’s so much bigger. I understand that we live under the capitalistic thumb of this society and I write about that and I get that, but I’m talking about when you are a mentor—part of your job is to bring up the next group. You can overemphasize the fear aspect, and it makes people go in half hearted. I’m the kind of person where the more you tell me I can’t, the more I’m sure I will. I know that everyone’s not like that. We have to protect those students who have the thing, the flame; you’ve got to keep it protected for a little bit. You know that it could become this huge inferno, but if you blow too hard on it with the doom and gloom shit, it could go out. I understand the reality, but I think that by overemphasizing it, you’re doing a disservice to the people wanting to do it.

You’ve also recently talked about your hatred of how overt the connection between art and commercial is. How do you personally navigate this industry that is focused so much on commercial success?

I try not to think about it. It’s funny because that’s the very opposite of how I came into this. I was trying to save my family and I meant that financially and obviously I chose a stupid path to do that, but here’s a thing I could do for free. Writing is free. I mean, it costs a lot, but in a different way. I like the work to be for itself as opposed to anything else. You have to have an active idea about protecting the work because publishing companies are publishing companies. They exist to make money for somebody and definitely not me. That’s not to say that they don’t have a mission as well but the primary mission is money. There’s a lot of niceties they’ll say after that, but if it’s not making money, you’re not even having a conversation. I understand that and I try to make sure that I protect my work and my integrity above all. It involves close conversations with my agent, and my agent having a clear understanding of what my goals are, what I desire, who I am. It’s me having a realistic look about all the people in my life who I have to support and what I’m willing to do to be able to do that. If I feel like some aspect of something external to the work is being used mostly to sell, in a way that I think could potentially be a disservice of the work, I try to eliminate it.

You mentioned Lynne Tillman earlier, and you’ve also studied with Lydia Davis and George Saunders. How much do others figure into your work now? And do you have a radar for when to take advice and when not to take advice?

My circle of advice is much smaller this time around. Almost any writer I respect, I’ll be willing to get writing advice from them, just to get another eye but you also might have had experiences that your mentors have not had. George told me, “What’s happening to you didn’t happen to me, in terms of your first book being received that well.” So, there’s challenges that come with that: out the gate suddenly your life is different. People are regarding you differently, you have to move a certain way. A lot of the people who I went to MFA with, both teachers and students, I get advice from. Just yesterday, I was with Caleb Azumah Nelson. He’s from the UK and he wrote Open Water. We were just chopping it up. It’s not necessarily advice but we’re about the same age, we’re in a similar space that’s pretty particular: young Black men in the literary world with books that have been perceived well. So just talking and trading stories is very helpful for me. I do pride myself on being a sponge. I could learn from really anybody at any level, whatever it is with this craft stuff or if it’s more on the professional side. I think my students teach me about craft all the time.

Friday Black really focuses a lot on consumerism, violence, racism… as an artist today, do you feel like you have a responsibility to highlight these things and point at them in order to hopefully enact change? Or is there room for both kinds of art where there’s art that just tries to distract away from it?

I hope it’s not either or. I like to think about fine art or music because I think that we don’t necessarily put the same burdens on those forms as we put on writing. I understand myself and I know what I’m doing with my writing. I do think of it as, like George said, a truth telling weapon. The other day I was looking at Matisse’s Red Studio at MoMA, and it didn’t feel like a distraction. It feels like the ability to “wow”: this breakdown of beauty in this form feels very important to me. The making of those other modes of art, of trying to pursue beauty or aesthetic is really sacred and important. Those types of things are assertions that we need in a world that can sometimes be really brutal. I want us to have more room for those modes. Arthur Flowers once asked us to write a story to save the world and it’s one of the stories in my book, “Things My Mother Said,” which is about a mom and poverty and housing insecurity. To me, it’s a story about how my mom is great and that felt like saving the world, too. So to me, it’s all magic. I think there’s room for all the art types. Just like there’s no one process, there’s no one form or style. It’s truly just about being your essential self to the fullest, and then see how that looks.

You released a song earlier this year and you’ve also shared some of your photography. Do these different forms of creativity pour over into your writing?

They absolutely do. Just like certain stories are for short stories, some stories are for a novel, some stories are for songs, and others for a photo set. These stories end up being ways to create feeling—it’s all these different feeling machines. I’m pursuing mastery in writing and working on that form most seriously but it’s tainted in a lot of ways because of the professional aspect of it. I also know that maybe I’ll talk about something in a song that I don’t feel brave enough to talk about in words. I only have one book and I very well remember when I had those same stories and no one cared, so I like putting out a song and no one giving a fuck. The novel for me is extremely ambitious and experimenting with other art forms is how I capture some of that energy back. These other mediums make me feel connected to that feeling I had back when I had two years of getting rejected from Submittable, which is core to me actually. Rejection is the fire I forged myself in and now I have to create that for myself.

What were the biggest lessons you learned from Friday Black that you brought to this new novel?

Seek leverage. No matter who they are, you seek leverage and that’s how you get the deal you want to get. You can’t negotiate unless you’re willing to walk away completely. In terms of craft, Friday Black was me discovering exactly who I am as a writer and embracing that. My new novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars is: I know who I am as a writer. One of the things I pride myself on is that I can do a lot of things. Chain-Gang All-Stars is me having no hang ups. In the literary world there’s the sense of the highest form of writing is a story about a sad couple about to get a divorce, in their apartment and that just isn’t me. I know what I can do. I know it’s valid. I know I’m making art. People think style is owning syntax or whatever but it’s what you choose to engage with and I have more confidence in what my style is, and I’m more affirmed in my purpose, which is connected to potentially creating a palatable way for people to engage with radical ideas.

What is the most rewarding thing about what you do?

Giving the people some hope. Someone once told me that Friday Black was part of the reason they moved from China to America to write. That’s awe-inspiring to me because I know what they really mean when they say that kind of thing. I remember when I found a George Saunders story and it made me feel a little different about myself and my situation in my life. If you can be there for somebody else, it’s very humbling and I take it really seriously. If I can help someone feel like they deserve to be a little bit more as an artist or as a person, that matters a lot and I think some of these writers forget that you have that. It matters how you move. A lot of it’s connected to teaching. That’s why I like being a mentor to someone because I’ve had really great mentors and I like creating spaces where people can discover a way. You have this power just like anybody else.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Sammy Maine.

For additional safety information, please see CPJ’s safety guidance on protecting against online harassment, removing your personal data from the internet, and protecting against targeted online attacks.

Editors and journalists should also consult CPJ’s digital safety kit for more information on digital security best practices.

As part of the risk assessment process, consider the following:

• Does the journalist already have a history of being attacked online? If so, this likely means that he or she will be attacked again.

• Does the story involve contacting people who are known to harass others online, for example members of online communities or certain political groups and their supporters?

• Is the subject of the story likely to cause the journalist to be attacked online? Be aware that certain groups are more active online than others.

• Is your journalist aware of the risks of online abuse related to the story they are covering?

• Your journalists are more likely to be attacked online just after publication. Be aware that others in the newsroom, including those who are publicly affiliated with the news outlet, may also be attacked online as a result of the story.

• Be aware that journalists and newsrooms are increasingly being targeted by sophisticated online smear campaigns. These campaigns often try to discredit an individual journalist or the outlet by linking them to an issue, a government, or an organization. For example, by stating that the media outlet receives money from foreign governments. 

• Online abuse can sometimes lead to physical threats. This risk is greater if the people attacking your reporter online live locally.

Before assigning a story:

Managing personal data

• Ask the journalist to review what personal data is available about them online. They should do this using all search engines and using the incognito or private window option in their browsers. The journalist should review photos, video, and comments under stories, as well as any content on websites. For more information on managing and removing your personal data, see CPJ’s safety note.

• Journalists should be encouraged to remove data that could be used to identify them, locate them, or contact them through a means they do not want, for example through their personal email address. This should include any information posted or shared by family members and friends.

• Both the editor and the journalist should be aware that online abusers often target a journalist’s family members. Journalists may wish to speak to family members about this.

• If based in the U.S., journalists should be encouraged to sign up to a service, such as DeleteMe, that removes their personal data from data-broker sites.

Account security

• Editors and journalists should be aware that online harassers often target a journalist’s account and try to gain access.

• The journalist should secure both their work and personal accounts with two-factor authentication (2FA).

• The journalist should ensure they are using good password security to protect both their work and personal accounts.

• Journalists should avoid using their personal email address or phone number when contacting sources that have a history of harassment and doxxing, for example members of the far right.

• Ideally reporters should be given a work phone for contacting possible hostile sources.

Consider the following:

• Does the newsroom have a protocol for dealing with online abuse, including steps for reporting online harassment?

• Has the newsroom planned for a situation of doxxing?

• What tech support will you be able to offer a journalist should their online accounts be hacked? Does that support extend to a journalist’s personal online accounts?

• What mental health and wellbeing support is available for a journalist targeted by online abuse?

Click here to download a printable version of this checklist.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is a member of the Coalition Against Online Violence (CAOV), which has numerous resources for journalists and editors on how to deal with threats of digital harassment and abuse. See the CAOV’s Online Violence Response Hub for more information.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Jennifer Dunham.

Reproductive health advocates are urging Congress to pass the My Body, My Data Act, which will prevent consumer data that is related to reproductive health from being used as criminal evidence. Protecting how sensitive personal information is collected and stored online is critical to combating anti-abortion laws, says Daly Barnett, staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Barnett also shares practical advice for securing your online privacy now, such as utilizing encryption and creating a culture of consent. “Privacy should just be a default for people,” says Barnett. “It shouldn’t be something that the end users have to fight for, especially when the data is potentially dangerous, that could be used as criminal evidence.”

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

Right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia confirmed that he is opposed to the Women's Health Protection Act just hours before a planned Wednesday vote on the legislation, spoiling his party's attempt to codify abortion rights into federal law before the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing majority has a chance to overturn Roe v. Wade.

"This is unacceptable," the hosts of a progressive podcast focused on Appalachia tweeted in response.

According to CNN chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju, Manchin endorsed "a codification of Roe" but said the Women's Health Protection Act (WHPA) "is too broad" and "goes too far."

Manchin previously helped kill the House-passed bill—which would enshrine patients' right to receive legal and safe abortions and healthcare professionals' right to provide them—in February, joining all Senate Republicans present to block the measure before it even reached the floor.

Last week's publication of Justice Samuel Alito's leaked draft opinion revealed that the high court's right-wing majority is set to strike down Roe. If this ruling is finalized, abortion could soon be outlawed in more than half the country, and Republican lawmakers have signaled their intention to pursue a federal six-week ban if they retake Congress and the White House.

Despite this imminent threat to bodily autonomy, Manchin doubled down on his defense of the filibuster less than 24 hours after Alito's draft ruling was made public. The West Virginia Democrat characterized the anti-democratic rule that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation—therefore giving veto power to the minority party in a closely divided upper chamber—as "the only protection we have in democracy."

After they helped prevent debate on the WHPA in February, Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) unveiled the Reproductive Choice Act, an opposing bill that would codify Roe while permitting states to restrict abortions after fetal viability.

Even if Manchin were to support their watered-down alternative or write his own bill, such legislation would also fall victim to the filibuster unless it garners 60 votes—a virtual impossibility given the Republican Party's growing attacks on reproductive freedom.

As Jordan Zakarin from More Perfect Union pointed out on social media, Manchin made the same empty promise about voting rights, and no federal legislation to counteract the GOP's nationwide assault on ballot access has materialized.

When he teed up Wednesday's vote on a modified version of the WHPA, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) failed to mention filibuster reform.

Eliminating or weakening the 60-vote rule would require the support of the entire Senate Democratic Caucus—including Manchin and fellow conservative Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona—and Vice President Kamala Harris. It remains a necessary prerequisite to passing the WHPA and a host of other languishing bills already approved by House Democrats.

House lawmakers from the Progressive, Pro-Choice, and Democratic Women's caucuses plan to march to the Senate chamber ahead of Wednesday's vote on the WHPA.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

U.S. lawmakers should "reject the notion that Congress must choose between antitrust and privacy reforms" when seeking to rein in Big Tech's anti-competitive behavior, a letter from 26 public interest organizations to Democratic legislators asserted Monday.

"Voters from both parties support breaking up monopolies and imposing stronger regulations on the largest tech companies."

"Recent remarks by Big Tech corporate leadership and its advocates have presented Congress with a false choice: fix corporate concentration or fix privacy. There is no reason that Congress should be so limited," the letter, which was led by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, states.

"Big Tech cannot, and should not, choose how it will be held accountable in a time when its damaging effects are becoming clearer by the day," the signers—who also include Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, RootsAction, and UltraViolet Action—continue. "Only elected officials, empowered by their constituents, should decide the policy solutions to the persistent problems in Americans' digital lives—not the corporations responsible for those problems."

The letter accuses tech companies of "attempting to deflect from the momentum behind legislation that will cut into their profit-making foundation of surveillance and anti-competitive gatekeeping," largely by highlighting "polling that shows favorable public attitudes towards laws protecting user privacy online as proof that Americans do not want antitrust reform."

"The truth is that people want true accountability, which requires action across the digital economy," the groups assert. "Public opinion polling consistently shows that the public knows Big Tech is bad for small business and has outsized influence on the government. Voters from both parties support breaking up monopolies and imposing stronger regulations on the largest tech companies."

"The need to hold Big Tech accountable for its harms goes beyond privacy and antitrust," the letter continues, citing a March letter from 60 health, safety, privacy, and education groups contending that the tech industry's business model is "fundamentally at odds with children's well-being."

Earlier this month, more than 100 groups including some of the new letter's signatories joined forces with smaller Silicon Valley tech companies in holding an Antitrust Day of Action to pressure members of Congress to pass two pieces of legislation aimed at reining in Big Tech's anti-competitive and anti-democratic practices.

One of the bills, the Open App Markets Act, would empower application developers to reach customers without using online stores run by tech giants, ban major online sellers from requiring specific in-app payments, and establish privacy and security protections for consumers.

The other proposed legislation, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, would block leading online platforms from favoring their own products and services, discriminating against businesses and harming competition, or requiring companies to buy their platform's goods or services for preferred placement.

Warning that "the window for reining in Big Tech's dominance may soon be closing," Demand Progress communications director Maria Langholz said on the Antitrust Day of Action that "Congress has a critical role to play in modernizing antitrust enforcement to rein in the power of modern-day monopolies like Amazon and Facebook/Meta."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Over the past 50 years, countries have signed thousands of treaties that protect foreign investors from government actions. These treaties are like contracts between national governments, meant to entice investors to bring in projects with the promise of local jobs and access to new technologies.

But now, as countries try to phase out fossil fuels to slow climate change, these agreements could leave the public facing overwhelming legal and financial risks.

The treaties allow investors to sue governments for compensation in a process called investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS. In short, investors could use ISDS clauses to demand compensation in response to government actions to limit fossil fuels, such as canceling pipelines and denying drilling permits. For example, TC Energy, a Canadian company, is currently seeking more than US$15 billion over U.S. President Joe Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

In a study published May 5, 2022, in the journal Science, we estimate that countries would face up to $340 billion in legal and financial risks for canceling fossil fuel projects that are subject to treaties with ISDS clauses.

That’s more than countries worldwide put into climate adaptation and mitigation measures combined in fiscal year 2019, and it doesn’t include the risks of phasing out coal investments or canceling fossil fuel infrastructure projects, like pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals. It means that money countries might otherwise spend to build a low-carbon future could instead go to the very industries that have knowingly been fueling climate change, severely jeopardizing countries’ capacity to propel the green energy transition forward.

Massive potential payouts

Of the world’s 55,206 upstream oil and gas projects that are in the early stages of development, we identified 10,506 projects – 19% of the total – that were protected by 334 treaties providing access to ISDS.

That number could be much higher. We could only identify the headquarters of project owners, not the overall corporate structures of the investments, due to limited data. We also know that law firms are advising clients in the industry to structure investments to ensure access to ISDS, through processes such as using subsidiaries in countries with treaty protections.

Depending upon future oil and gas prices, we found that the total net present value of those projects is expected to reach $60 billion to $234 billion. If countries cancel these protected projects, foreign investors could sue for financial compensation in line with these valuations.

Doing so would put several low- and middle-income countries at severe risk. Mozambique, Guyana and Venezuela could each face over $20 billion in potential losses from ISDS claims.

If countries also cancel oil and gas projects that are further along in development but are not yet producing, they face more risk. We found that 12% of those projects worldwide are protected by investment treaties, and their investors could sue for $32 billion to $106 billion.

Canceling approved projects could prove exceptionally risky for countries like Kazakhstan, which could lose $6 billion to $18 billion, and Indonesia, with $3 billion to $4 billion at risk.

Canceling coal investments or fossil fuel infrastructure projects, like pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals, could lead to even more claims.

Countries already feel regulatory chill

There have been at least 231 ISDS cases involving fossil fuels so far. Just the threat of massive payouts to investors could cause many countries to delay climate mitigation policies, causing a so-called “regulatory chill.”

Both Denmark and New Zealand, for example, seem to have designed their fossil fuel phaseout plans specifically to minimize their exposure to ISDS. Some climate policy experts have suggested that Denmark may have chosen 2050 as the end date for oil and gas extraction to avoid disputes with existing exploration license holders.

New Zealand banned all new offshore oil exploration in 2018 but did not cancel any existing contracts. The climate minister acknowledged that a more aggressive plan “would have run afoul of investor-state settlements.” France revised a draft law banning fossil fuel extraction by 2040 and allowing the renewal of oil exploitation permits after the Canadian company Vermilion threatened to launch an ISDS case.

Securing the green energy transition

While these findings are alarming, countries have options to avoid onerous legal and financial risks.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is currently discussing proposals on the future of investment treaties.

A straightforward approach would be for countries to terminate or withdraw from these treaties. Some officials have expressed concern about unforeseen impacts of unilaterally terminating investment treaties, but other countries have already done so, with few or no real economic consequences.

For more complex trade agreements, countries can negotiate to remove ISDS provisions, as the United States and Canada did when they replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Additional challenges stem from “sunset clauses” that bind countries for a decade or more after they have withdrawn from some treaties. Such is the case for Italy, which withdrew from the Energy Charter Treaty in 2016. It is currently stuck in an ongoing ISDS case initiated by the U.K. company Rockhopper over a ban on coastal oil drilling.

The Energy Charter Treaty, a special investment agreement covering the energy sector, emerged as the greatest single contributor to global ISDS risks in our dataset. Many European countries are currently considering whether to leave the treaty and how to avoid the same fate as Italy. If all country parties to a treaty can agree together to withdraw, they could collectively sidestep the sunset clause through mutual agreement.

The global transition

Combating climate change is not cheap. Actions by governments and the private sector are both needed to slow global warming and keep it from fueling increasingly devastating disasters.

In the end, the question is who will pay – and be paid – in the global energy transition. We believe that, at the very least, it would be counterproductive to divert critical public finance from essential mitigation and adaptation efforts to the pockets of fossil fuel industry investors whose products caused the problem in the first place.

[Like what you’ve read? Want more? Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter.]

Rachel Thrasher, Law Lecturer and Researcher at the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, Boston University; Blake Alexander Simmons, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Colorado State University, and Kyla Tienhaara, Canada Research Chair in Economy and Environment, Queen's University, Ontario

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Rachel Thrasher, Blake Alexander Simmons, Kyla Tienhaara.

The post Protecting Our Environment?  Not! appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by James C. Nelson.

Several media crews have already come under fire and four reporters have sustained gunshot injuries in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion as it enters its fourth week.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has reaffirmed its call to the Russian and Ukrainian authorities to comply with their international obligations to guarantee the safety of reporters in the field, and urges journalists to take the utmost care.

• READ MORE: Читать на русском / Read in Russian
• RSF opens press freedom centre in Lviv, first bulletproof vests delivered
• RSF creates ‘mirror’ of leading Russian exile news site blocked by Kremlin
• RSF refers Russian strikes on four Ukrainian TV towers for ICC probe

The shots came within centimetres of Swiss photographer Guillaume Briquet’s head when presumed members of a Russian special commando fired on him shortly after he passed a Ukrainian checkpoint on a road towards the southern city of Mykolaiv on March 6, while covering the Russian advance in the region.

Despite the many “Press” markings on his car and his bulletproof vest marked “Press,” this experienced war reporter was then harassed by the soldiers, who stole 3000 euros and reporting equipment from him.

“As this incident clearly illustrates, reporters in the field are targets for belligerents despite all the rules protecting journalists,” said Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk.

“They are civilians, who are keeping the world informed about the progress of the fighting. They must be able to work safely. We therefore call on all parties to the conflict to immediately commit to protecting journalists in the field in accordance with international law.

“We also recommend that journalists exercise the utmost caution in the light of the many attacks by Russian commandos sent ahead as scouts.”

Under Russian fire
“They were less than 50 metres away,” RSF was told by Briquet, who was wounded in the face and arm by glass splinters from his windshield.

“They clearly shot to kill. If I hadn’t ducked, I would have been hit. I’ve been fired on before in other war zones, but I’ve never seen this.

“Journalists traveling around the country with no war experience are in mortal danger.”

A crew working for the London-based pan-Arab TV channel Al-Araby TV — reporter Adnan Can and cameraman Habip Demirci — came under Russian fire in Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv, on March 6. Shots were aimed at their car even though they had attached a white flag and “Press” signs to it.

Trapped in a town where fighting was taking place, the two journalists had to hide with residents.

A crew with the UK’s Sky News TV channel — consisting of four Brits and a Ukrainian journalist – came under fire from a Russian reconnaissance unit while heading toward Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, on the fourth day of the invasion, February 28.

The crew’s leader, reporter Stuart Ramsay, sustained a gunshot injury to the lower back while cameraman Richie Mockler’s body armour stopped two other rounds.

After shouting that they were journalists and after seeing that the shooting continued despite their press vests, the crew had to abandon their vehicle and run for cover.

Brush with death
Vojtech Bohac and Majda Slamova, two Czech journalists reporting for Voxpot, and two Ukrainian journalists with Central TV had more luck during a similar incident while travelling together in a car in Makariv, another town on the outskirts of Kyiv, on March 3.

They managed to escape uninjured in their car after coming under fire from Russian soldiers using AK-47 assault rifles, their media outlets reported.

“This shoulder wound missed costing me my life by just a few centimetres,” Danish journalist Stefan Weichert told RSF. He is now hospitalised in Denmark after being evacuated along his colleague, Emil Filtenborg Mikkelsen, who sustained four gunshot wounds in the same attack.

The two reporters for the Danish newspaper Ekstra-Bladet sustained these injuries in the northeastern town of Okhtyrka on 26 February.

“The gunman, who we weren’t able to identify, was located about 15 metres behind our car.” Weichert said. “He couldn’t have failed to see the ‘press’ sign that was clearly visible on our car.”

4 TV towers bombed
As well as firing live rounds at reporters, the Russian armed forces have also carried out strikes on telecommunications antennae to prevent Ukrainian TV and radio broadcasts. Four radio and TV towers — in Kyiv, Korosten, Lyssytchansk and Kharkiv — have been the targets of Russian attacks that abruptly terminated broadcasting by at least 32 TV channels and several dozen national radio stations.

Evgeny Sakun, a cameraman for the local Kyiv Live TV channel, was at the Kyiv tower at the time of the attack and was killed in circumstances that RSF is investigating.

Ukraine is ranked 97th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index, while Russia is ranked 150th.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.