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Ding dong the witch is dead, the wicked witch is dead.

Senator Lindsey Graham died Saturday night of an apparent heart attack. Another horrible human being bites the dust. As Mehdi Hasan said it in his Zeteo column, Graham “never met a Middle East County he didn’t want to invade.” And in those invasions he wanted to “level” Gaza and kill as many brown, mostly Muslim, people as possible. The consummate opportunist, when it seemed impossible that Donald Trump would get the 2016 Republican nomination for president, Graham called him “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” By 2026, when Graham was well entrenched in Trump’s inner circle, Trump became “the greatest president of all time. . . Mr. President, you’re not far behind God.” Such great people as Benjamin Netanyahu and Volodymyr Zelensky rushed to say what a “wonderful friend” and “true believer of freedom” Graham was. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee he helped pack the Supreme Court with the rightwing justices we have today and made sure federal justices were groomed by the Federalist Society, whose goal is to turn the country into a presidential autocracy. In Britain, Lindsey would be what they call a “reverse ferret.” In the U.S., we can just call him a blood thirsty monster.

I want to tell a little story about how Congress came to be filled with people like Lindsey Graham. I recently read most of Rick Perlstein’s massive (914 pages) Reaganland: America’s right turn, 1976-1980. In his chapter “What is an Orrin Hatch?” Perlstein lays out the history of what became known as the “New Right,” or as Paul Weyrich, one of its main proponents put it, “radicals working to overturn the present power structure in this country”—meaning liberal elites. Rather mind boggling, this is where the notion of the Republican Party being the party of the working class originated, a notion that Missouri Senator Josh Hawley recently proclaimed while leading the charge that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Another of these proponents, Kevin Phillips, a former Nixon justice department official, wanted to build “a cultural siege-engine out of the populist steel of Idaho, Mississippi, and working class Milwaukee, and then blast the Eastern liberal establishment to ideological-institutional smithereens.” Also mind boggling is that these guys thought Barry Goldwater was too much a member of the establishment. Ergo, Orrin Hatch, the political neophyte elected senator from Utah in 1976 would be the torchbearer for the New Right. He represented the fundamentalist Christian coalition (he was a Mormon) that would soon come on board while the Heritage Foundation think tank would provide the intellectual underpinning. In 1973, University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize, signifying that his “trickle-down economics” would become the economic bible of the New Right. The election of 1976 also saw the rise of the neoconservatives from the flames of the Old Left: as Irving Kristol (Commentary magazine and the American Enterprise Institute) described them, a “liberal mugged by reality.” He was joined in the movement by all our favorite neocons of the George W. Bush era: Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, and Richard Perle.

There’s a lot of history between then and now—Newt Gingrich’s reign of terror in the House of Representatives, George W. Bush’s “war on terror,” the Tea Party rebellion—that led to Trumpism and the failure of the left to be the alternative. This, unfortunately, gives some credence to the critique of journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi that our obsession with the election of Donald Trump was more detrimental to journalism than it was to democracy. Theirs is a broader critique that our obsession with him distracted us from examining much else that needed examining: what the so-called “deep state,” i.e., the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, etc., are doing to spy on us, foment regime change abroad, murder people with drones, or any of the nefarious things they’ve been guilty of for years without legislative oversight. Lindsey Graham and his senatorial cohort (we can’t really tell if that includes Mitch McConnell anymore despite his picture from the hospital) are our “Orrin Hatch.” Donald Trump is their God.

 

DENVER—President Donald Trump today signed proclamations attempting to shrink the boundaries of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments, reducing the size of each by about 90 percent. Bears Ears National Monument will be reduced by over 1.2 million acres, and Grand Staircase-Escalante will be reduced by nearly 1.7 million acres.

During the signing, President Trump falsely stated that “You can’t go hunting, you can’t go fishing, you can’t do anything, you can virtually not even walk on it.” Deputy Interior Secretary Kate MacGregor followed up by saying, “That’s exactly right sir, so you are remedying that today.”

In fact, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase explicitly allow hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation inside the monuments, something that the State of Utah’s own hunting regulations confirm.

MacGregor also misled the president and reporters when she claimed that the first monuments Teddy Roosevelt protected under the Antiquities Act were small in size. In fact, Teddy Roosevelt used the Antiquities Act to protect 800,000 acres of public land at the Grand Canyon. The Supreme Court later confirmed that such landscape-scale protections were proper under the Antiquities Act, and that large landscapes were considered “objects” under the Act.

The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Executive Director Aaron Weiss:

“We all know that President Trump has very little understanding of what he’s told to sign. But Kate MacGregor knows better. Giving the president documents to sign based on false information is unconscionable. If she’s going to take over running America’s public lands while Doug Burgum plays pool boy, the least she can do is be honest with the president and the American people.”

The proclamations also attempt to open the land originally inside the monuments for sale or lease to oil, gas, mining, and logging companies beginning in 60 days. Weiss added:

“Senator Mike Lee’s attempt to sell off America’s public lands failed last year. Now he’s a sore loser, trying again with language in the president’s proclamation that makes it clear America’s public lands are up for sale. The people of Utah and the entire country have spoken with one voice: These lands belong to all of us, not Mike Lee, President Trump, or the mining companies his kids are in business with.”

The Bears Ears proclamation also attempts to disband the Bears Ears Commission, a body that was created at the request of the five Tribal nations that advocated for the designation of the national monument. The new proclamation would create a new “advisory committee” that drastically dilutes Tribal input.

Public opinion: When the first Trump administration asked the public in 2017, it received 2.8 million comments, 98 percent of them in support of keeping national monuments in place. A 2024 poll conducted on behalf of the Grand Canyon Trust found 71 percent of Utah voters support keeping Bears Ears as a national monument and 74 percent support keeping Grand Staircase-Escalante, including majorities of Republicans. Three-quarters of Utah voters support presidents’ authority to protect public lands as national monuments. Across the West, Colorado College’s 2025 Conservation in the West poll found that 89 percent of Western voters, including 83 percent of Republicans, believe national monument designations made over the past decade should be kept in place.

The post Trump signs orders attacking Utah monuments based on false information appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

by Neil Greet, first published at The Canberra Times 

The cost of living is at the centre of Australians’ concern and a major political battleground, but one of the biggest inflation threats is flying under the radar: a food-cost crisis brewing at the intersection of two current global events.

The first is the war on Iran that has cut global fertiliser supply by a third and doubled prices in some cases, the consequence being less planting of grain staples this year, and lower yields over the next year. Australia’s wheat harvest in 2025-26 is expected to be down by a quarter. Across Asia, it will also affect rice and other crop yields.

The second is that 2026 may be the hottest year in the modern record, and 2027 even hotter, as a result of a record-breaking “super”  El Niño driving up temperatures, on top of a world that has already heated by 1.5°C due to the burning of oil, coal and gas.

This will result in a hotter, drier 2026-27 summer in Australia and enhanced fire and drought risks, with the likelihood of lethal heat, record-breaking heatwaves, severe bushfires and adverse impacts on food production. In much of Asia, the El Niño will also produce hotter, drier conditions, unlivable heat and potentially weaker or delayed monsoons.

The deadly combination of a strong El Niño and the fertilizer crisis will have a significant impact on food production, and lead to shortages, higher prices, panic buying and perhaps social unrest and conflict in some parts of the world. We have seen this before: the main trigger of the Arab Spring was simultaneous wheat harvest failures in major producing countries, which led to a tripling of wheat prices and widespread rioting.

Four crops – wheat, rice, maize and soybeans – provide more than 60% of the world’s calorie intake. Wheat and maize are highly dependent on nitrogen fertiliser for protein content and yield; and high-yield rice is also significantly nitrogen fertiliser dependent. The threat to food security from the war on Iran is significant and ongoing, and so are extreme heatwaves which can severely affect yields.  

The global interconnection of food systems and markets means that no country is insulated from the consequences. Climate change can be abrupt, and so can the consequences. But the Australian Government is one of many that appears not to routinely consider extreme climate scenarios in their security plans, instead assuming that climate risks will gradually evolve over the long term.

This is a dangerous mistake that would leave Australia poorly prepared. The double-whammy of fertiliser shortages and extreme heat could produce unexpected events in neighbouring countries with whom Australia has security arrangements, and Australia will not be immune. Defence and emergency services may be spread too thin over multiple competing response demands. 

There is an urgent need to enhance the capacity of neighbours to withstand climate-changed-driven food shocks. Australia’s system for assessing and preparing for such climate risk is inadequate, and now is the time to establish an Abrupt Climate Change Early Warning System and fund and integrate climate research in Australia in a manner that will deliver a sound platform for realistic risk assessment and government planning and policy-making.

Domestically, climate disasters have had a dramatic impact on insurance premiums and availability. Premiums in disaster-prone regions have increased by up to 400%, posing a systemic financial risk.  

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority warns that an estimated one in seven households are uninsured today, which may be one in four households by 2050, and that a growing home insurance protection gap can lead to greater uninsured financial losses for households and banks, which can in turn erode financial system resilience.

Three food crops  — maize, rice and wheat —  account for 42 per cent of calories that people eat around the world. Scientists warn that even under an optimistic, low-emissions climate scenario, those crops will experience dramatic increases in heat stress by 2050, with 27 per cent of maize, 36 per cent of wheat and 87 per cent of rice at risk.

Climate-driven food shocks, reduced yields and higher production costs will drive ongoing food-flation. Research from the European Central Bank published in 2024 found that rising temperatures and extreme weather events will push food prices and inflation higher over the next decade, and that in a worst-case scenario food inflation would be more than four per cent per year across large parts of the world.

UN climate chief Simon Stiell says that the climate crisis is a cost-of-living crisis because “climate disasters are driving up costs for households and businesses… worsening climate  impacts will put inflation on steroids unless every country can take bolder climate action.”

How events will unfold over the next 6 to 12 months is uncertain, but it is prudent to look ahead and consider plausible scenarios. Are we prepared for this, and for the consequences for human security both at home and across the Indo-Pacific?

Neil Greet is a former Australia Defence Force Colonel.  

Registered nurses from Kaiser Permanente facilities across California protested today outside the American Hospital Association (AHA) Leadership Summit in Denver, Colo., where Kaiser CEO Greg A. Adams is scheduled to speak this week.

Earlier this year Freepoint Eco-Systems announced that it would be suspending operations at its facility in Licking County. This is a major victory for clean air and a real opportunity for clean jobs as since opening, this facility has been a major polluter in the community and a toxic workplace. 

Freepoint was one of just seven operational pyrolysis facilities in the United States. Freepoint claimed it was “recycling” plastic trash into low grade oil called py-oil. However, in a notice of violation published shortly before the facility suspended operations it was revealed that Freepoint had not produced enough py-oil in nine months to qualify for a recycling exemption and therefore had been misregulated. 

Malfunctions reveal the truth we knew all along

Py oil is the low grade oil made at these ‘recycling’ facilities. The facilities need to process more than 70% by weight of the plastic waste into py-oil to qualify for a recycling exception. This rule is set in the Clean Air Act rules for incinerators. For 3 quarters in a row in its limited operation, Freepoint was ‘recycling’ less than this. Because Freepoint was not “recycling” enough plastic into py-oil it should instead be regulated as an incinerator. This reveals the truth we knew all along. Plastic pyrolysis is plastic burning. 

In just under two years of operation the facility received five notices of violations and had 27 malfunctions in the first five months of 2026.  There were also multiple OSHA investigations of the facility including one shortly after start-up after reports of fine plastic dust. An OSHA report from 2025 revealed a worker was hospitalized with chemical burns after a drum that was only supposed to be holding plastic spilled sulfuric acid on them. 

After the smells, malfunctions, and black smoke flaring events, Freepoint has lost the community’s trust and so even though they are in the process of shutting down we wanted to make sure they protect the community, workers, and our environment through the process. 

Our Findings

On June 10th Earthworks and our partners at Buckeye Environment Network were at the facility with our optical gas imaging (OGI) camera. This is a special camera which is designed to detect certain invisible, airborne pollutants such as harmful volatile organic compounds (VOCs). 

While we were at Freepoint we caught a sickening whiff of a sweet chemical odor as workers were transferring fluids between a truck and storage tank. When we observed this process through our camera, we identified emissions from the hatch on the tank. Due to the nature of the site, these emissions likely consisted of VOCs that could have posed a threat to the health of the  nearby worker. From our vantage point we could not see if any of the workers involved with this process had PPE to keep them safe. Many of the materials mentioned in Freepoint’s permits are carcinogens and workers deserve the proper safety equipment throughout the shut down process. 

While the facility was cold and there was no pyrolysis taking place, this demonstrates that even during shut down Freepoint still has the potential to pollute. It has an obligation to the community, and even more so the workers, to ensure this process is done safely and transparently. 

We’re calling on Freepoint to address community and worker concerns by holding a town hall before the facility closes on July 26th. 

Together, we can get justice for our communities— join us!

The post Freepoint Plastics Incinerator: Still polluting while shutting down appeared first on Earthworks.

PHILADELPHIA, PA (July 13, 2026) – Last night, Governor Shapiro signed Pennsylvania’s 2027 state budget, which was finalized over the weekend after negotiations across chambers and parties.  

The bills increased the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s general fund allocation by less than inflation and contained a handful of policy provisions both harmful and helpful to our health and natural environment. The budget lacked funding for transit. 

Alex Bomstein, Executive Director of Clean Air Council, issued the following statement: 

“The negotiations around the budget this summer were an opportunity to move ahead on important legislation such as a moratorium on new hyperscale data centers and removing barriers to clean and abundant renewable energy. And this budget should have secured critical funding for transit systems across rural and urban Pennsylvania communities. 

“Instead, legislators passed a state budget that doesn’t change much and left the Capitol without taking meaningful action on the issues that matter most to Pennsylvanians. While a status quo budget could be a lot worse, it is a missed opportunity. This will continue to force transit agencies across the state to cut services and increase fares. Big tech and fossil fuel interests will continue to pollute our air, raise our energy bills, and take advantage of our communities.” 

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Two weeks after eliminating the funding for the county’s fire chief and his deputy, Sussex County supervisors voted to give an annual payment of $422,250 to the volunteer rescue squad run by Board Chairman Steve White, according to a memorandum of understanding obtained by Checks & Balances Project (C&BP).

The $422,250 is more than twice the annual revenue for the Stony Creek Volunteer Rescue Squad (SCVRS) in the years leading up to 2019, which is the last year the squad filed its tax returns with the IRS.

SCVRS lost its federal nonprofit status in 2023, because it failed to file tax returns for three straight years. It regained its nonprofit status in January 2025, but there are no more recent publicly available tax returns after 2019.

The squad’s revenues also include donations, billings to Medicare and Medicaid and other payments from the county. The $422,250 in county funding far outstrips SCVRS revenues in previous years. Consider:

• In 2015, annual revenues were $154,771;
• in 2016, $78,426;
• in 2017, $124,837;
• in 2018, they were $186,911.

C&BP obtained the memorandum of understanding through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Too many questions

The funding for Fire Chief Nick Sheffield’s job was removed during a special retreat in September 2025 after he questioned SCVRS’ finances during supervisors’ meetings. Sheffield also said that SCVRS had not filed its tax returns.

Sheffield said, “There’s a net profit to that and nobody knows what the net profit is,” though it is unclear if Sheffield was referring to Stony Creek’s profits of those of other county rescue squads.

By voting for the MOU, it appears that White may have had a direct conflict of interest that could be illegal under state law (Va. Code § 2.2-3112).

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

You may also want to read:

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The post Deal with county fattens Stony Creek Volunteer Rescue Squad’s bank account appeared first on Checks and Balances Project.

DENVER—An attack on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments is reportedly scheduled to happen today at 4:30 pm ET behind closed doors at the White House, according to sources cited in news stories out of Utah.

President Donald Trump’s public calendar lists the 4:30 pm Oval Office event only as “sign an executive order,” with no mention of Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante, or the roughly two million acres of protected public land on the chopping block. The signing is marked as closed to press, and the White House has no press briefings scheduled today.

The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Executive Director Aaron Weiss: 

“Planning this attack behind closed doors and providing no notice to the press, the five Bears Ears Tribes, or the public shows the administration knows it’s on the wrong side of history.

“When Trump tried to shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase in 2017, he flew to Salt Lake City and announced it from the state capitol in front of Utah politicians. This time, the president wants as few cameras in the room as possible. The five Tribes of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition and the American people will learn what happened to their land from a press release.”

Public opinion: When the first Trump administration asked the public in 2017, it received 2.8 million comments, 98 percent of them in support of keeping national monuments in place. A 2024 poll conducted on behalf of the Grand Canyon Trust found 71 percent of Utah voters support keeping Bears Ears as a national monument and 74 percent support keeping Grand Staircase-Escalante, including majorities of Republicans. Three-quarters of Utah voters support presidents’ authority to protect public lands as national monuments. Across the West, Colorado College’s 2025 Conservation in the West poll found that 89 percent of Western voters, including 83 percent of Republicans, believe national monument designations made over the past decade should be kept in place.

Background: President Bill Clinton designated Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996, and President Barack Obama designated Bears Ears National Monument in 2016 at the request of five sovereign Tribal nations. In December 2017, President Trump cut Bears Ears from 1.35 million acres to roughly 228,000 acres and Grand Staircase-Escalante from 1.87 million acres to about 1 million acres, the largest rollback of public lands protections in American history. Lawsuits from Tribes, conservation groups, and businesses challenging those cuts were put on hold in early 2021 and remain pending in federal court in Washington, D.C. President Joe Biden restored both monuments in October 2021.

Learn more:

• Trump Orders Largest National Monument Reduction In U.S. History (2017) — NPR

• America to Trump and Zinke: Don’t touch national monuments – Westwise

• In defense of Bears Ears National Monument – Westwise

• STATEMENT on proposed Bears Ears National Monument management plan – Center for Western Priorities

• Bears Ears Plan Makes History – Grand Canyon Trust

The post Trump plans secretive attack on Utah national monuments, underscoring unpopularity appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

National Nurses United (NNU) is today condemning the latest murder by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, this time in Biddeford, Maine. NNU maintains that the only way forward on this issue of fascist authoritarian violence targeting communities nationwide is the abolition of ICE. This latest horror comes just days after ICE’s murder of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas.

Today, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ruled that President Trump’s lawsuit asking for $10 billion from the IRS was manufactured to justify a “settlement” that included a nearly $1.8B slush fund to reward political allies.

Robert Weissman and Lisa Gilbert, co-presidents of Public Citizen, issued the following statement in response:

“Donald Trump had the brilliant idea of suing the government he runs and resolving the lawsuit with the creation of an illegal and unconstitutional nearly $1.8 billion slush fund, paid for at taxpayer expense and likely to be distributed to January 6 insurrectionists, among others, as well with as an immunity deal protecting Trump and his family from IRS investigation. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was a willing participant in this fraud on the court and the American people.

“Trump and the DOJ tried to remove the issue from the court in which Trump originally filed the sham lawsuit but now Judge Williams has had her word. In a devastating order, she finds that ‘This lawsuit was not brought to vindicate rights; it was brought to manipulate the judicial process to pursue benefits unavailable in litigation because the Parties were not adverse.” The abuse is so severe that she has ordered the bar to consider sanctions against Trump’s attorney; ordered that Trump and DOJ never again refer to their collusive deal as a ‘settlement;’ and authorized amicus filers in the case — including Public Citizen — to seek attorneys fees.

“Crucially, Judge Williams finds that the abuse is committed equally by Trump’s private lawyers and the Todd Blanche’s Department of Justice, with DOJ’s conduct ‘equally untenable.’ Blanche’s DOJ ‘disregarded DOJ policies, and accomplished objectives beyond those authorized, as well as those specifically prohibited, by law.’

“If the Senate needed an additional reason not to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general, it just got it.”

On Monday, 12 state attorneys general launched an antitrust suit to block the proposed $111 billion merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. California Attorney General Rob Bonta led the multistate lawsuit, joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Washington.

“The unlawful merger of these two entertainment behemoths would lead to higher prices, lower quality, and less content for film and television, harming movie theaters, basic cable distributors, and ultimately, audiences on every sofa and movie theater seat in the U.S.,” Bonta said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.

The combination of these two massive entertainment and news companies would create a media colossus with CBS, CNN, HBO, Nickelodeon and the Warner Bros. and Paramount film studios — among other major media properties — all under one roof. The deal’s announcement in 2025 spurred widespread protests led by a coalition of First Amendment advocates, unions, consumer-rights groups, and Hollywood actors and directors.

Free Press and others opposing the mega-merger explain that the deal would give one company the power and incentives to raise prices, lay off thousands of workers and limit consumer options, while giving the Trump-aligned Ellison family the power to shape public discourse at the president’s direction in exchange for the administration’s regulatory approval. That’s why administration officials like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have openly rooted for the Ellisons to obtain CNN, based on their documented promises to make “sweeping changes” to the network to please Trump.

State attorneys general can sue to block mergers that violate federal and state antitrust laws. In March, California and New York attorneys general led a multistate coalition in suing to block the merger of broadcasters Nexstar and Tegna. Typically, state attorneys general have coordinated such antitrust suits with their federal counterparts at the Justice Department, but the Trump DoJ has shirked its consumer-protection duties in mergers involving favored Trump allies. Free Press and allies delivered hundreds of thousands of petitions opposing the Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery deal to Attorney General Bonta’s office in May, and hosted rallies against Paramount’s corruption in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

Free Press Co-CEO Jessica J. González said:

“Today we thank these state attorneys general for listening to the hundreds of thousands of people who have taken action to oppose this mega-merger. This deal would result in higher prices and fewer choices for consumers. It would open the door to wholesale layoffs across the news and entertainment industry and lead to less competition and more propaganda in news coverage.

“President Trump and his cronies want to rush this anti-competitive deal through because David Ellison has demonstrated time and again that he will leverage his control of his media empire to silence Trump’s critics and amplify MAGA propaganda. That’s corruption, plain and simple. Any merger of this scale would diminish creativity and diversity in entertainment, weaken journalists’ ability to hold those in power accountable and further endanger our democracy. This is especially true when the Ellisons are in charge. To win approval for their takeover of CBS News, the Ellisons promised to gut hard-hitting reporting across the network — and have gleefully followed through. And they’ll do the same to undermine editorial independence at CNN if they gain control of the global news network.

“The states’ challenge means that this corrupt merger is far from a done deal. While the administration won’t take a stand against the president’s billionaire cronies, we can still stop the Ellisons’ power grab. While Paramount is flaunting its corruption and toasting Trump officials, we’re standing with the workers and artists at the heart of the news and entertainment industries — and with the American people, who deserve a diverse and independent media system that works on their behalf, and against the self-interest of greedy billionaires and unethical politicians.”

Declaración sobre Autonomía, Democracia Radical y autodeterminación [ English ] [ Español ] [ Français ] [ Português] Redactado en la “Confluencia Global sobre Democracia Radical, Autonomía y Autodeterminación”, Port Edward, Sudáfrica, del 2 al 6 de febrero de 2025. Organizado por el Tejido Global de Alternativas, la Academia de Modernidad Democrática, WoMIN y el Comité de Crisis de Amadiba. Ver AlternativesAlternatives

Declaration on Autonomy, Radical Democracy and Self Determination [ English ] [ Español ] [ Français ] [ Português] Issued at ‘Global Confluence on Radical Democracy, Autonomy and Self-determination’, Port Edward, South Africa, 2-6 February 2025. Organised by Global of Alternatives, Academy of Democratic Modernity, WoMIN, Jineology and the Amadiba Crisis Committee. See alternativesalternativesAlternativesMASSAAlternativesGTAAlternatives

Registered nurses and resident physicians at University of California San Francisco will protest a UC Regents meeting on July 15 to highlight their patient safety concerns about boarding in the emergency department. Combined with existing unsafe staffing, the boarding has created unsafe conditions caused by providing patient care in waiting rooms and hallways.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) today filed formal comments calling on the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to withdraw its sweeping proposed overhaul of the federal grantmaking system, warning that the rule would institutionalize political cronyism across over a trillion in annual public funds, destroy the independence of American science, and threaten the constitutional separation of powers.

The OMB proposed rule would require all discretionary federal awards to “demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities” and would essentially abandon merit-based federal grantmaking. Specifically, this rule would:

• Require senior political appointees to review most awards before they are issued and allow them to terminate multi-year existing grants at will.
• Explicitly forbid appointees from “deferring to peer reviewers or routinely ratifying their recommendations,” thus leading to funding decisions not based on scientific merit.
• Allow political appointees to bypass public notice requirements for funding opportunities under broad national security interest exemptions that are not defined in the rule.

“This is not a grant reform — it is a blueprint for a spoils system applied to federal science funding,” said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of PEER, noting that this proposed rule arrives at a time when independent oversight mechanisms designed to detect corruption and financial mismanagement have been systematically destroyed or weakened by this administration.

The administration is already targeting grants on important environmental and public health issues that conflict with its political narrative, such as climate science, vaccine safety, chemical safety, and emerging infectious diseases, while it is simultaneously working to steer federal money to political allies such as Elon Musk and family members of the president, according to PEER’s comments.

“Grant money has historically been distributed through programs authorized by Congress using statutory, regulatory, formula-based, or competitive criteria rather than direct tests of political loyalty,” added Whitehouse. “Placing all scientific research funding under the unreviewable discretion of political appointees is not an administrative reform, it is a recipe for corruption on a scale not seen even in this administration.”

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Read the PEER comments

See the OMB proposal

Dozens of police officers in India have arrested the prominent Indigenous rights activist Pranab Doley, #

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order this afternoon shrinking Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah. Sources told ABC4 the signing is planned for 4:30 p.m. Eastern in the Oval Office. A White House official called the reports “pure speculation” in statements to multiple outlets.

This would be the second time Trump has attempted to shrink the two monuments. In 2017, Trump reduced Bears Ears by 85 percent and Grand Staircase-Escalante by nearly half. President Biden restored both monuments in 2021, and lawsuits over Trump’s original cuts remain pending in federal court in Washington, D.C. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals recently allowed a separate Utah lawsuit challenging Biden’s restoration to move forward.

Reducing or eliminating national monuments is a broadly unpopular idea across political parties. “The American people have made it clear over and over again that they want our national monuments protected, not sold out to drilling and mining companies. President Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum would be wise to remember that,” said Center for Western Priorities Executive Director Aaron Weiss in a statement.

A 2024 poll conducted for the Grand Canyon Trust found 71 percent of Utah voters support keeping Bears Ears as a monument, and 74 percent support keeping Grand Staircase-Escalante. Colorado College’s 2026 Conservation in the West poll found 91 percent of Western voters, including 87 percent of Republicans, want existing national monument designations kept in place.

Trump administration finalizes rule weakening endangered species protections

The Interior Department and NOAA Fisheries finalized a rule Friday redefining “harm” under the Endangered Species Act to exclude habitat destruction, reversing a long-standing interpretation. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the change “restores common sense, respects private property, provides much-needed certainty for landowners and follows the statute Congress actually passed,” while critics say it clears the way for oil and gas drilling, mining, and logging on habitat that imperiled species depend on. “For more than four decades, the definition of ‘harm’ recognized a simple truth: if you destroy the places wildlife need to survive, you are putting species on a path to extinction,” said Ben Greuel, wildlife campaign manager at the Sierra Club.

Quick hits Trump expected to shrink Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments

Fox13 | ABC4 | Deseret News | KSL | Backpacker | Heatmap | KMYU | Center for Western Priorities [press release]

Trump administration finalizes rule weakening endangered species protections

Washington Post | Reuters | E&E News | Associated Press | Fox 13 | Los Angeles Times

Park ranger exposes impact of 2025 public lands layoffs

Denver7

Interior proposes to rewrite grazing rules on 155M acres of BLM land

Deseret News

‘L.A. at rush hour.’ ‘Disney World.’ American national parks feeling the strain this summer

CNN

Amid blistering drought, feds tap New Mexico aquifers to build border wall without permits

WBUR

Trump administration clears path for controversial Mojave Desert water pipeline

Los Angeles Times

Opinion: Selling off your off-road trails was never about affordable housing. Mike Lee’s latest vote proves

RideApart

Quote of the day

There’s no money for overtime in a lot of national parks, there’s less people to save people when they get in trouble in national parks. So, less people to come for search and rescues, less law enforcement rangers to respond, less normal rangers to clean bathrooms. It is causing rangers to also have to go outside of their job description, which again is not what we signed up for, but we are public service, and a lot of us will do it because it’s for the greater good of the public.”

—Anonymous park ranger, Denver7

Picture This
@u.s.forestserviceGolden hour? Nah, this is legendary hour.

Coconino National Forest offers a field of sunshine with a side of dramatic skies.

Drop a pin, drop your jaw and hit the trail in your big backyard.

(Forest Service photo by Deborah Lee Soltesz.)

 

Featured photo: Indian Creek at Bears Ears National Monument, Utah. Bob Wick, BLM

The post Trump expected to shrink Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

By KAY MATTHEWS

Editor’s Note: Robin Collier of KCEI radio 90.1 recorded the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) July 7 meeting on the Questa Chevron Superfund site where the Kit Carson Electric Coop’s (KCEC) proposed hydrogen facility will be located. He sent La Jicarita the transcript, which I read and am reporting on in this article. The EPA provided detailed information that I can’t adequately cover in this article, so I’ve focused on the agency’s relationship with Chevron, the company responsible for the clean-up at its former molybdenum mine, and how that may affect the proposed hydrogen facility. Kudos for Robin for recording almost all the community meetings held to discuss this controversial proposal.

Representatives of the EPA (Region 6 based in Dallas), the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED), and New Mexico Minerals and Natural Resource Department introduced themselves and after their presentation on the Chevron Superfund site agreed to take questions. They explained how a situation becomes a Superfund site, when an assessment that contamination is present then leads to what type of contaminants are present and what options are available to clean up that site. Those options are ranked and then a NEPA-like process ensues with a proposed plan presented for public comment. An ROD (Record of Decision) is then released. The Chevron Questa ROD was filed in December of 2010. The Chevron molybdenum facility closed down in 2014.

What followed was a detailed explanation of the risk assessment period that tries to identify risks to human health and the environment at the Superfund site. There was also a lengthy presentation by a representative from the Department of Health who stated that the Town of Questa municipal water system has to meet federal drinking water standards but there is the possibility of future private wells being contaminated. People can request tests of their wells that would provide updated information to the state.

An EPA representative went through the cleanup activities that are being overseen by that agency. The site was divided into five different areas to address the remedy for each one, whether it be the groundwater or the soil that have contamination. The first area was the mill, where the PCB contaminated mining material was removed. At the mine site, there are 300 million tons of waste rock material. These piles of rock were regraded to a slope that’s stable and doesn’t potentially have the ability to move should there be an earthquake or other types of activity. They are then revegetated. Seepage interceptor systems are in place to rout the water away from the waste rock material. There are also groundwater extraction systems, located inside the mine area that handle the water that’s in the underground workings. At the tailings facility the ROD calls for the material to be covered and revegetated. There are also provisions for seepage collection and groundwater extraction. She then discussed what has already been achieved in the clean-up up process, what is next on the agenda, and the various agreements that Chevron has agreed to.

Finally, there was an announcement that a public meeting for the issuance of the Chevron Questa National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit will be held at the VFW in Cerro on July the 23rd.

Public comment then ensued and the moderator quickly got to the heart of the matter with this statement: “ . . . okay, I hear you, are we shilling for Chevron?” People wanted clarification on the EPA’s relationship with Chevron, and who was responsible for the clean-up. The moderator explained that the EPA doesn’t use taxpayer dollars on a clean-up when they have a responsible party “that made the mess and can afford to clean it up.” The EPA does oversee some Superfund sites that break the terms of settlement agreements, but so far, Chevron has been cooperating.

This raised the issue that if KCEC) disturbs the tailings area where the hydrogen facility is proposed, will it be the responsible party. Under the consent decree Chevron is required to provide the EPA with a 60-day notice of intent to lease or sell any land on the Superfund site. There are deed restrictions placed on the property that includes the clause that if the new owner or lessee encounters tailing material on that property, they are to immediately notify Chevron of that. They also have to notify the state and the EPA to further investigate those areas.

A member of the audience then asked if the agencies knew that the Village of Questa had rezoned the tailings area for heavy industrial use. The representative responded that the ROD lists the use as light industrial. She went on, “We don’t have a lot of power over the hydrogen plant unless it messes with our remedy at the tailings facility. And if we find out it’s going to mess with the remedy, EPA has a lot of power.” She made it clear that KCEC never notified the EPA Superfund that it was going to construct the facility and that they have no record that it will occur on the tailing facility. The solar array is not on an actual tailing site, but people asked about dust from the tailings that could blow onto those acres. The EPA position is that it’s not harmful for people to breath that dust.

The NMED is going to investigate whether there are any permits for the solar array that’s currently under construction. They’re now looking to see if in fact Kit Carson has applied for necessary construction permits that are covered under the construction general permit. If someone is disturbing an acre or more, they’re required to submit a notice of intent for coverage under the construction general permit. As a part of the permit, they have to provide a stormwater pollution prevention plan and they have to identify any type of critical species that are identified. EPA will coordinate with NMED on this.

The transcript of this presentation will eventually be on the Chevron Questions website.

 

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By Mariah Meek, Michigan State University and Karrigan Börk, University of California, Davis

It wouldn’t make much sense to prohibit people from shooting a threatened woodpecker while allowing its forest to be cut down, or to bar killing endangered salmon while allowing a dam to dry out their habitat.

But that’s what the Trump administration is doing by changing how one word in the Endangered Species Act is interpreted: harm.

For 50 years, the U.S. government has interpreted the Endangered Species Act as protecting threatened and endangered species from actions that either directly kill them or eliminate their habitat. A new federal rule change, announced July 10, 2026, keeps the first part – protecting against the direct killing of the species – but removes habitat destruction.

That matters, because most species on the brink of extinction are on the Endangered Species list because there is almost no place left for them to live. Their habitats have been paved over, burned or transformed. Habitat protection is essential for their survival.

Green sea turtles, like this hatchling in Florida, are endangered due in part to habitat destruction and fishing nets. Keenan Adams/USFWS

As an ecologist and a law professor, we have spent our entire careers working to understand the law and science of helping imperiled species thrive. We recognize that the rule change could green-light the destruction of protected species’ habitats, making it nearly impossible to protect those endangered species.

The Legal Gambit

The Endangered Species Act, passed in 1973, bans the “take” of “any endangered species of fish or wildlife,” which includes harming protected species.

Since 1975, regulations have defined “harm” to include habitat destruction that kills or injures wildlife. Developers and logging interests challenged that definition in 1995 in a Supreme Court case, Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon. However, the court ruled that the definition was reasonable and allowed federal agencies to continue using it.

In short, the law says “take” includes harm, and under the regulatory definition at the time, harm included indirect harm through habitat destruction.

The Trump administration has now changed the definition of “harm” in a way that leaves out habitat modification.

Critical habitat throughout the U.S., including many coastlines and mountain areas. Note: Alaska is not to scale. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

This narrowed definition unravels the most significant protections granted by the Endangered Species Act.

Why Habitat Protection Matters

Habitat protection is the single most important factor in the recovery of endangered species in the United States – far more consequential than curbing direct killing alone.

A 2019 study examining the reasons species were listed as endangered between 1975 and 2017 found that only 17% were primarily threatened by direct killing, such as hunting or poaching. That 17% includes iconic species such as the red wolf, American crocodile, Florida panther and grizzly bear.

In contrast, a staggering 81% were listed because of habitat loss and degradation. The Chinook salmon, island fox, southwestern willow flycatcher, desert tortoise and likely extinct ivory-billed woodpecker are just a few examples. Globally, a 2022 study found that habitat loss threatened more species than all other causes combined.

As natural landscapes are converted to agriculture or taken over by urban sprawl, logging operations and oil and gas exploration, ecosystems become fragmented and the space that species need to survive and reproduce disappears.

The Catalina Island fox is endemic to Catalina Island. Habitat loss, diseases introduced by domestic dogs, and predators have diminished the population of these small foxes to threatened status. Catalina Island Conservancy/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Currently, more than 107 million acres of land in the U.S. are designated as critical habitat for Endangered Species Act-listed species. Industries and developers have called for changes to the rules for years, arguing it has been weaponized to stop development. However, research shows species worldwide are facing an unprecedented threat from human activities that destroy natural habitat.

Under the new change, development could be accelerated in endangered species’ habitats.

Gutting the Endangered Species Act

The definition change is a quiet way to gut the Endangered Species Act.

It is also fundamentally incompatible with the purpose Congress wrote into the act: “to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved [and] to provide a program for the conservation of such endangered species and threatened species.” It contradicts the Supreme Court precedent, and it would destroy the act’s habitat protections.

The golden-cheeked warbler breeds only in Texas, primarily in Texas Hill Country. It has been losing habitat as development expands in the region. Steve Maslowski/USFWS, CC BY

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has argued that the recent “de-extinction” of dire wolves by changing 14 genes in the gray wolf genome means that America need not worry about species protection because technology “can help forge a future where populations are never at risk.”

But altering an existing species to look like an extinct one is both wildly expensive and a paltry substitute for protecting existing species.

The administration has also didn’t conduct the usual analysis of the environmental impact that changing the definition could have. That means the American people won’t even know the significance of this change to threatened and endangered species until it’s too late, though wildlife groups are already planning to sue over the change.

The ESA is Saving Species

Surveys have found the Endangered Species Act is popular with the public, including Republicans. The Center for Biological Diversity estimates that the Endangered Species Act has saved 99% of protected species from extinction since it was created, not just from bullets but also from bulldozers. This regulatory rollback seeks to undermine the law’s greatest strength: protecting the habitats species need to survive.

Congress knew the importance of habitat when it passed the law, and it wrote a definition of “take” that allows the agencies to protect it.

This is an update to an article originally published May 13, 2025.

Mariah Meek, Associate Professor of Integrative Biology, Michigan State University and Karrigan Börk, Professor of Law, University of California, Davis

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

The post Harm: How Redefining One Word Strips the Endangered Species Act’s Ability to Protect Vital Habitat appeared first on The Revelator.

CALGARY — Janetta McKenzie, director of the Oil and Gas program at the Pembina Institute, made the following statement in response to the new emissions reduction project signed between the Government of Alberta, Government of Canada and the...