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Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has directed national recreation areas, seashores, wildlife refuges, and other public lands to immediately lift dozens of restrictions on hunting and trapping, according to internal documents reviewed by the New York Times.

The directive, which takes effect this week, targets rules at 76 Interior sites that allowed hunting but had restrictions designed to protect habitats or public safety, such as prohibitions on firing weapons across trails or cleaning game in public restrooms. Burgum ordered the changes in an April 21 memo, asserting that any restrictions not strictly required by law must be the “minimum necessary for public safety or resource protection.”

The Interior department framed the move as a way to expand access for sportsmen and women, but critics are concerned that the administration is bypassing environmental studies and public consultation to implement major rule changes, and warned against a “one size fits all” approach to land management. “What we’re really concerned about is, that memo didn’t say, ‘do analysis,'” said Stephanie Adams of the National Parks Conservation Association. “It didn’t say ‘engage the public,’ and it didn’t say to be sure to focus on that key part of the Organic Act, which is to manage in a way that leaves the parks unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

Senator Ben Ray Luján: Reform the 154-year-old mining law

In a letter to the editor in the Washington Post, New Mexico Senator Ben Ray Luján calls for an overhaul of the General Mining Act of 1872, arguing the law prioritizes industry over the safety of community drinking water. In a response to claims that permitting takes decades, Luján notes that the most delayed projects were due to the current law causing opposition and distrust with local communities and Tribal nations.

Quick hits Bison have grazed these lands for centuries. Trump wants to evict them

New York Times

June lease sale will offer over 150,000 acres in Colorado

Grand Junction Daily Sentinel

These rural towns are banking on outdoor recreation to boost their economies

Deseret News

Trump administration falls behind on wildfire prevention with risky fire season ahead

NPR

How the rush to mine the metal of the future echoes America’s colonial past

Inside Climate News

Editorial: New tactic to come after public lands must be stopped

Arizona Daily Star

Twin Metals paid former Trump officials $380K. Their Boundary Waters mine is now advancing against public opinion

Outdoor Life

8 victories that give hope in the fight to protect public lands

Outside

Quote of the day

At a certain point, operating these mines and establishing these settlements stopped being about pure capitalism, pure greed, and it started to be about harming Indians. The wealth accumulated from all that extraction was a self-awarded prize for harming Indians, which was at the time, and possibly still is, the most American patriotic thing.”

—Lakota Sioux member Taylor Gunhammer, Inside Climate News

Picture This @yellowstonenps

“That’s no moon.” Actually, it is. We had a beautiful moonset this morning over Terrace Mountain in Mammoth Hot Springs. May the 4th be with you!

 

Featured photo: Mesa Trail at Curecanti National Recreation Area. mlhradio, CC BY-NC 2.0

The post Trump administration orders rapid end to some hunting rules on federal lands appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

This article May Day was even more important than you think was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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On May 1, organizers reported over 5,000 May Day Strong actions across the country — the most widespread distribution of U.S. May Day actions ever. Numbers are interesting — but they’re not nearly the whole story here. Because this May Day was even more important than you think.

With No Kings, millions were activated into the streets. May Day had another goal in mind — to stretch our mass mobilization skills to include more, to quote Martin Luther King Jr., “creative tension.” 

The need for escalation became all the more urgent in light of the MAGA Supreme Court’s ruling eviscerating the Voting Rights Act, the legal crown jewel of the civil rights movement. This heavy blow is aimed at the most reliable voting bloc for a just democracy in America — Black voters. So, in response, we have to return to risky tactics that wage struggle for our democracy.

So in New York, protesters with the Sunrise Movement shut down entrances to the New York Stock Exchange — a daring tactical escalation. In Raleigh, North Carolina, 20 school districts closed for the largest statewide teacher rally since 2019. In each of the thousands of May Day protests, people spoke to specific local conditions — North Carolina ranks 43rd in average teacher pay — but tied to the overall frame of workers over billionaires.

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At Kent State University in Ohio, students honored previous generations who braved bullets, standing in the rain and wind to protest the closing of DEI offices and scholarships. They were part of the fast-moving and underreported growth of students organizing against this regime: Sunrise estimates 100,000 students participated in this weekend’s May Day strikes.

It’s important to note what we saw. Escalated tactics were trialed — this wasn’t just sign-waving. The May Day Strong coalition was also consciously moving in a unique formation with National Nurses United, AAUP, NDWA and dozens of local unions, including SEIU, AFSCME and UNITE HERE locals, joining with the likes of Indivisible and 50501. 

But perhaps most importantly and consequentially, it was a structure test for future economic disruptions. In a structure test you’re testing to see who is with you — who is ready to move and who just says they’re ready to move. So in real time we get to assess which groups are ready for further boycotts, strikes and other kinds of economic disruption. These tactics are important to build up for because they are not symbolic, but have a material impact on the authoritarian regime.

As a wise group, this coalition was testing what capacity we have for this kind of collective power. And that capacity was significant (with room to grow!). All consciously organized by a group that has a vision for building to rolling, wildcat and general strikes.

Finding the right yardstick

One of the hazards of living under an authoritarian attempting to consolidate power is that most of our victories will not come from government interventions. As civil resistance scholar Hardy Merriman has observed, we are facing a leader who can wake up each morning and do something terrible — kidnap Nicolás Maduro, fire competent federal workers, bomb Iran, cancel contracts, tear down part of the White House — and in the immediate term, we are not able to stop it.

Therefore “Did we stop him today?” cannot be our yardstick for growth — though obviously, it is an ultimate aim.

So May Day did not stop the Iran war, despite May Day Strong’s strong antiwar demand. It did not fulfill its goal of taxing the rich or guarantee that Trump will honor the “hands off our vote” demand. That’s not the right yardstick.

Previous Coverage

What’s next after the historic No Kings protest?

A different yardstick could be numbers. But of course No Kings blows that out of the water with an impressive 8 million people taking action this March.

But No Work, No School, No Shopping is not sign-waving — it’s economic pressure. In preliminary data from the event, 89 percent of participants refused to shop that day, 14 percent didn’t go to school and 32 percent participated in “No work.” We’re now expanding our ability to materially disrupt the regime.

Yes, we need to go further. Yes, we need more than one-day actions. Yes, we need many more groups to participate, but critics don’t make movements — doers do. And the doers were off doing a lot of things.

They were turning out for public demonstration in small towns where showing up at all takes courage. Towns like Idaho Falls, Idaho, Lewisburg, West Virginia and the ranching town of Dillon, Montana.  

In San Francisco, as elsewhere, protesters were arrested doing direct action, among them  elected officials (and several vying for office). In their case, they blocked the airport — the site of a recent high-profile confrontation with ICE forcibly detaining a woman and her child. While being arrested, Sanjay Garla, first vice president at SEIU United Service Workers West, said, “It’s a good day for the movement. ICE out of SFO!”

Memphis showed up boldly. They now face the triple threat of an ongoing National Guard deployment, new redistricting due to the Supreme Court ruling and an enormous Elon Musk xAI data center. Protesters blocked the entrance to Musk’s Colossus I supercomputer, with its massive turbines polluting air and water. 

“We want xAI to turn the turbines off,” protester Jasmine Bernard told Channel 3 news in Memphis. “We know the consequences of xAI being here far outweigh any benefits that somebody may be able to conjure up.” In city after city, protesters were making visible the story of how billionaires are wrecking our lives — and making clear that we’re not going to put up with it.

In Washington, D.C., people blocked numerous intersections, demanding core values of democracy: no more attacks on workers, peace and the long-delayed D.C. home rule. Keya Chatterjee of Free DC explained where the escalation is headed in an AFSCME press release: “Millions of people across the country rose in solidarity today and that’s what it’s going to take to end this regime and their attacks for good. The next step is to flex our economic muscle.”

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And if you hadn’t heard much about May Day in your community, obviously that means there’s more to do. But also it’s a good sign, as it means people outside your immediate circle were organizing and moving things. If you’re reading this and realize you’re not yet in the boat, join May Day Strong’s list so they can reach you as they plan what comes next.

May Day Strong proved the organizing phenomenon that getting people in motion is difficult, but once people stay in motion, getting them into greater motion becomes easier. And that is a different kind of victory, measured by different instruments.

The research on what actually determines success in civil resistance makes a stark point: 83 percent of successful anti-authoritarian campaigns win when they have strong participation of labor — without labor, the percentage that wins plummets to 29 percent. 

May Day Strong put together one of the widest coalitions yet: a mix of national and locals of National Nurses United, AAUP, NDWA, NEA, AFT, SEIU, Chicago Teachers Union, Starbucks Workers United, the United Electrical Workers, and APWU, alongside Indivisible, 50501, DSA chapters, immigrant rights organizations, and hundreds of local groups. All under a broad set of sensible demands: 

• Tax the Rich: Our families, not their fortunes, come first.
• No ICE. No war. No private army serving authoritarian power.
• Expand democracy, not corporate power. Hands off our vote.

Movement research is also very clear on another point: Movements that wage economic disruption succeed at dramatically higher rates than those that stay in the realm of courts, elections, rallies and petitions alone.

That’s why testing out the operational capability of days of “No Work, No School, No Shopping” is critical. It may be needed in the future if there are attempts to steal elections or other inflection moments — so it’s important for us to get in shape now. 

It’s worth recalling this particular tactic’s history and what happened in Minneapolis.

Minneapolis gave us the blueprint

Operation Metro Surge placed 3,000 armed, masked federal agents throughout Minnesota, leading to ICE agents killing Renée Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7. Families hid. Children were afraid to go to school. ICE agents unleashed chemical sprays on students and staff.

Out of that terror, something else was born. Unions, faith leaders and community organizations made a call: Jan. 23 would be a day of “No Work, No School, No Shopping.” We, as workers and students and consumers, would use our power to stop business as usual. 

The day started at a negative 40 degree wind chill. Despite that, over 100,000 people showed up in the streets. Notably, the action was backed by the executive board of the Minnesota AFL-CIO. Subsequent polling found that nearly one in four Minnesota voters either participated or had a loved one who did.

At the AT&T call center in the Twin Cities, “they only have about 20-30 people, out of over 100, who are still working,” Lori Wolf, a CWA Local 7250 member, told Labor Notes. Across many sectors — SEIU 26, UNITE HERE Local 17, ATU bus drivers, IATSE stagehands, AFSCME municipal workers and OPEIU office workers — people made the choice to stay home.

I have written extensively about the “pillars of support” as a way to understand authoritarian power — the institutions whose cooperation an authoritarian needs to govern, and whose withdrawal of cooperation can crack that power open. On Jan. 23 in Minneapolis, we saw pillars from media to small businesses crack — not break, but crack — across almost every dimension at once. 

Over 1,000 businesses closed. The faith pillar moved, activating new national networks, with over 700 faith leaders participating and roughly 100 arrested in an action at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, blockading the departure lanes used for deportation flights. Across the country, police — long a backbone of state enforcement — began to break ranks, with chiefs publicly condemning ICE tactics and others moving beyond words to support legal distance from rogue, unaccountable and untrained agents. 

Minneapolis Federation of Educators showed up in force with their sea of blue hats — while the following week, University of Minnesota students called for a nationwide walkout. Tens of thousands of students were activated, and they helped spark thousands of largely unreported protests by students nationwide.

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This was not a spontaneous eruption. It drew on networks built after the murder of George Floyd, labor councils shaped by years of relationship, and immigrant rights organizations that had been organizing long before most people noticed. What Minneapolis gave us was not just inspiration. It was a blueprint — and a question. Could it spread?

A structure test

Much of the country does not have the resources, history of organizing and relatively healthy movement ecosystem that Minnesota has. We need more practice moving in more unity with each other. 

In that sense, this May Day was what unions call a structure test. A structure test is not an action you take because you’re ready. It is an action you take to find out whether you’re ready — and where you’re not.

In labor organizing, a structure test is any ask you make of people that is deliberately lower-stakes than the final big ask. It’s designed to reveal the real shape of your organization: who will put their name on a petition, who will wear a sticker to work, or who will attend a public meeting, before you ever ask anyone to walk a picket line. “In the lead up to today’s most successful strikes,” wrote the great Jane McAlevey, referring to historic 2018 teachers’ walkouts, “countless structure tests are conducted in advance of knowing a workplace or workplaces are actually ready to strike to win.” 

Her model of building to win requires doing small tests to both exert power and to identify organizing weaknesses. Each May Day locale hopefully is doing a debrief to assess what networks were activated. Nationally we can see groups who came on board and did turn out, and others who did not.

“We are asking people to take a step into further exerting their power in all aspects of their lives — as workers, as students, as members of local organizing hubs,” Leah Greenberg of Indivisible told The Guardian. “It’s important as it builds muscles towards greater non-cooperation.”

A structure test is very different than wishful thinking (“why can’t everyone just do a general strike?”) — it is testing the capability of institutions and their resolve. It is the practice of honesty about where you are. It is the act of asking, in public and under conditions of real pressure: Who is actually with us?

That question, asked in thousands of cities on May 1, is the most important thing that happened that day. Not because we have the final answer. But because now we know more about the shape of the answer than we did on April 30.

Power, unity, leadership: an honest accounting

Researchers often converge on some key measures to assess movements resisting authoritarianism: unity, planning and nonviolent discipline.

The scale of coordination — thousands of events, major national unions, official city holidays in Chicago, teacher actions statewide in North Carolina, airport actions in the Bay Area, nurses on strike in New Orleans — represented unity and planning, in a real and measurable expansion of what this movement can do. 

“The way we build power is by flexing power,” said Martha Grant, one of the May Day Strong organizers.

In Chicago, the birthplace of May Day, the Chicago Teachers Union recently won the concession that all public school children learn about May Day, creating what CTU president Stacy Davis Gates called “academic freedom for all of us to understand where our empowerment comes from.” Thousands rallied at Union Park alongside a day of economic blackout with SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana, Indivisible Chicago and the Chicago Federation of Labor. 

Previous Coverage

What’s it going to take to get to mass strikes?

There are real tensions in any broad front. There are more groups that need to be brought in. And because institutions like unions have been so gutted, there are many more individuals that need to be connected, too — hence one reason organizers created “Strike Ready” to capture individuals wanting to participate who weren’t connected to some of the big organizations.

In Minneapolis this January, what was most striking was not the headline number but the distributed leadership underneath it: union shop stewards who had built trust over years, faith leaders who had organized their congregations, neighborhood organizers who knew every door on their block. 

May Day 2026 built some of that model into its design, encouraging people to register their own events and lead their own actions. But we also know that thousands of communities had nothing on the map: places where the networks are thin, where people are activated and angry but not organized. That gap is the next frontier. The work of the next months is not another rally. It is building into those communities — finding the people who will knock on the next door.

We are training for something larger

May Day 2026 was, in the language of Freedom Trainer’s Community Strike Readiness workshops, not just a day of action. It was one structure test — because we have some big inflection moments coming up. Perhaps the biggest test of this year may be preparing for enforcement of election results — something that the tactic of the strike is well suited for.

A general strike is not a valve we can just turn on and off. It requires groups ready to move in formation with each other — and May Day Strong is positioning itself to be the entity that tells us it’s time to strike if the election is stolen. This is critical.

Cliff Smith, a Roofers Local 36 official and May Day Strong organizer in Los Angeles, said plainly what many are saying privately: “We should not depend on the November midterm elections to provide us with any solutions to this problem. We should have contingency plans in the event that there are not free and fair elections.”

Of course, between now and the election we need a lot more public action and pressure. And the civil disobedience that May Day Strong incorporated is crucial. 

This is just a beginning. The May Day Strong campaign is hosting dozens of planning and debrief sessions and turning its attention towards defending the right to protest, right to vote and the right to have a free and fair election.

May Day 2026 wasn’t perfect — but it was a real exercise of power. We learned where we stand, not in theory but in motion. The muscles are there — maybe stiff, maybe uneven — but real, alive and ready to grow for more escalation, more economic disruption, more clarification of the billionaire opponents who are threatening the existence of all of us. That matters. Now we just have to keep building on it.

This article May Day was even more important than you think was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Workers Over Billionaires & Stop The War, Support Workers They Gave Us Weekends, Lady Liberty with Distressed US, Gay Pride, & Palestinian Flags, Morons Are Governing America.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rolled back section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The 6-3 ruling, along partisan lines, ends 61 years of voter protections for African-Americans and…

UK Oil & Gas plc announced this morning it has submitted a revised planning application for its Horse Hill site , near Redhill, in Surrey.

The company said the retrospective application seeks to reinstate consent for oil production.

Horse Hill, Surrey, England. January 2026. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize

Planning permission for the Horse Hill site, now UKOG’s only hydrocarbon asset, was quashed by a landmark climate judgement, known as the Finch Ruling, at the Supreme Court in June 2024.

The court ruled that the planning permission granted by Surrey County Council in 2019 was unlawful. The judgement said the permission failed to take into account the climate impact of burning oil from the site.

Sarah Finch, who brought the challenge on behalf of the Weald Action Group, was last month awarded the leading international award, the Goldman Environmental Prize.

The Weald Action Group said this morning:

“This is an appalling but predictable move by UKOG. After repeatedly claiming they were transitioning away from fossil fuels, they have now submitted plans to Surrey County Council to restart oil production at Horse Hill, showing that they are still relying on this site as a financial lifeline.

“There is simply no room left in the rapidly dwindling global carbon budget for any more fossil fuel developments.  Instead, the site should be urgently decommissioned and fully restored. Given their disastrous financial position, with cash reserves reported at just £32,000, this application appears to be a way by which UKOG can further delay meeting these costly obligations.

“Enough is enough, this cannot be allowed to drag on any longer, and this application must be rejected.”

Immediately after the Supreme Court judgement, UKOG said it was working to reinstate planning permission.

This required a revised application with information on the carbon emissions from combustion, known as downstream or scope 3 emissions.

Surrey County Council reported in November 2024 it was waiting for this information.

Since then, UKOG has promised the details but repeatedly delayed submission.

At the time of writing, the new application was not listed on the county council planning register.

When the application has been validated, a public consultation is expected on the new information.

In a statement today, UKOG said:

“The Company has worked closely with its planning advisors and SCC to prepare the revised planning submission, which includes updated ecology, environmental and technical baseline studies and an assessment of downstream emissions in accordance with the Supreme Court judgment.

“A successful planning outcome would permit stable production at Horse Hill to resume, generating valuable revenues which would help support the Company’s ongoing transition to its announced clean energy projects in Dorset and Yorkshire.”

UKOG’s chief executive, Stephen Sanderson, said:

“This retrospective planning submission seeks to address the Supreme Court’s ruling on SCC’s 2019 Horse Hill planning consent in a thorough and transparent manner. Horse Hill remains a valuable UK onshore asset and, subject to planning consent, has the potential to generate revenues that can be responsibly reinvested to support the Company’s strategic transition towards hydrogen storage and other clean energy initiatives.

“The Company continues to pursue a balanced approach, managing its legacy oil and gas assets while actively investing in the UK’s energy transition and clean power future.”

UK Oil & Gas (UKOG) previously announced production had voluntarily ceased in October 2024.

More reaction

The local MP, Chris Coghlan (Lib Dem)

said:

“Last year I urged the government and Surrey County Council to ensure Horse Hill is restored to woodland. It’s no surprise that UKOG has now submitted a retrospective planning application, but with the company’s financial track record, I am worried they will not be able to deliver proper site restoration. Any decision by Surrey County Council must recognise residents’ concerns and guarantee that the site is fully returned to woodland.”

Salfords and Sidlow Parish Council said in a statement:

“In 2024, Salfords and Sidlow Parish Council supported local resident Sarah Finch in her ground-breaking legal challenge against Surrey County Council’s decision to extend planning permission for the oil drilling site at Horse Hill which is in our parish. Councillors recognised Sarah’s argument that the Environmental Impact Assessment failed to include the effects of emissions released from burning the extracted oil, assessing only emissions from the development itself.

“What began as a local campaign evolved into a five-year legal battle that climbed through the courts, culminating in a historic ruling by the UK Supreme Court in June 2024 and, crucially, the planning permission being overturned. The Parish Council was delighted to see Sarah Finch and her colleagues at the Weald Action Group recently being awarded the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize for Europe. Sarah’s landmark legal victory is already reshaping climate accountability across the UK and beyond.

“In August 2025, we also wrote to Tim Oliver, leader of Surrey County Council, expressing concern as to who will be responsible for restoration of the Horse Hill oil site in the event the UK Oil and Gas (UKOG) entered formal insolvency.

“The Parish Council has been advised on 5 May 2026 that UKOG will be submitting a retrospective planning application for reinstatement of production consent at the Horse Hill site. Once formally notified, Councillors will review all the new planning documents and make representation on the application on their merits including consideration of protection to our Green Belt and the local environment.”

• UKOG also announced today the month-long suspension of its shares had been lifted. Trading was suspended after the company missed the stock market deadline for publishing its accounts. The accounts, due to be published at the end of March 2026, were released this morning (5 May 2026). DrillOrDrop has reported on the contents of the accounts.

Disclaimer: This article is a satirical/tabloid-style deep dive based on reported facts and public sources. Spoof sections are clearly labelled. Site wide disclaimer also applies.

Part 1 — Fact-Based Deep Dive

Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos Energy and Shell are pushing ahead with oil and gas exploration in the US Gulf, in a move that says plenty about where big energy capital now feels welcome — and where it does not.

According to The Times, Ineos Energy is teaming up with Shell to explore opportunities near Shell’s Appomattox platform in the Gulf of Mexico, after Ineos acquired a 21 per cent stake in the platform from China’s CNOOC. The partnership is focused on developing Shell’s Fort Sumter discovery, understood to hold more than 125 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent, identifying further exploration wells, and assessing broader development opportunities in the area.

The geography matters. This is not a speculative punt in the middle of nowhere. Appomattox is already an operating deepwater production hub, Shell is the operator, and Ineos is now plugged into a basin where infrastructure, geology, capital discipline and regulatory predictability all converge. In oil-speak, that means one thing: if the rocks behave, the money has somewhere sensible to go.

Ineos has already had a taste of the prize. In December 2025, it announced a new Norphlet oil discovery at the Shell-operated Nashville well, where Ineos holds a 21 per cent working interest and Shell holds 79 per cent. The well was drilled more than five miles beneath the seabed, confirmed high-quality oil, and could be tied back to the nearby Appomattox platform.

That is the magic phrase in deepwater economics: tie-back. A discovery near existing infrastructure is not just a geological trophy; it can be a cheaper, faster, lower-risk production candidate than a standalone mega-project. Exploration still carries risk, but the Appomattox neighbourhood gives Ineos and Shell the sort of industrial springboard that makes boardrooms less twitchy.

Ineos’ American expansion did not begin offshore. In 2023, it entered US onshore oil and gas production by buying Chesapeake assets in the Eagle Ford shale for $1.4 billion, acquiring about 2,300 wells producing a net 36,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day and leases across 172,000 net acres in south Texas.

Then came the Gulf. In April 2025, Ineos completed its acquisition of CNOOC’s US Gulf business, a deal it said increased its global production to more than 90,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day and took its US energy capital spend above $3 billion. The assets included interests around Appomattox and Stampede, plus mature assets and supporting operations.

So the pattern is now obvious: Ratcliffe’s outfit is not dabbling in America. It is building a proper oil and gas platform there — onshore shale, offshore deepwater, LNG exposure, and a seat beside Shell in one of the world’s most important hydrocarbon provinces.

And now for the uncomfortable British bit.

The Times report frames Ineos’ US push against the backdrop of frustration with the UK’s oil and gas fiscal regime. Ineos Energy chief executive David Bucknall is reported as saying that America’s stable fiscal and regulatory environment is a key attraction, while UK policy volatility and high taxes make large domestic investment harder to justify.

That is not just corporate moaning into the Aberdeen drizzle. The UK government itself announced that the Energy Profits Levy would rise to 38 per cent from November 2024, taking the headline tax rate on upstream oil and gas activities to 78 per cent, with the levy extended to 31 March 2030.

For the North Sea, that is a brutal sales pitch: mature basin, declining reserves, political hostility, uncertain licensing, and a headline tax rate that screams “thanks for the cash, now please leave quietly.”

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the US Gulf offers scale, infrastructure and a government system that, whatever its political noise, still tends to treat oil and gas production as a strategic asset rather than a moral embarrassment.

This is the central irony. British companies are still perfectly willing to drill. They are just increasingly willing to drill somewhere else.

Shell’s role is equally revealing. Under Wael Sawan, Shell has been refocusing on shareholder returns, oil, gas and LNG after investor scepticism over earlier green-energy ambitions. A separate Times report notes that Shell’s recent strategy has emphasised buybacks, portfolio discipline and oil and gas, although the company still faces questions over reserve life and long-term growth compared with US rivals.

Put simply: Shell needs barrels. Ineos wants growth. The Gulf has rocks, rigs and rules that investors can understand. The North Sea has a tax regime that looks like it was designed by someone who wants the industry to stay just long enough to pay for its own funeral.

None of this removes the climate contradiction. Ineos says it is pursuing a dual-track approach: meeting current energy demand while investing in carbon storage, LNG, hydrogen and other transition technologies. Its own materials say it is active in oil, gas, power and carbon credits, while also investing in LNG and carbon capture and storage.

But the hard commercial reality is that hydrocarbons still dominate the cash machine. Carbon capture is the corporate hymn sheet; oil and gas are the till receipts.

The Nashville discovery, the Fort Sumter development push, and the Appomattox partnership show that Ineos is positioning itself not as a reluctant fossil-fuel legacy player, but as a serious transatlantic upstream operator. Shell, meanwhile, is doing what Shell does best: squeezing value from big, technically complex basins where it already has infrastructure and operating expertise.

The broader story is not “oil companies discover they like oil.” That was never in doubt. The real story is that Britain’s energy giants and industrial champions are voting with their capital. The UK can talk about energy security, transition jobs and industrial strategy all it likes; if the investment case is better in America, the rigs, engineers and future barrels will follow.

The North Sea is not dead. But it is being politically sedated.

And in the Gulf, Ineos and Shell have found exactly the sort of place where the industry still hears the magic words: drill, develop, produce, repeat.

Part 2 — Clearly Labelled Spoof PR / Spin Section

Official Statement From the Department of Making Everything Sound Fine

We welcome the exciting news that British-linked energy expertise is creating jobs, investment and production opportunities in… America.

This is clear evidence that the UK remains a world leader in exporting confidence, capital and drilling ambition to jurisdictions that have not yet decided to treat domestic oil and gas as a taxable sin bin.

The government’s 78 per cent headline tax rate should not be viewed as a deterrent. It should be viewed as an innovative industrial strategy encouraging companies to broaden their horizons, discover new continents, and support energy security somewhere with warmer water.

We remain fully committed to the North Sea, especially as a historic concept, a source of tax revenue, and a scenic backdrop for speeches about transition.

Official Statement From Big Oil’s Department of Polished Optimism

We are delighted to confirm that our latest deepwater activities demonstrate our unwavering commitment to reliable energy, responsible development, shareholder value, transition-compatible hydrocarbons, disciplined capital allocation, and phrases that make drilling sound like a yoga retreat.

The Gulf opportunity is attractive because it combines world-class geology with infrastructure and a fiscal regime that does not require a séance before every investment committee meeting.

We remain committed to the UK, subject to geology, economics, tax stability, regulatory clarity, political weather, coffee availability, and whether anyone in Whitehall can say “investment certainty” without laughing.

Part 3 — Spoof Bot-Reaction / Comment Section

@EnergyRealistBot:
British company drills in America because America likes energy. Analysts stunned by obvious thing.

@NorthSeaNostalgia:
Remember when the North Sea was a national asset? Anyway, it’s now a tax piñata wearing a hard hat.

@GreenwashDetector3000:
“Dual-track strategy” detected. Translation: oil now, carbon capture PowerPoint later.

@DividendGoblin:
Shell + Ineos + existing infrastructure = shareholders quietly sharpening their calculators.

@PolicyVolatilityBot:
UK: “Why won’t you invest?”
Also UK: “Here is a 78 per cent tax rate and a ministerial mood swing.”

@DeepwaterDrama:
Five miles beneath the seabed and still easier to navigate than British energy policy.

@AberdeenEngineer:
Can someone let us know whether we’re building the energy transition or attending the North Sea’s retirement party?

@FiscalRegimeFan:
America offered certainty. Britain offered vibes, levies and a consultation document. The rig chose certainty.

Ineos and Shell Drill Into America While Britain Taxes Its Own Basin Into the Sick Bay was first posted on May 4, 2026 at 8:17 pm.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is ordering the removal of science and history materials from National Park Service websites in addition to visitor centers and physical signs. Reporting from E&E News found that a small group of Interior department employees has been reviewing new submissions for the National Park Service’s 180,000 websites since February, evaluating the material for compliance with President Donald Trump’s “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” directive and Burgum’s corresponding secretarial order.

Previously, park service employees had a lot of authority over the content on park websites, and park-based staff typically led decisions about website content, often in consultation with Tribes and local communities. “The Park Service has been for most — if not almost all — of its history very decentralized, with a lot of authority, including comms at the park level,” said Jonathan Jarvis, who was National Park Service director during the Obama administration. “This is a very divergent approach.”

This process is already altering how history is told online. For example, an article written by a Tribal group for the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail website removed references to Thomas Jefferson fathering children with an enslaved woman, Sally Hemings, before it was allowed to be posted.

The website crackdown follows the recent removal of physical signs and exhibits at parks, including a sign at Grand Teton National Park acknowledging a massacre of at least 173 Piegan Blackfeet, and at Muir Woods National Monument, where signs mentioning the contributions of Indigenous people and women have been removed.

The five most bewildering moments from Doug Burgum’s congressional hearings

A new Westwise blog post captures some of the most embarrassing and perplexing exchanges from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s recent appearance before the House Interior Appropriations subcommittee. The blog post highlights Secretary Burgum’s attempt to defend a $10 billion slush fund for D.C. vanity projects despite slashing the National Park Service budget, his sudden concern for whales after voting to condemn a whale species to extinction, and more.

Quick hits How many federal land agency jobs were lost in the West?

Deseret News | Colorado Sun

House members file brief in case aiming to remove Trump’s face from park pass

National Parks Traveler

Protesters in Fargo target Burgum

InForum | KVRR | Prairie News | KFGO

Tohono O’odham leaders voice opposition to physical border wall after construction damages 1,000-year-old site

Arizona Republic

Opinion: The public’s lands deserve better than Steve Pearce

Albuquerque Journal

Trump gives go-ahead to major new Canada-US oil pipeline

Associated Press

International visitor fee has national park gateway business owners in distress

SFGATE

BLM investigates copper line removal near Wyoming sage grouse leks, historic trails

WyoFile

Quote of the day

This notion of needing to restore truth and sanity to American history is one of the largest red herrings in American history. It’s trying to resolve a problem that doesn’t really exist, that never really existed.”

—Alan Spears, senior director at the National Parks Conservation Association, CNN

Picture This
@usinteriorLocated in southern New Mexico, @whitesandsnps offers a landscape like no other, with glistening gypsum dunes perfect for exploration, play, and inspiration. Whether you’re hiking to a sweeping vista, sledding with family or soaking in the quiet beauty of the desert, unforgettable moments await.

Photos by Stephen Leonardi | @leo_visions_ and Rick Kramer

Featured photo: National Park Service badge and patch, NPS/Kurt Moses

The post The Trump administration is erasing history on national park websites appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Pooja Kishinani and Satakshi Gupta

An interview with visual artist Anuja Dasgupta, whose practice sits at the intersection of eco-art, ethnobotany and community. Using plant-based emulsions, cameraless photography, and repurposed wood, she creates art that refuses to represent the land, …

It’s the 56th anniversary of the killings at Kent State University. In a special encore episode, we’re reposting our episode from 2020. In this episode, we commemorate the anniversary of…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, May 1, 2026

The eight-hour workday. Voting rights. Desegregated buses and schools. Every hard-won right Californians depend on today came from people who organized, refused to accept the status quo, and fought back.

In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions made a declaration: in five years, workers across the country would strike on May 1 for an eight-hour workday.  No guarantee of success—and no central command to make it happen. The idea spread anyway, city to city, carried by ordinary workers who organized locally and walked off of the job together. At Haymarket Square in Chicago, workers paid for that defiance with their lives. The movement grew anyway. They won, and May 1 became the international workers’ celebration, May Day.

That is the spirit that drives Public Advocates. For 55 years, we have combined civil rights litigation, policy advocacy, and deep partnership with grassroots communities to challenge the laws and power structures that lock low-income communities and communities of color out of good schools, stable housing, and reliable transit. We do this because rights declared on paper mean nothing without power behind them—and power is built through sustained organizing and coordinated struggle over time. That is how we win resourced schools, renter protections, and transit systems that serve the people who need these most.

That work has never been more urgent.

California is the fourth-largest economy in the world. The people who built it—teachers, nurses, farmworkers, transit workers, essential workers of every kind—are being pushed out of it. The Tenant Protection Act, the state’s primary shield against extreme rent hikes and unjust evictions, expires in 2030. Tens of thousands of affordable homes sit approved but unfinanced. Students in under-resourced school facilities are still denied what the law guarantees. This is not a series of policy failures. It is a system working exactly as it was designed—to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few rather than spreading it to include the people who make this state run.

We know it can be different today because we have seen it. In Minnesota years of cross-racial organizing produced the 2023“Minnesota Miracle,”— a single legislative session that delivered a billion dollars in affordable housing, free school meals for every child, expanded voting rights, paid family leave, and protections for workers and immigrant communities. This past January 23, that same coalition drove a massive ICE presence out of Minneapolis through peaceful community action. It didn’t happen by accident. It happened because people built power—across race, across issues, across years—together.

That is the work of May Day. That is the work of Public Advocates.

This May Day we recommit to the California that should exist—where the people who built this economy can afford to stay here, where every child has a school worthy of their potential, and where no community’s future depends on the goodwill of those in power.

Power isn’t given. It’s built. We’re building it.

###

Public Advocates Inc. is a nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization that challenges the systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination by strengthening community voices in public policy and achieving tangible legal victories advancing education, housing, transportation equity, and climate justice.

The post Statement: Public Advocates Stands with Workers and Communities Fighting For a Just California on May Day appeared first on Public Advocates.

Here is a repost of our May Day episode from 2021. In it, we talk about the history of May Day from pagan rituals to the Haymarket Affair to International…

When Doug Burgum appeared before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee as President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Interior department last year, he was extended the traditional benefit of the doubt, with senators chummily reminiscing about North Dakota, lobbing softballs, and avoiding tough questions on the way to voting to confirm Burgum as Interior secretary. If Burgum got the idea that this is how all hearings would go, he was mistaken. A year later, as the Interior secretary who has overseen a multi-pronged effort to dismantle the agency and sell off or sell out our national public lands, Burgum seemed totally unprepared to handle difficult questions from members of Congress, not to mention the decidedly different vibe of a budget hearing where elected representatives demanded accountability for how their constituents’ resources are being stewarded and tax dollars are being spent.

In appearances before three congressional committees so far, Burgum struggled to defend President Trump’s proposed Interior department budget and explain the administration’s chaotic, destructive, and unpopular agenda for America’s public lands. Below are five of the most head-scratching exchanges between Burgum and lawmakers—along with some useful information Secretary Burgum might want to bookmark for his next Hill appearance.

Burgum can’t provide details on the $10 billion request for ‘beautification’ in Washington, D.C.

President Trump’s budget proposal includes a $10 billion request for a new Presidential Capital Stewardship Program which would “carry out priority construction and rehabilitation projects in the Washington, D.C. area.” According to the Interior department’s own website, the deferred maintenance backlog for Washington, D.C. is just over $2 billion. When asked by Senator Angus King of Maine what the extra $8 billion is for, Burgum’s bumbling explanation was that “D.C. is like a state. It’s not just, like, the National Mall. It’s for the greater capital region. That’s a region.” But again, according to the Interior department, adding in the deferred maintenance backlog for the entire states of Maryland and Virginia—far beyond the D.C. area— would bring the total to $4 billion, still leaving more than half of Burgum’s $10 billion request unaccounted for. Meanwhile, last year’s budget for the entire National Park Service was just $4.6 billion.

During the Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Senator Jeff Merkeley of Oregon also asked about the $10 billion request for the Presidential Capital Stewardship Program and if Burgum could provide a specific list of what the funds would be used for, as required by law. Burgum said he would “get you all the information you need according to law” but stopped short of agreeing to provide a detailed list. “As long as we don’t have the details, it’s a slush fund,” Merkeley responded. “You can call it something else if you want.”

Burgum learns about batteries and fossil fuel subsidies

Burgum struggled to hold his own against the expertise of Senator King—a former energy executive—on energy issues. In response to questions from King about the Trump administration’s actions to block renewable energy projects, Burgum fell back on a well-worn intermittency argument. “We have no ability to dispatch wind and solar,” Burgum claimed, and followed up with, “There are times in North Dakota when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.” But King pointed out, “That’s where batteries and storage come in.” Burgum argued that worldwide battery storage would only provide one hour’s worth of energy. However, in the United States where Burgum is Interior secretary, battery storage has been increasing rapidly, with a new record set in 2025 for energy storage installations, and is expected to reach at least 600 gigawatt hours of installed energy storage by 2030. This is the equivalent of 300 Hoover Dams, according to the Department of Energy, which offers other comparisons Burgum may find helpful. In California, 44 percent of evening peak energy is now being delivered via batteries.

Burgum also complained that he doesn’t understand “why we had to have massive taxpayer subsidies to produce” renewable energy. King pointed out that the U.S. currently pays $30 billion in subsidies to the oil and gas industry. The International Monetary Fund put this figure at $3 billion in explicit subsidies in 2022 alone, with an additional $754 billion in implicit subsidies. A 2025 analysis found that even without taxpayer subsidies, renewable energy sources are still the most cost-effective source of energy.

Burgum defends 24 percent of National Park Service staff coincidentally choosing to quit at the exact same time

Senator Patty Murray of Washington pressed Burgum about unacceptable cuts to on-the-ground staff at national parks in Washington and a budget that proposes to eliminate even more park staff. Arguing with the characterization that staff had been “forced out,” Burgum insisted, “There’s been no forcing of anything. These are all voluntary.” Murray wasn’t buying it: “However you want to put it, a quarter of them left over the last 15 months.” According to the National Parks Conservation Association, 4,000 staff, nearly 25 percent of the National Park Service workforce, left their jobs since January 2025 as a result of “pressured resignations and early retirements” along with hiring freezes that prevented vacancies from being filled. That’s an awful lot of people who somehow all voluntarily left their jobs at the same time.

Burgum, who voted to condemn the Rice’s whale to extinction, worries about the impact of wind turbine installation on whale populations

In response to questions from Representative Chellie Pingree of Maine, Burgum complained about the impacts to whales and other marine life from pounding pylons into the sea floor to install offshore wind turbines. Pingree immediately pointed out the disconnect between Burgum’s sudden whale-based arguments against offshore wind and his vote to remove Endangered Species Act protections for the endangered Rice’s whale in order to clear the way for more offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico: “If you’re going to be talking about pounding and those kinds of things, then we can’t have offshore drilling, and you want to re-permit the entire East Coast for offshore drilling. If you want to talk about danger to marine mammals and danger to fisheries, my next question is going to be about what happened with Deepwater Horizon, and you want to reduce the permitting standards there. There’s just a lot of hypocrisy in your arguments.”

Burgum denies erasure of history on national park signs

Burgum awkwardly tried to dodge a question from Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii about the removal of exhibits about slavery at the President’s House site in Philadelphia and other actions to erase history from national park sites across the country.

“Some of these examples that are floating around in the media saying some of these things have been removed, they haven’t been removed. In the case of Philadelphia, there’s a weird injunction where we can’t put the new signage up. And what is on the new signage, which is not hiding any points of our history, is available for anyone to read.”

Burgum referred Hirono to the President’s House Site website, where images of new panels—including information about slavery—are indeed available to view online. New physical panels at the site itself, however, are not yet in place, depriving visitors of the opportunity to learn from these interpretive materials in context during their time at the site.

Hirono also asked Burgum about the removal of signs referring to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Burgum responded, “I don’t believe that any of that information has been removed.” However, signage related to slavery and the internment of Japanese Americans, was removed from signs at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in New York City following an executive order signed by President Trump in March 2025 ordering the removal of materials that contain “improper partisan ideology.”

The post Highlight reel: The five most bewildering moments from Doug Burgum’s congressional hearings appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

In the second part of our series on the borderlands, Aaron and Lilly are joined by Bob Krumenaker, former superintendent of Big Bend National Park and current chair of Keep Big Bend Wild. They discuss the proposal for a border wall through one of America’s national treasures, the bipartisan coalition rallying to stop it, and what’s at stake for the park, communities, and local economy. Plus, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum struggles to defend a 38% cut to the National Park Service maintenance budget while making a $10 billion request for D.C.-based projects.

News

• Fact Check: Burgum claims $10 billion Trump slush fund request is for NPS deferred maintenance only — Center for Western Priorities
• Senate ENR committee tussles with Burgum over permitting  — E&E News
• Trump used Park Service to funnel millions to ballroom construction firm — New York Times
• President’s Budget Proposal Slashes National Park Service Funding Amid Ongoing Attacks on National Parks — National Parks Conservation Association
• Border wall map disappears from government website — Big Bend Sentinel
• Land acquisition expands popular Jeffco park adjacent to Red Rocks — Denver Post

Resources

• Borderlands part 1: The threats to public lands at the border
• Keep Big Bend Wild
• Mission Creep: How Trump is using the border to militarize our public lands — Westwise blog
• Watch this episode on YouTube 

Produced by Aaron Weiss, Lauren Bogard, and Lilly Bock-Brownstein
Feedback: podcast@westernpriorities.org
Music: Purple Planet
Featured image: U.S.-Mexico border within Big Bend National Park, NPS photo

The post Borderlands part 2: The fight against a border wall at Big Bend appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

April 30, 2026—LAist reporter Mariana Dale spoke with Senior Staff Attorney Alicia Virani about Miliani Rodriguez v. California, Public Advocates’ lawsuit challenging California’s inequitable distribution of Prop 2 school modernization funds. Virani explains why the firm filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in March—and why low-wealth districts facing asbestos, leaks, and toxic mold can’t afford to wait for the next bond measure. A hearing is scheduled for May 20.

Read the Story

The post LAIST: California voters greenlit billions of dollars to fix schools. How much has it helped? As schools age, the requests for modernization funding exceed the funding available.As schools age, the requests for modernization funding exceed the funding available. appeared first on Public Advocates.

Fear and division have become defining forces in the lives of many immigrant communities — but they are not the whole story. Cristina Jiménez Moreta has spent her life working to transform that reality, drawing on her own experience growing up undocumented and her years of organizing to build collective power.

A co-founder of United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the country, she has helped lead some of the most influential campaigns for immigrant justice in recent history. In this keynote, she reflects on the role of community, courage, and organizing in shaping a more inclusive future.

This is an edited transcript from Bioneers 2026.

Cristina Jiménez Moreta:

I am proud to be here as someone who was formerly undocumented. My parents, Fausto and Ligia, immigrated from Ecuador, fleeing poverty and political turmoil — like so many others in our country’s history — in search of a better life for our family. We settled in Queens, New York, in 1998. 

I’m a community organizer, and right now I lead Shared Future, a new initiative building a movement in support of immigrants and a shared vision of what unites us as Americans.

Before this, and before becoming a mom, I was a young organizer working alongside high school and college students to build the immigrant youth movement. Together, we helped grow United We Dream into a catalyst for one of the most powerful and inspiring movements of the past 20 years.

But even before I could build a movement, lead an organization, or call myself a community organizer, I’ll tell you the truth: I was a young undocumented person growing up in Queens, in a small studio apartment, living with the constant fear that one day my parents, my brother, or I could be taken by deportation agents and disappear.

Today, that same fear, uncertainty, and division are gripping millions of people across this country. What once felt normal has been turned upside down. And all around us, it can feel overwhelming — like it’s too much, and like there’s not much we can do about it.

I don’t need to remind you what’s happening. We’ve seen it on our phones, on TV, in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Chicago, and communities across the country. We’re seeing aggressive immigration enforcement, families living in fear, and people afraid to go to work or send their kids to school. At the same time, everyday Americans are making courageous choices to stand up for their neighbors.

This is a new level of fear spreading around us. But I invite you to be clear-eyed about it, because without facing the truth of what’s happening, we won’t be able to find a way forward together.

And I want to remind you of this: despite all the pain and all the harm we’ve witnessed, history — and my own experience organizing in communities across the country — shows that the way through is by building community and collective power. 

I’ll share why I believe this, because I grew up knowing what home felt like. Home was in Ecuador, with my abuela, making noodle soup in Quito on chilly evenings in the Andes.

But when I was 13, my family had to flee political turmoil. I left behind not just a place, but a sense of belonging. My parents didn’t have much, but they had love and courage. Guided by that, they did something incredibly hard: They left everything behind and came to this country in 1998.

Growing up in New York City, in a place where I didn’t know the language or the culture, I quickly learned to feel ashamed — ashamed of not speaking English, ashamed of being an immigrant, ashamed of my skin, my Indigenous features, ashamed of who I was.

I was undocumented, living in fear, and still trying to fulfill my parents’ dream that I would be the first in our family to go to college. I did everything I was told to do: worked hard in school, did community service, checked all the boxes.

Then 9/11 happened. And in that painful moment for our country, everything changed for families like mine, and for Muslim and immigrant communities across the country. Policies shifted. Immigrants were treated as threats to national security. In many places, including New York, undocumented students lost the ability to access higher education. People like my dad, who worked in construction, lost the right to drive.

One day, my dad was traveling between New York and New Jersey for work, crossing the George Washington Bridge. He was given the wrong change at the toll booth and tried to go back to fix it — an ordinary, honest mistake. But when you’re an immigrant, even something small can make you a target. As he turned back, a police car pulled him over. The officer asked for his license. My dad told him it was expired. That was enough. He was asked to step out of the car and taken to a local police station.

I got a call from him. He said, “I’m allowed one phone call. Mija, ayúdame.” Help me.

I told him to stay calm, to remember his rights — to remain silent, to not sign anything. Then I asked to speak to the officer and told him we knew my dad’s rights and that a lawyer was on the way. Right after that, I texted a network of organizers: “My dad needs help. This is where he is.” Within minutes, people responded. A lawyer was already on the way.

I share this story because I don’t know what happened to that police officer. What I do know is that he released my dad with a $150 ticket for driving without a license. And the only reason that happened is because we had a community behind us — people who had my back, who taught me my rights, and who gave me the courage to speak up in that moment.

That’s the kind of courage I want to share with you today. Because courage is a choice.

Undocumented people like me take real risks when we speak out and share our stories. So imagine what’s possible for those who aren’t in that same vulnerable position. Across the country, young people found courage in each other — fighting deportations, supporting one another through school, and committing to build something bigger than ourselves.

That’s how we built United We Dream. And that’s how I learned that in isolation, we lose. Alone, any one of us can be targeted, silenced, or pushed aside. But in community, we show up for each other. In community, no one has to face it alone.

I want to share this: The way we won DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) was by building community. We reminded each other we weren’t alone. We helped each other find our voices. And we took action together to fight for what was right.

I never imagined we would build a movement. I never imagined that years later we would be sitting across from policymakers and people in the White House, winning protections for more than 600,000 people. But we kept organizing.

I know that right now can feel uncertain. It can feel like we don’t know what comes next, or whether change is even possible. But I’m here to tell you that it is.

We’ve seen what’s possible in places like Minneapolis, where people believed in solidarity and built power together. We’re seeing it in Los Angeles and in communities across the country responding to increased immigration enforcement.

And there is a role for everyone here. This is not just about undocumented people or immigrants. All of us have a role, especially those of us with protections that others don’t have.

What’s inspiring is that people are already showing what that looks like. In some places, people are putting their bodies on the line. In others, they’re supporting neighbors in quieter but just as meaningful ways — buying groceries for families who are afraid to leave their homes, driving children to and from school, stepping in wherever help is needed.

In cities like New York and Chicago, people are building community defense networks through group chats, text chains, and rapid response systems. There are so many ways to show up.

There is a role for all of us.

I want you to see that our organizing isn’t just building hope, it’s also shifting public opinion. It’s making ICE and deportation deeply unpopular. Together, we built a mass movement that says no to ICE.

And I want to be clear: This administration wants us to believe they’re targeting people who pose a threat to our communities. But they are the ones creating fear in our communities. And people know that.

Look at what people are actually worried about: the cost of living, paying their bills, taking care of their families. Not these manufactured fears about immigrants. More and more, people are recognizing that the chaos we’re seeing is part of a strategy.

It’s a strategy to divide us. To use immigration as a scapegoat so we don’t pay attention to the real sources of harm: corporations exploiting workers and the planet, and an administration using immigrants to advance a more authoritarian vision of this country.

But people are waking up. They’re seeing through the lies. We know that lack of healthcare, underfunded schools, and economic struggle are not caused by immigrants. And even some who once supported this administration are starting to question what they’ve been told.

I’ll share one brief story. I’ve spoken with evangelical communities across the country who have told me, “We were raised conservative. We even supported this administration. But now we see what’s happening.” In fact, this week, many of them are launching a fast for immigrants and justice.

Across the country, communities — including U.S. citizens — are recognizing that this is not the future we want. And they’ve shared this message:

We are people connected by family, community, and faith. We refuse to turn away from injustice. We show up for one another. We organize with courage and compassion. And we turn our pain into power to build a future where dignity is the norm.

We won’t be divided. We have an opportunity to build a shared future — a multiracial democracy that includes all of us.

Sí se puede. Yes, we can.

The post From Fear to Power: Building a Movement for Immigrant Justice appeared first on Bioneers.

Two months ago, everyone was still wondering whether the First Conference for Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels would carry the relevance it promised in Brazil. Would governments around the world care enough to show up after the excitement of COP30 had faded? In a world that seemed to be sinking into new wars with global consequences?

Paradoxically, the escalating aggressions by the United States and Israel in Southwest Asia (Middle East) have shown the world exactly why we need to leave behind our dependence on fossil fuels. Entire communities have been destroyed, families buried under rubble, children killed, livelihoods erased, all in a region whose political fate has been shaped for over a century by the control of oil and gas. People in Palestine, Lebanon, and across the region are paying with their own lives for the world’s thirst for fossil fuels.

These are not abstract arguments. They are the bombs that fall, the blockades that starve, the occupations that endure, all because fossil fuel wealth concentrates power in the hands of those willing to use violence to protect it. Not only do fossil fuels poison our planet, they fuel instability, deepen inequality, and tie our futures to volatile and unjust energy systems. Moving beyond fossil fuels is no longer a distant goal. It is a shared necessity.

The response? Fifty-seven countries representing roughly a third of the global economy came together, signaling that the transition is not only possible but already underway.

But what truly defined this conference was not just who showed up at the governmental level. It was who was finally let in.

Indigenous peoples from around the world, trade unions, youth groups, academics, Afro-descendant communities, peasant associations, women and diverse identities, activists and NGOs, among others, engaged for the first time in a participation mechanism that actually listens to their voices and puts their demands on the table.

And beyond the high-level spaces, communities were building, not just speaking. During both days of the Peoples Summit, 350.org with 32 organizations across Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and the Caribbean Islands a Fair of Alternatives, showing that futures beyond fossil fuels are already here. Community leaders hosted a panel within the Peoples Summit space, and their voices fed into the final declaration.

Frontline communities from all around the world had a voice on the Santa Marta conference

 

It was no small thing to see Indigenous women leaders from Putumayo and Bolivia connecting over their shared concern about an energy transition being carried out without consultation in their territories, one that threatens to bring extractive models for copper and lithium that would gravely affect their environments and communities. But ready, too, to share models of community energy generation through biodigesters they have built themselves. Because communities around the world have not sat around waiting for their governments to act. They have thought of solutions and carried them out.

That same spirit drove the Popular Assemblies we co-organized in three territories in Colombia and Ecuador, where affected communities named the crisis in their own terms. Two of the communities that led these Assemblies — Cesar sin Fracking and Alianza Libre de Fracking — attended the high-level Conference, including Yuvelis Morales Blanco, now a winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize. 350.org also held an organizing space toward a common Latin American campaign against fracking and LNG with leaders from Colombia, Argentina and Mexico.

These connections between communities were perhaps the most powerful thread running through the conference. Activists from across the world linked militarization and the climate crisis in a country with more than 60 years of armed conflict, where multinationals like Glencore and Drummond have used armed groups to displace and kill local communities, seize their lands and waters, and leave surrounding populations in misery and fear. The Climate Justice Flotilla traveled across Caribbean islands still under Dutch colonial rule to bring their voices to this space — possibly the first time Aruba and Curacao had representation at a conference like this, even as the Netherlands, their colonial power, co-hosted while opposing a fossil fuel transition treaty.

During the Santa Marta conference, activists and local communities blocked the entrance of one of the main coal ports in Latin America.

 

It was also no small thing to see these same activists blockade one of the largest coal ports in Latin America with solar panels — Drummond’s port in Ciénaga. The action put the demands of affected communities front and centre: making polluters pay for the loss of land, biodiversity and life, and the need for a just transition. For local communities, doing something like this would mean enormous security risks — just weeks earlier, armed groups had kidnapped 25 fishermen from the community most affected by Drummond. But these young people from around the world used their foreign origins as a kind of shield, standing in solidarity with the communities of Ciénaga, Santa Marta, and all of Colombia affected by this multinational. Those same solar panels used in this action will now go to the communities most harmed by that coal port.

So what did governments actually deliver?

Let’s be clear: they could have been far more ambitious. The world is on fire, sometimes literally, and the political outcomes of this conference reflect cautious, small steps that do not match the urgency communities are living every day.

Governments from 57 countries meet at the First Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels Conference, in Colombia

 

That said, the fact that this conference happened at all, that it finally named fossil fuels as the root cause of climate chaos and created a dedicated space to address them outside of the pressures of formal COP negotiations, is itself a significant victory. Five concrete outcomes came out of the high-level segment:

1. Continuity. A second conference has been announced for 2027, co-hosted by Tuvalu and Ireland, with the main event taking place in Tuvalu. And who better than our brothers and sisters from the Pacific nations, on the frontlines of climate chaos, to carry forward what started in Santa Marta and remind the world of the urgency?
2. A coordination group has been established to ensure continuity between conferences, bringing together countries leading different alliances and initiatives on the fossil fuel transition, including the co-hosts of the first and second conferences.
3. The outcomes will be handed over to the COP30 Presidency, shared ahead of the intersessional meetings in Bonn this June and formally presented at London Climate Action Week, with plans to bring them to the UN Secretary-General during New York Climate Week. The intention is to feed these results into the second Global Stocktake, making sure this process does not live in isolation from the UNFCCC.
4. Three workstreams have been launched to identify concrete opportunities for cooperation: one focused on national roadmaps guided by the Science Panel, another on economic dependencies and financial architecture, and a third on aligning fossil fuel producers and consumers toward trade systems free of fossil fuels. These workstreams will remain open for countries to join or lead.
5. A Science Panel for the Global Energy Transition will anchor the entire process in evidence rather than politics. Academics and scientists from around the world joined forces to ensure that science guides the process of leaving fossil fuels behind, and to help countries develop roadmaps aligned with the 1.5°C trajectory and to dismantle the legal, financial, and political barriers standing in the way.

Are these outcomes enough? No. Are they the kind of bold, binding commitments that the scale of the crisis demands? Not even close. But in a world where the largest historical emitter has abandoned climate action entirely, where wars rage over the very resources we need to leave behind, the fact that 57 countries sat down, opened the doors to movements and communities, and committed to a sustained process is not nothing. It is the floor, not the ceiling, and it is up to all of us to push it higher.

Communities everywhere will keep building the solutions their governments have been too slow to deliver. And the rest of us? We stay loud, stay connected, and keep showing up, because the transition has already begun, and it was never going to be led from the top.

Because if this conference showed anything, it is that the transition is not only about energy systems. It is about power. The power of who gets to decide. Who benefits. Who is heard. And for perhaps the first time at this scale, the answer is beginning to shift.

The Great Power Shift has started. Join us!

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DENVER—Interior Secretary Doug Burgum claimed in a Senate Energy and Natural Resources hearing this morning that President Donald Trump’s $10 billion “slush fund” request in his 2027 proposed Interior department budget is solely for deferred maintenance at National Park Service sites in and around Washington, D.C., and will not go toward any new construction. See their exchange HERE.

Trump’s proposed NPS budget requests the establishment of a “new $10.0 billion Presidential Capital Stewardship Program in order to carry out priority construction and rehabilitation projects in the Washington, D.C. area.”

But the Interior department estimates the NPS deferred maintenance backlog in D.C. to be just over $2 billion. Adding in the maintenance backlog for all of Virginia and Maryland brings the total to only $4 billion, leaving $6 billion or more unaccounted for in Burgum’s request for Trump’s slush fund.

Trump’s NPS budget also calls for a 55 percent reduction in the annual National Park Service construction and major maintenance budget, leaving NPS less than $50 million to address repairs at historic sites and national parks across the country, and a 53 percent, or $213 million, reduction in resource stewardship funds.

The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Communications Manager Kate Groetzinger:

“Doug Burgum finally gave Congress insight into the shady $10 billion request for ‘beautification’ projects in Washington D.C. But his answer doesn’t square with his own department’s deferred maintenance numbers. He’s already spent $17 million in taxpayer money on a fountain across from the White House. President Trump has made it clear he wants more vanity projects, from giant arches to sculpture gardens, in his own backyard.

“It’s time for Secretary Burgum to tell President Trump that all of America’s parks need attention, not just the ones outside the president’s window.”

Learn more:

• Burgum blunders through budget hearings, taking heat for NPS cuts and Trump ‘slush fund’ – Westwise

• DOI Deferred Maintenance backlog – Interior Department

• President’s Budget Proposal Slashes National Park Service Funding Amid Ongoing Attacks on National Parks – NPCA

• Firm Building Trump’s Ballroom Got a Secret No-Bid Contract for a Nearby Job – New York Times

The post Fact Check: Burgum claims $10 billion Trump slush fund request is for NPS deferred maintenance only appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

PHILADELPHIA (April 29, 2026) — After the Shapiro Administration announced Tuesday a $267 million investment in industrial projects through the Reducing Industrial Sector Emissions in Pennsylvania (RISE PA) program, Clean Air Council and labor leaders are pointing to both the promise of the initiative and the need to ensure funds are directed toward truly clean solutions. 

At a press conference in Johnstown, Bernie Hall, District 10 Director for the United Steelworkers, underscored the opportunity to align economic growth with health and environmental progress.

“Too often people try to frame this as a choice between growing our economy and doing the right thing for our environment,” Hall said. “But good jobs and doing right aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Clean Air Council welcomed many of the awarded projects, including investments in solar, battery storage, electrification, energy efficiency, and industrial upgrades that can reduce pollution, cut energy costs, create jobs, and lower greenhouse gas emissions. 

“The funded projects show the tremendous potential to grow jobs, combat climate change, improve public health, and strengthen Pennsylvania’s industrial future,” said Alex Bomstein, Executive Director of Clean Air Council. “We applaud the RISE PA team for directing funds to the solutions to clean up and modernize our economy. But some of these grants miss the mark.”

The announcement included more than $31 million for projects to capture coal-mine methane, an approach that extends the reliance on fossil fuels rather than transitioning to cleaner technologies.

“Investments in fossil fuel infrastructure like mines and gas distribution, even in the name of efficiency, push our clean energy future farther out of reach,” Bomstein said. “The projects that truly modernize industry, like electrification and zero-emission technologies, are the ones that will deliver long-term economic, health, and environmental benefits.”

Yesterday’s RISE PA grants, funded through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants, are expected to reduce more than 1.3 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in their first year. Another round of funding, totaling $52 million, will open on May 15.

The next round will be critical.

“As the next round of funding moves forward, Pennsylvania has a clear opportunity to invest in solutions that lower energy costs, reduce pollution, and create family-supporting jobs,” Bomstein said. “That means prioritizing projects that move us toward a zero-emissions future, not ones that keep us tied to outdated fossil fuel infrastructure.”

This profile is part of an ongoing series that introduces members of CalCAN’s newly formed Stewardship Council. The Stewardship Council serves...

The post CalCAN Stewardship Council Profile: Thomas Nelson appeared first on CalCAN - California Climate & Agriculture Network.

Western states are running out of money to fight wildfires, according to reporting in High Country News. As climate change fuels hotter fires that occur year-round, states routinely spend well over their forecasted wildfire budgets. For example, Oregon spent more than $350 million fighting wildfires in 2024, far exceeding the $10 million it had allocated for wildfire that year.

A 2022 analysis by Pew Charitable Trusts found that most states use their general fund, or revenue from state taxes and other fees, to cover wildland fire costs, pitting firefighting and fire prevention efforts against top state priorities. Skyrocketing suppression costs have also led to a reduction in fire mitigation treatments, like prescribed burns and mechanical thinning, increasing wildfire risk on state forest land and pouring metaphorical fuel on the wildfire cycle.

Some states are tackling this issue with new taxes or wildfire-specific accounts. Oregon passed a new nicotine tax to fund wildfire prevention last year, and Utah put $150 million into a new wildfire fund. Still, costs continue to rise, and drought is driving above-average wildfire predictions for the West this summer.

Burgum struggles to defend public lands budget

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum struggled to defend the Trump administration’s disastrous public lands agenda in congressional appropriations subcommittee hearings p;last week in both the House and the Senate. Members grilled him on cuts to the National Park Service, a billion-dollar payout to kill offshore wind energy, and a $10 billion request for a NPS “beautification” program in D.C. Read more in a new Westwise blog post by CWP Communications Manager Kate Groetzinger.

Burgum appears before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this morning.

Quick hits The ramifications of record-shattering heat on the West’s ecosystems

High Country News

How the Lolo National Forest planners are bracing for a roadless rule repeal

The Missoulian

Trump signs bill ending protections for Boundary Waters watershed

Associated Press | GearJunkie

University of Utah creates critical minerals institute

Utah News Dispatch

Energy execs push WY lawmakers to carry out Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda

WyoFile

Colorado farmers tighten their belts ahead of summer drought

Colorado Sun

NM breaks ground on Reforestation Center, with plans to plant 5 million seedlings a year

Albuquerque Journal

Rep. Davids introduces Truth in National Parks Act to protect Native American history

Native News Online

Quote of the day

What we’re seeing right now is a deliberate attempt to erase the experiences of Native communities and other marginalized groups from places that are supposed to educate and inform the public. That’s unacceptable.”

—U.S. Representative Sharice Davids, Native News Online

Picture This

@CAgovernor

California’s ocean is not a sacrifice zone for Big Oil.

With Donald Trump plotting to sell off our beaches to his fossil fuel industry donors, we’re celebrating California Ocean Day by reaffirming our commitment to protect every inch of it.

Feature image: A prescribed burn in Oregon on Bureau of Land Management land in 2016; Source: Justin Robinson for the BLM via Flickr

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