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Into a clear blue sky, the sweet-smelling smoke billows and spreads. Farmers have been burning and harvesting sugarcane this way for generations, but the practice creates ash fallout and hazardous air pollutants. Every year, farmers plan and coordinate the fires, to clear out pests like snakes and clear leaves, leaving behind only the stalks where the sugar lies.

Nobody in Iberia Parish thinks twice. Sugarcane smoke is a part of life.

But locals are wary of the dangers they suspect lurk within a different, newer industry. This new industry is going to be the ruin of Iberia Parish, they warn, with dangers ranging from toxic smoke and cancer-causing chemicals to homegrown tornados and flying debris, even poisoned farmland and worthless houses. 

Dangers that are almost entirely imagined, say experts, who now find themselves as the main line of defense against misinformation that could hamstring a vital field. It’s a dynamic being repeated nationwide.

This is a close-knit community, part of the Acadiana region of Louisiana best known as Cajun Country. But last year, opposition to solar farms became so heated here that speakers at Iberia Parish Council meetings were brought to tears. Hundreds of residents successfully mounted a campaign opposing a proposed utility-scale solar project that would have been sited northeast of town. Opponents voiced fears that solar panels would destroy farms and poison the soil. They wore anti-solar T-shirts and staked yard signs. They snubbed and scolded the project’s supporters.

A social media group for Nebraskans posted a meme aimed at Tennesseans opposed to industrial solar projects. Similar themes and images appeared in social media posts that targeted other states.
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They feared fires, falling property values and panels that they said would leach chemicals into bayous. “I’ve done my own research. I don’t need anybody to tell me that it can’t cause cancer, or that they don’t crack and things don’t seep out,” said opponent Cathrine DeGroat during a June 2025 council meeting.

After heated debate, the council passed an ordinance requiring utility-scale solar projects to be set back at least half a mile from the nearest residential property line. Solar opponents hailed it as a victory for Iberia Parish. 

The ordinance appears to have effectively killed the Acadiana Solar project, which could have brought millions in local tax revenue to Iberia Parish, a rural area that could sorely use the public funds. The project’s developers would have leased land from Andree McAnally’s family farm for part of the project, money that would have helped pay college tuition and other expenses in a household budget that has been tighter since the death of her husband from COVID in 2021, McAnally said. She felt the lost opportunity more sharply, she said, since the fight against it was not based on facts. 

The day of the vote, in July 2025, McAnally told parish council members that she was disappointed in them. “I thought you were going to call in your own experts and figure it out yourself,” she said. “People are fueled by misinformation.”

McAnally herself had once believed that misinformation, she told the council. When her parents first agreed to put a solar farm on her family’s land, she was furious — she believed that her family was sure to get cancer. So she dug deep into research. What she learned changed her mind. “We have three generations right there on the property. And I would not put myself or my children in harm’s way,” she said.

Misinformation has become one of the primary hurdles for utility-scale solar projects like the one once planned here.  “Sometimes you just have this opposition that develops from misinformation and disinformation that tends to spread like wildfire,” said Matthew Holland, energy policy outreach coordinator at the Blanco Center, who counsels solar advocates to counter misinformation through specific facts about the benefits of the projects. And, as solar projects become more commonplace, some misinformation may lose its grip. 

Posts aimed at solar opponents in Indiana, Texas, Iowa and California, clockwise from top left, repeated messaging and imagery. Composite image by Dominique Hodge / Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk

For some who live in Iberia Parish, the standoff seems more deep-seated. “I think you’re seeing the animus of people who feel like their opinion is not taken seriously,” said Josh Trosclair, a member of the United Houma Nation and native of the small community of Lydia, just south of New Iberia, who argued on behalf of solar in front of the council. After one meeting, agitated solar opponents followed him to his car, he said. 

It seems clear that unfounded fears of solar have found fertile ground here. 

Facebook groups and AI bots

In Acadiana, solar opposition appears to have been organized in large part through a 1,200-member social-media group known as “NO Industrial/Utility solar in Iberia Parish” on Facebook. “Panels are toxic, contaminate the soil and water, [and] are a huge fire hazard,” wrote one of the group’s administrators in an April 2024 post. 

The group appears to have been first created in 2024 by a local real estate agent, Angela Scott. Scott did not respond to multiple attempts to reach her for this story.

Many posts express concerns that Iberia would no longer be a farming community. “There’s about 500k acres of sugarcane in the state. About 250k of them are leased for potential solar farms in the future,” read a post reshared from a group for St. James Parish — which also saw an anti-solar campaign. “If we lose 250k acres of farmland in this state, the sugar mills will likely close.”

To date, experts project that, at most, Louisiana solar will require about 87,000 acres over the next 10 years, on sites spread out across the state — not just on sugarcane fields. Only about 1 percent of Louisiana’s total farmland would be impacted by the highest estimates of solar buildout over the next decade, researchers estimate. 

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Posts in the group echo the dangers cited by opponents in council debates, along with a few new alleged hazards, including “increased ambient temperatures” and suggestions that solar panels themselves create unstable weather, particularly tornadoes.

Many posts in the group are cross-posted from “Stop Solar-Wind-BESS-Carbon Capture Scams,” a larger, 11,000-member Facebook group, which has become a hub for people who oppose solar across the nation. It was created in 2020 by Indiana resident Franklin T. Wike. 

A pinned post by Wike under the name “David Herman” seeks people willing to be trained to spread anti-solar messages: “We are looking for volunteers that would be interested in learning how to HELP run anti-Solar or anti-Solar and Wind websites. We are willing to train the individuals if needed,” reads the post. “The position will basically involve copying and pasting news links from various Facebook Groups we run, then writing a short introduction to the news articles.”

Wike also did not respond to requests for comment.

Some members of the network of anti-solar groups are sharing nearly identical posts of AI-generated anti-solar content, tailored to different U.S. states.

“Once Louisiana is gone, there’s no way to get it back,” reads one AI-generated graphic, shared by user Sheila Thomson, the words appearing on a sign with a farm and red barn in the distance. “Solar panels belong on roofs, not on farmland.” In a Facebook group for Texans, a different user posted a similar image tailored to Texas: “Once Texas is gone, there’s no way to get it back,” reads the sign. The same message and graphic appears in other groups tailored to Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and elsewhere.

The accounts have been linked to a network of “AI slop machine” accounts, per an analysis released earlier this month by the threat intelligence company Alethea. The network has also targeted data centers. Many of the accounts are anonymously run, are based in Bangladesh, and appear to be rapidly producing a volume of “emotionally resonant, locally targeted content … to manufacture the appearance of organic, grassroots consensus.”

Highly charged issue divides neighbors

Iberia Parish is more familiar with a different aspect of the energy sector. Parish workers fabricate parts for oil and gas infrastructure, like offshore platforms and pipelines. They work for petrochemical companies that, historically, come in, extract resources, and leave behind poverty and pollution — and loss. Trosclair’s uncle, whom he’s named after, was doing oil and gas fieldwork when he was killed by a burst pipe in 1980 at 20 years old.

Fossil fuels also don’t provide the jobs they once did: A report this summer from The Data Center, a Louisiana nonprofit, found that oil and gas production and transportation in the New Orleans metro area lost over 6,500 jobs between 2004 and 2023, a 47 percent decrease. 

Solar, on the other hand, will keep growing, say analysts, because the technology has simply gotten so efficient and affordable that the low cost will keep driving demand despite the hostile federal policy landscape. Scientists say that the world must transition to renewable energy as quickly as possible as global climate change worsens. Energy generated by solar in the U.S. recently overtook coal for the first time. Even President Trump’s allies recently softened their once-hostile tone and began championing solar outright.

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Perhaps because of their fraught history with oil and gas, locals can be wary of large new developments on agricultural land. They rallied the council last year to discuss the risks of carbon capture and sequestration and weighed instituting a moratorium. For the past several years, the solar industry has instilled worries, turning longtime friends into enemies.

“This is a highly charged, emotional issue, not just for me but for all of my neighbors who are my friends,” McAnally told the Council, her voice shaking. “Or — were my friends.”

Sugarcane has long been the dominant crop in Iberia Parish, where some farms have been handed down through four or five generations. The hundreds of acres of sun-drenched land also appealed to Recurrent Energy, a division of Canada Solar, which selected about 1,000 acres for their proposed solar project, initially dubbed “Acadiana Solar.” It would have been a $175 million investment.

But amid passionate public opposition, Iberia Parish passed its first solar-related ordinance in February 2024, a moratorium on solar farms, described as a temporary measure until permanent regulations could be agreed upon. A year later, in July 2025, the council passed the second ordinance, requiring that solar farms in the parish be sited at least a half mile from the nearest residential zones and occupied structures.

At the state level, Louisiana legislators passed their first solar restrictions last year, with House Bill 459, which requires that solar projects 75 acres or larger be set 300 feet from the nearest residential property line. The law also allows local governments to set larger setbacks.

Louisiana’s setback law is “one of the larger distances that you’ll see in the country,” Mark Zappi, executive director of the Energy Institute of Louisiana, told 1012 Industry Report in April. The Iberia Parish ordinance, with a setback that’s more than eight times larger, is among the most restrictive in the state.

The full effects of that setback are unclear: Though Recurrent Energy has never officially announced that its project was canceled, there’s been no movement on the project since the ordinance passed, local advocates say.

Solar panels don’t leach toxins

It is clear that, for solar development in Louisiana, one of the most formidable hurdles is misinformation.

Some inaccuracies are spread among friends and neighbors, by mouth or by social media. Sometimes disinformation is spread deliberately by politically-linked groups or digital marketers sharing AI-generated posts.

Or, as Terrence Chambers, the recently retired director of the University of Louisiana-Lafayette’s Center of Efficiency and Sustainable Energy, testified in front of a Louisiana legislative committee in 2021: “I have recently heard many concerns expressed by members of the public, some of which are based on incorrect information, and I would like to address some of those concerns, so that public policy can be based on accurate information.” 

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In his testimony and in the 17-page written testimony that he supplied the committee, Chambers set the record straight. “The solar cell is completely protected from air and water during normal operation, and as such, rainwater does not wash any toxic materials into the soil,” he said. “Solar racks can easily be designed to wind speeds of 150 mph or higher,” he wrote, noting that data from 50,000 operational solar installations shows that “solar plants stand up well to hurricanes and hail.” Also, because solar panels are mostly made of non-flammable materials like steel, glass and aluminum, they will not catch fire.

A December study from Chambers and other researchers at UL-Lafayette reached a similar conclusion: “There are no harmful emissions or runoff from solar power plants that would negatively affect the soil.”

Some opponents’ concerns were valid decades ago, but have now been largely addressed. For instance, residents expressed worries that solar panels would depress property values, become eyesores amid the landscape, or  — like the “orphan wells” often left behind by fossil-fuel companies — that the projects won’t be properly decommissioned when the projects end, leaving farmland littered with aging solar panels.

Studies have drawn differing conclusions about property values, but another UL-Lafayette paper points to two recent ones, by appraisers in North Carolina and Virginia who found that solar projects have no effect. Abandoned panels are less of a concern now since Louisiana law requires every project to have a decommissioning plan, which must account for closure in case of disaster and be updated every five years, with the costs set aside before construction begins. The way solar projects are designed has improved dramatically as well, said Stephen Barnes, director of the Kathleen Babineaux Blanco Public Policy Center at UL-Lafayette. 

Today’s projects are designed to be less visible than older ones, partly because it’s become standard for projects to include vegetative barriers – tall plants and bushes used to blend solar arrays with surrounding landscape.  “The reality is that most people that live in a parish that does have a solar farm don’t think about it ever,” said Barnes. “You could be driving past one and never even know it.”

Solar continues to grow, and provide needed tax revenue, despite hurdles

Across Louisiana, 19 solar projects are operating. Five began operating after Iberia passed its strict ordinance. 

Rural parishes that may otherwise see little investment are reaping massive tax benefits by embracing solar projects, researchers at UL-Lafayette say. Even if solar facilities are granted massive tax exemptions, they’ll generate at least 40 times more local property tax than farmland. 

Near Iberia, in Pointe Coupee Parish, the Oxbow solar project  — the largest in the state — is projected to generate $9.7 million in local tax revenue within the first three years. Morehouse Parish has already brought in about $3 million in sales tax revenue thanks to the Oak Ridge Solar Farm that began operating in 2023, about half of which went to the School Board. 

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The UL-Lafayette study predicts solar will bring in about half a billion dollars in state taxes through 2035. And once built, Barnes said, solar projects “tend to sit quietly with very little activity, generating significant, steady, predictable stream of tax revenue,” without requiring the increased public services — like fire protection or better roads  — that other large development projects need, said Barnes. Investment in a solar facility can also draw other businesses in, or prompt investment in improving the local electrical grid — what Barnes calls “broader spillover economic benefits.” 

“There will be continued expansion,” said Monika Gerhart, executive director of Gulf States Renewable Energy Industries Association. “The question is whether those projects will be over the state lines in Texas or Arkansas or Mississippi, or whether Louisiana is going to be able to avail itself of that revenue.”

Despite its opposition, Iberia Parish, too, has begun to see spillover benefits from investments in solar energy. 

Last year, a company called First Solar opened a $1 billion solar-panel production facility in Iberia Parish. It will manufacture 3.5 gigawatts of solar panels annually and is the largest investment in Iberia Parish history. 

The plant now employs hundreds of locals.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In rural communities, fears amplified by ‘AI slop’ and social media hamper solar boom on Aug 9, 2026.

Headline News:

• “Wildfire Smoke Poses Growing Risk To Pregnant Women As Climate Change Worsens” • A study published in Frontiers in Environmental Health tracked exposure to fine particulate matter from US wildfires from 2003 to 2019. It found that emissions from transport and industry fell in that time, smoke from wildfires offsets some of the gains. [Euronews]

Statue of Liberty in a smoky sundown (Chris Barbalis, Unsplash)

• “World’s Largest 12.8-GWh Battery Storage Cluster Activated in China” • Sources at Envision told Cleantechnica that its 4-GWh flagship plant could very well be “the world’s largest single-site electro-chemical energy storage facility.” It serves as the central anchor for a network of energy storage installations distributed across energy production centers. [CleanTechnica]
• “Renewable Energy Equipment Now Duty-Free for Import in Cuba” • A range of renewable energy components, including solar panels, transformers, lithium-ion batteries, and other batteries, can now be imported into Cuba without incurring customs duties. The plan is for this exemption to be in effect until December 31, 2027. [CubaHeadlines]
• “Harvesting Rainwater From Rooftops Could Cut The Number Of Heatwave Days And Reduce AC Reliance” • Rooftop rainwater could be a secret weapon to address urban heat. Researchers at The University of Manchester modeled capturing rainwater from rooftops and spraying it onto buildings during hot weather, reducing a need for air conditioning. [Euronews]
• “Twenty Thousand Flee Wildfires As British Columbia Declares State Of Emergency” • British Columbia has declared a state of emergency after a fast-moving wildfire destroyed homes and forced more than twenty thousand people to flee communities along Okanagan Lake in western Canada. Dozens of them were rescued by aircraft. [ABC News]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

Vanadium batteries could be the answer to the expanding, energy-hungry artificial intelligence infrastructure sector, with data centres rising around Australia's major cities.

The post Vanadium: The silvery data centre storage metal that you may never have heard of appeared first on Renew Economy.

Pagi itu, sebuah angka beredar di grup percakapan. Ada yang menyebutnya hasil analisis, ada pula yang menganggapnya sebagai angka yang “sedang bagus”. Dalam hitungan menit, pesan tersebut berpindah dari satu ponsel ke ponsel lain. Tidak ada yang benar-benar tahu dari mana asalnya, tetapi semakin banyak orang membicarakannya, semakin kuat pula kesan bahwa informasi itu layak dipercaya.

Situasi semacam ini bukan hal baru dalam pembicaraan mengenai togel hari ini. Informasi mengenai angka, hasil pengundian, prediksi, hingga berbagai istilah analisis dapat ditemukan dengan mudah di internet. Persoalannya bukan sekadar banyaknya informasi, melainkan bagaimana seseorang membedakan data yang dapat diverifikasi dari klaim yang hanya dibungkus dengan bahasa meyakinkan.

Langkah pertama adalah memahami perbedaan antara hasil dan prediksi. Hasil pengundian merupakan informasi yang dapat diperiksa setelah proses pengundian berlangsung. Sebaliknya, prediksi adalah perkiraan yang belum tentu terjadi. Keduanya tidak boleh diperlakukan sebagai hal yang sama.

Di sinilah sikap kritis menjadi penting. Ketika sebuah situs atau akun menyatakan memiliki “angka pasti”, misalnya, pembaca sebaiknya bertanya: apa sumbernya, bagaimana metode tersebut dibuat, dan apakah ada bukti yang dapat diperiksa? Istilah seperti pola, angka panas, angka dingin, atau statistik tertentu mungkin terdengar teknis, tetapi istilah tersebut tidak otomatis membuat sebuah prediksi menjadi akurat.

Cerita tentang seseorang yang berhasil menebak angka tertentu juga perlu ditempatkan secara proporsional. Satu keberhasilan dapat menjadi pengalaman menarik, tetapi tidak cukup untuk membuktikan bahwa sebuah metode selalu bekerja. Dalam permainan yang hasilnya ditentukan secara acak, kejadian sebelumnya tidak dengan sendirinya menjamin kejadian berikutnya.

Ada pula persoalan yang sering luput ketika orang terlalu fokus pada informasi angka: pengelolaan uang. Membaca statistik atau mengikuti hasil pengundian seharusnya tidak membuat seseorang mengabaikan kebutuhan sehari-hari. Uang untuk makan, tempat tinggal, transportasi, tabungan, dan kebutuhan penting lainnya memiliki prioritas yang berbeda.

Karena itu, informasi seputar togel lebih sehat dipandang sebagai bahan pengetahuan, bukan kepastian hasil. Pembaca dapat memeriksa sumber resmi, membandingkan informasi dari beberapa tempat, serta menghindari klaim yang menggunakan kata-kata mutlak seperti “pasti menang” atau “dijamin keluar”.

Pada akhirnya, memahami informasi angka secara bijak bukan soal menemukan ramalan yang paling meyakinkan. Justru sebaliknya, kemampuan terpenting adalah mengetahui batas antara data, opini, dan spekulasi.

Di tengah derasnya informasi togel hari ini, sikap tenang mungkin terdengar sederhana. Namun, ketika setiap angka datang bersama cerita tentang peluang dan kemenangan, kemampuan untuk berhenti sejenak, memeriksa sumber, dan membuat keputusan secara bertanggung jawab menjadi jauh lebih berharga daripada sekadar mengikuti angka yang sedang ramai dibicarakan.

By KAY MATTHEWS

There’s good news for the many Questa area citizens opposed to the proposed Kit Carson Electric Cooperative hydrogen facility and solar array. Attorneys for the Cabresto Lake Irrigation Community Ditch Association and Acequia Madre del Cerro de Guadalupe filed suit against the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service over the agency’s Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) authorizing the Questa Hydrogen Project. Claiming that the ruling violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the notice seeks judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) and requests that a full-blown Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) be conducted rather than the inadequate Environmental Assessment (EA). The plaintiffs also allege that the EA improperly limited the scope of the environmental review by excluding the proposed solar array from analysis.

Kit Carson Electric Cooperative, Inc. (“KCEC”) proposes to construct and operate a hydrogen-production facility, an associated electrical substation, and a solar-generation facility in the Village of Questa, New Mexico. The proposed hydrogen facility and related infrastructure are located on property associated with the former Questa Mine Tailings Site and within or adjacent to areas subject to ongoing environmental remediation and oversight under the federal Superfund program. The Project would use electricity generated by the proposed solar facility to support the production of hydrogen. The hydrogen facility, electrical substation, solar facility, and related infrastructure are intended to function together as components of the same overall development. The Project plans the use of groundwater from an existing well owned by Chevron mining identified as RG-14117 POD 18 (“POD 18”). At present, POD 18 is authorized for water use associated with reclamation and dust-control activities at the mine and tailings facility.

The two acequia plaintiffs, Cerro Acequia, which diverts water from Cabresto Lake, and Acequia Madre, which diverts water from Latir Creek and contributing streams, supply irrigation water for hundreds of parciantes and allege that USDA approved the Project without complying with NEPA’s procedural requirements by preparing an inadequate EA and failing to take the required hard look at significant environmental consequences.

Operation of the Project requires the continued withdrawal and destruction of substantial quantities of groundwater, including approximately 10,579 gallons per hour, from a well located within the Chevron Questa Mine Superfund Site. Once the water is introduced into the electrolyzer, it undergoes destruction as water and dissociates into hydrogen gas and oxygen gas. The liquid water pumped from the ground no longer exists. The EA concluded that groundwater resources would not be affected but did not support that conclusion with a quantified analysis of the Project’s anticipated withdrawals. The EA did not include an aquifer-drawdown analysis, long-term water analysis, or other adequate assessment of how sustained Project pumping could affect groundwater levels, nearby wells, connected surface-water resources, or water historically available to Plaintiffs and their members.

The suit also raises the issue of KCEC’s lease of the Chevron mine. At the time USDA issued the EA and the FONSI, KCEC was “currently in the process of purchasing the land described from Chevron for the construction of the proposed project.” On May 8, 2026, five months after issuance of the EA and the FONSI, KCEC and Chevron entered into a 3-year lease for the property. The lease, with a term of 3 years without renewal provisions, addresses ownership and use of the property, the presence of contaminated materials, responsibility for damage to the existing environmental remedy, and the allocation of environmental risks. Because the lease postdated the FONSI, USDA did not evaluate the final lease terms before making its NEPA determination, including the terms governing the duration of KCEC’s site control, ownership of permanent Project infrastructure, groundwater limitations, and responsibility for environmental conditions caused or aggravated by project activities.

After KCEC and Chevron executed the lease, USDA did not reopen its environmental review, prepare a supplemental environmental assessment, or issue a new finding addressing the final lease terms. USDA therefore did not evaluate whether the executed lease altered or undermined assumptions concerning KCEC’s long-term control of the Project site, ownership of permanent infrastructure, authority to use groundwater, responsibility for environmental damage, or interaction with the existing environmental remedy.

Furthermore, hydrogen gas production poses the risk of explosion. Upon completion and operation, the Project will store up to 29 tons of produced hydrogen gas under pressure in 54 tanks, with 28 tanks situated south of the 42 electrolyzer units and 26 tanks situated north of the 42 electrolyzer units. While KCEC contracted with Entrust Solutions to conduct a “What If” assessment, using 79 scenarios to evaluate risk and likely consequences of a variety of hypothetical failures of key components across the hydrogen storage, electrolyzer, and fuel cell units, an explosion can occur without the ignition of hydrogen.

Because construction is currently ongoing the Plaintiffs request immediate conjunctive relief. For more information you can go to the Questa Watershed Protectors Facebook page where the attorney who filed the complaint in US District Court in Albuquerque, Guy Dicharry, thanks Honorio Justin Rael who has done most of the legal work on this case.

file:///Users/geographer/Downloads/FILED%20COMPLAINT%20(1).pdf

In Wisconsin, utility Alliant Energy has called off a project meant to reduce power outages in disadvantaged and tribal communities, after the Trump administration terminated a federal grant that would have supported it.

In California, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which has deployed and upgraded hundreds of thousands of advanced smart meters, has not received any reimbursement from the U.S. Department of Energy, or DOE, for the work since October, when the Trump administration declared it was killing grants that it described as fueling ​“the Left’s climate agenda.”

And in the upper Midwest, a consortium of regional grid operators, utilities, and state agencies is still waiting for $464 million in DOE funds meant to help build high-voltage transmission lines to reduce grid congestion — although the agency in charge of the project says the funding will soon be restored.

Across the country, hundreds of such projects to improve grid reliability and make electricity more affordable face a highly uncertain future — the result of Trump administration actions that have slowed the outflow of billions of dollars of DOE funds to a trickle.

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Some of those projects in ​“blue states” were targeted as political retribution, as recent reporting from The New York Times has made clear. A handful of grant awardees in this category have won favorable court rulings, and more are seeking legal redress.

But many others are suffering from the DOE’s broader failure to carry out work that Congress has tasked it to do, according to groups that have been monitoring the agency since the start of last year. In red and blue states alike, the DOE is forcing thousands of grantees to undergo a laborious review process, so even projects that have not been officially terminated are stuck, unable to determine when or if they’ll start getting the money they’re owed.

According to an April report from the DOE Alumni Network, a group of former agency employees, the DOE has announced the termination of 356 awards totaling $12.5 billion since January 2025, and has threatened to terminate 303 additional awards worth $12.2 billion.

But the DOE has also stalled projects for ​“a large number of awardees who have never appeared on any list,” the report found. ​“This means the agency is not moving forward to resolve disputes, finalize conditional awards, or respond to continuation applications, leaving projects in administrative limbo and functionally freezing promised funds.”

“DOE both overtly canceled a set of projects, then had this pattern of behavior where for 15 months they stopped actively managing projects,” said one former DOE official. ​“Projects can’t proceed to the next stages and get their next tranche of funding.”

The former official, who asked not to be named, described a pattern of stalling, stonewalling, and ​“ghosting” utilities, state governments, energy companies, and nonprofit groups awarded grants under the Biden administration.

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Many of those projects have been caught up in a process the DOE announced in May 2025 to review all financial assistance ​“on a case-by-case basis to identity [sic] waste of taxpayer dollars, protect America’s national security and advance President Trump’s commitment to unleash affordable, reliable and secure energy for the American people.”

Then, in October, the DOE announced the ​“termination of 321 financial awards supporting 223 projects” — all of them tied to states that voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. The DOE’s termination announcement came right after Russ Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, declared in a social media post that the administration would cancel ​“nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding.”

Canary Media reached out to a subset of DOE grantees that had won funding from the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) program created by the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law. The DOE issued a total of more than 100 GRIP grants — in October 2023, August 2024, and October 2024 — for projects to enlarge the grid, harden it against extreme weather, build microgrids to protect vulnerable communities, and deploy technologies to integrate solar, wind, EVs, and batteries.

Some of the GRIP projects involve expanding clean energy and serving disadvantaged communities, two bugbears of the Trump administration. But many more are straightforward grid improvement projects that need federal dollars to reduce the costs borne by utilities and regional or state agencies.

The largest of these is in California. In 2024, the DOE awarded a $630.6 million grant aimed at upgrading more than 100 miles of high-voltage power lines in the state with advanced power cables capable of carrying more electricity along existing transmission corridors, a project estimated to be capable of delivering about $200 million in savings from improved energy efficiency. That project was terminated in October, and the DOE has disbursed no money for it, according to federal records.

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This uncertainty appears to apply to the majority of GRIP projects, according to Emlyn Bottomley, founder of the consultancy High Road Analytics, which focuses on workforce development, and a former Department of Labor deputy policy director in the Biden administration.

According to his tracking of federal spending, of the roughly $11.4 billion in DOE funds obligated to grid infrastructure and resilience — a category that includes GRIP program funds — $9.1 billion remains ​“at risk,” with funding stalled or timelines for completion shortened. That’s compared with $400 million in grants that have been canceled outright and $1.3 billion not yet disbursed but showing no signs of being stalled.

“It’s a shame these projects are being held up or canceled, especially since the case for them is fairly bipartisan — spanning national security, economic competitiveness, and cost and affordability,” Bottomley said.

All of the GRIP projects required partners to provide matching funds at an amount at least equal to the money DOE is providing, the former DOE official added. ​“You’re talking about folks putting hundreds of millions of dollars on the line. People have skin in the game for these awards.”

The costs of losing federal funding

Many of the GRIP grantees contacted by Canary Media declined to comment, citing ongoing discussions with DOE. Others reported that they are no longer pursuing the projects as described in their grant applications, at least not with the help of DOE money.

The latter is the case for Alliant Energy’s Smart Power Automation in Rural Communities (SPARC) project, which won a $50 million grant in late 2024 to add grid visibility and control devices to 140 grid circuits in disadvantaged and tribal communities served by subsidiary Wisconsin Power & Light — a utility in a blue state.

Those devices could allow the utility to quickly find and isolate faults on its grid, cutting power outages in targeted communities by up to 50 percent. They could also support grid-management software to help integrate more renewable and distributed energy, and potentially expand wireless communications access to these remote areas.

Alliant ​“voluntarily withdrew” from the grant award process in April, six months after its grant was terminated by the DOE, Alliant spokesperson Melissa McCarville told Canary Media. The agency has disbursed no funds to the project, according to federal records.

Read Next The secret to a better grid? Electric vehicles. Matt Simon

Alliant is ​“actively pursuing many of the goals that were outlined in the SPARC project,” McCarville wrote in a May email, but as part of a 10-year strategic plan with no set timeline. ​“While the grant did provide valuable funding, it also required a significant investment, and we want to ensure our contributions are properly prioritized,” she wrote.

Still, at least one grant-funded project in a blue state is proceeding despite the absence of DOE funds. 

That’s the case for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which serves the state’s capitol and environs. In 2023, SMUD won a $50 million grant to support a project to deploy 200,000 smart meters and grid devices and underlying software controls to ​“improve grid reliability, resilience, visibility and efficiency,” utility spokesperson Gamaliel Ortiz told Canary Media in an email. 

SMUD has carried out much of that work, which includes close to $100 million in utility spending, and has received almost $33 million in reimbursements from DOE, according to federal records. However, SMUD ​“has not received reimbursement for any costs incurred after the grant was cancelled on October 10, 2025,” Ortiz wrote. ​“We remain committed to this critical work and stay flexible as we evaluate how the loss of grant funding may impact the project timeline.”

In other blue states, some grants have been canceled and others are still under negotiation. In Oregon, utility Portland General Electric has recently learned that the DOE may reinstate a previously terminated $50 million grant to support next-generation ​“grid edge computing” devices, utility spokesperson John Farmer told Canary Media in an August email. That project had received only $1.2 million in DOE funding, according to federal records.

Read Next Biden’s climate law is dead. The energy transition might not be. Jake Bittle

The purpose of the project was to integrate batteries, EVs, and community solar into its grid to ​“improve resilience, enable the integration of distributed energy resources, and maximize customer investments in home energy solutions.”

“PGE is evaluating the benefits and risks of reinstating the grant,” Farmer told Canary Media. The utility ​“recognizes that there are inherent risks of additional and changing demands by the DOE as the administration’s priorities change.”

At the same time, PGE remains in discussion with the DOE on a $250 million grant to build a high-voltage transmission line with the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Farmer wrote. ​“Without this funding, we would lose the opportunity to offset those costs with external dollars, which could limit how efficiently we can advance needed grid improvements.”

Red state projects are also being held up because the grantee is located in a blue state. Such is the case of the aforementioned $464 million DOE grant for the Joint Targeted Interconnection Queue project to build new transmission lines between the Midcontinent Independent System Operator and Southwest Power Pool, two grid operators spanning nearly a dozen Midwestern states.

The $464 million GRIP grant was meant to bolster $1.3 billion in matching funds from utilities in the region to enable nearly 30 gigawatts of new generation to be built in Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. All but one of those states voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 election — but the Minnesota Department of Commerce, the entity awarded the grant, is in a blue state.

Read Next How Ann Arbor, Michigan, is creating its own clean energy utility Carey L. Biron

In May, the Minnesota Department of Commerce announced that the DOE ​“will honor its $464 million grant,” which will ​“unlock more than $1 billion in additional private investment and provide communities across the region with economic and infrastructure benefits.”

A DOE spokesperson told Canary Media in a July email that the DOE has conducted its review of GRIP projects based on a ​“number of criteria,” including whether it has ​“achieved the milestones set forth in the terms of the award,” whether it ​“remains technically and economically feasible,” and whether it ​“continues to effectuate the purpose of the program or the Department’s priorities.”

The spokesperson added that ​“none of the termination decisions were based on political considerations.” That statement is belied by court testimony reported by The New York Times last month, in which a DOE lawyer stated that none of the October grant terminations were ​“based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction or performance-based factor,” and that all but one of them ​“had a recipient location and/​or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing senators.”

During a series of congressional hearings in April, Energy Secretary Chris Wright stated that the DOE’s review of more than 20,000 grants was almost complete, and that more than 80 percent of grantees had received notice that their awards could proceed as is or with modifications.

But an Alumni Network analysis of DOE data shared with Congress showed that the DOE’s review both failed to restore the vast majority of projects caught up in the ​“blue state” termination action in October and failed to address the hundreds of projects that have never been officially terminated but remain unable to secure funds.

The revelation of the DOE’s explicit targeting of blue states for grant termination spurred 39 Senate Democrats to sign a letter to Wright and Vought demanding the immediate restoration of funding for DOE projects terminated in October.

“Once an administration begins punishing Americans for how they vote,” the senators wrote, ​“the threat extends far beyond these projects: no state, community, business, or worker can trust that the federal government will apply the law fairly.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump is blocking billions of dollars of grants that would fix the grid on Aug 8, 2026.

Headline News:

• “US Battery Storage Capacity Averaged 70% Growth Over The Last Three Years” • Battery storage capacity in the US grew a lot over the last three years, with an annual average growth rate of 70%. By the end of 2025, the US had battery storage capacity of 43.6 GW operating. Over the first six months of 2026, operators added another 8.3 GW. [CleanTechnica]

Growth in utility batteries (EIA image)

• “Wildfires Keep Raging As Europe Swelters Under Extreme Heat” • Firefighters were battling multiple wildfires in Serbia on Friday, as temperatures remain extremely high. Serbia was not the only country affected, however. Days of extreme heat with temperatures reaching 40°C (104°F) fueled wildfires in several Balkan countries. [Euronews]
• “Rising Temperatures Could Keep More Flights From Taking Off On Time” • Airline passengers know to expect possible flight delays when forecasts call for rough weather. But extreme heat also disrupts flights. On the hottest days, thinner air can make it harder for aircraft to get off the ground safely. Airlines might even remove passengers to save weight. [ABC News]
• “California Produced Over Half Its May Electricity From Solar, A World Record” • California hit a major milestone in May, with over half its electricity coming from the sun. It is believed to be a global first, according to analysis from Ember. And in the first five months of 2026, California made more electricity from solar than from natural gas. [Arizona Daily Sun]
• “New Hampshire Law Empowers Homeowners With ‘Balcony’ Solar Panels” • A state law set to go into effect on January 1, 2027, gives Granite Staters an ability to install so-called “balcony solar” panels. DIY solar power users still need to do their homework to understand the technology, safety requirements, the potential for their home, and possible limits. [NH Business Review]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

Each week, Food Tank is rounding up a few news stories that inspire excitement, infuriation, or curiosity.

United States Restores Some Health Aid

After the sudden elimination of humanitarian assistance last year, the United States is taking steps to restore some global health aid, the New York Times reports.

The latest funds—US$600 million—will go to Gavi an organization helping low-income countries secure essential childhood immunizations. In total, the U.S. government has made nearly US$2 billion in recent pledges to support international organizations tackling hunger and malnutrition, epidemic preparedness, disaster response, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and malaria.  But the amount is still far below what the U.S. spent on foreign assistance in the past.

According to officials who have been a part of State Department conversations, public health threats including the recent Ebola outbreak, are one of the main drivers of this shift. And with the U.S. Agency for International Development gone, the infrastructure no longer exists for the U.S. to handle the humanitarian assistance itself. They must now partner with large international agencies to work at the scale needed. 

The reality of past decisions may be “sinking in,” says Mark A. Green, President of the ONE Campaign. He adds, “The good news is that Secretary Rubio clearly realizes that global health is what we do, and we’re really good at it. That’s why you’re starting to see more money moving.”

Countries Adopt First Global Framework on Sustainable Livestock Management

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Members have approved the first globally negotiated framework to sustainably transform the livestock sector. It marks a “a major achievement for FAO and all livestock stakeholders,” says Thanawat Tiensin, FAO Assistant Director-General, Chief Veterinarian and Director of the Animal Production and Health Division.

The Global Plan of Action for Sustainable Livestock Transformation (GPA) recognizes livestock as a key source of protein and other nutrients as well as the sector’s ties to zoonotic diseases, biodiversity loss, and greenhouse gas emissions. Its 85 recommended actions are designed to help countries promote healthy diets, control animal diseases, encourage climate mitigation and adaptation practices, improve animal welfare, and boost farmers’ livelihoods.

Food Companies Slow Efforts to Improve Public Health

Food corporations are costing countries billions of dollars in healthcare and legal costs by hindering the adoption of public health measures, according to the World Health Organization’s Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) make up half the calories consumed by eaters in countries including the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. 

As governments try to implement programs and initiatives that help people adopt healthier diets, food corporations say they support these actions. But an investigation by The Guardian finds that these same corporations are quietly trying to overturn, weaken, or delay them. 

Between 2010 and 2025, corporations brought 235 lawsuits forward in five countries in response to policies targeting UPFs. Even though the companies lost around three-quarters of these cases, they were still successful in slowing the rollout of legislation and discouraging other countries from pursuing similar policies. 

Tedros recognizes that some food products are being reformulated to be made healthier, but stresses more must be done: “These efforts are welcome, but they are not sufficient on their own to meet the scale of this global health crisis. To contribute meaningfully to the solution, companies should also end litigation and other tactics that strain limited government resources and hinder efforts to protect public health.”

RFK Jr. Launches New Cooking Show

Last week, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced the launch of a new cooking show. Kennedy states that he will travel across the country, connecting with chefs to show families “how to cook delicious, nutritious meals with real ingredients all at affordable prices.”

In the first episode of “The Real Food Show,” available on YouTube, Kennedy and Chef Andrew Gruel prepare salmon cakes with an arugula and white bean salad. 

Each recipe is designed to come out to US$5 or less per portion whenever possible but some experts question whether that’s possible. Registered dietitian Juliana Vocca says, “RFK Jr.’s cooking show may be promising in terms of educating the public on how to cook healthy.” But, she adds, “I’m not sure everyone can afford some of his recipes.”

Food prices in the U.S. are 33 percent higher than they were in 2019, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Tool Helps Women Farmers Unlock Water Security

A new tool known as the Agriculture Water InSecurity (AgWISE) module is tracking the realities of women facing water stress in coastal Bangladesh, helping decision makers develop gender-inclusive water governance and climate policies. 

Women are increasingly impacted by water stress, from increased flooding to erratic rainfall. At the same time, they are taking on larger roles in agriculture. But they remain largely excluded from decisions impacting water management and infrastructure.

AgWISE aims to change this by collecting information to understand the physical and emotional toll of water insecurity. A pilot study with 800 respondents revealed how age, class, land ownership impact a household’s vulnerability. 

By translating everyday experience into actionable evidence, the tool is supplying decision makers with the information they need to create policies. The insights from AgWISE are now being used to shape revisions to Bangladesh’s National Women Development Policy and guide discussions with the Ministry of Finance to integrate the tool into Gender Responsive Budgeting initiatives across climate hotspots. 

CGIAR sees this as an adaptable tool that can be used to support smallholder farming communities around the world.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Wietse Jongsma, Unsplash

The post Food Tank’s Weekly News Roundup: U.S. Restores Health Aid, Companies Block Action on UPFs, New Tool Boosts Water Security appeared first on Food Tank.

Sepak bola tidak lagi hanya menjadi tontonan selama 90 menit. membuat pertandingan semakin mudah diikuti, termasuk melalui layanan sportsbook yang menyediakan pilihan taruhan pada berbagai kompetisi. Bagi sebagian penggemar, sportsbook menjadi bagian lain dari pengalaman menikmati pertandingan. Namun, daya tarik tersebut tetap perlu diimbangi pemahaman mengenai risiko dan mekanisme permainan.

Mengapa Sportbook Sepak Bola Banyak Diminati?

Popularitas sportsbook sepak bola bertumpu pada satu hal sederhana: pertandingan memiliki banyak aspek yang dapat dianalisis. Kondisi tim, performa pemain, statistik pertemuan, posisi klasemen, hingga perkembangan terkini bisa menjadi bahan pertimbangan.

Data Menjadi Bagian Penting

Pengguna yang memahami sepak bola biasanya tidak sekadar melihat nama besar sebuah klub. Mereka memperhatikan tren permainan, produktivitas gol, catatan kandang dan tandang, serta kemungkinan perubahan susunan pemain.

Pendekatan berbasis data membuat aktivitas tersebut terasa lebih terukur. Meski begitu, statistik tidak pernah mampu menjamin hasil pertandingan. Sepak bola memiliki terlalu banyak variabel yang dapat berubah dalam hitungan menit.

Karena itu, informasi sebaiknya digunakan untuk memahami pertandingan, bukan dianggap sebagai alat untuk memastikan kemenangan.

Pilihan Pasar yang Beragam

Salah satu hal yang membuat sportsbook bola terlihat menarik ialah variasi pasar yang tersedia. Selain memilih pemenang pertandingan, beberapa platform menawarkan pasar seperti jumlah gol, handicap, atau hasil pertandingan tertentu.

Variasi tersebut memberi ruang bagi pengguna untuk menentukan pilihan berdasarkan pertandingan yang ingin mereka ikuti. Akan tetapi, semakin banyak pilihan bukan berarti semakin besar peluang memperoleh keuntungan.

Kenali Aturan Sebelum Bermain

Pemahaman terhadap aturan menjadi dasar penting. Pengguna perlu mengetahui cara kerja odds, ketentuan taruhan, batas transaksi, serta kebijakan pembayaran yang diterapkan sebuah platform.

Aspek keamanan juga tidak boleh dikesampingkan. Platform yang digunakan sebaiknya memiliki informasi operasional yang jelas, ketentuan layanan yang mudah dibaca, serta mekanisme perlindungan akun dan data pengguna.

Kejelasan informasi merupakan salah satu indikator yang lebih masuk akal untuk diperiksa dibanding sekadar janji keuntungan besar.

Menempatkan Hiburan di Atas Ekspektasi

Sportbook sepak bola pada dasarnya tetap merupakan aktivitas berisiko. Hasil pertandingan tidak dapat diprediksi secara pasti, bahkan oleh pengamat yang memiliki pengetahuan luas tentang olahraga tersebut.

Pengelolaan Batas Menjadi Penting

Pengguna perlu menetapkan batas dana dan waktu sejak awal. Dana untuk kebutuhan sehari-hari tidak semestinya digunakan untuk aktivitas taruhan. Begitu pula ketika mengalami kekalahan, keputusan untuk mengejar kerugian dengan taruhan berikutnya justru dapat meningkatkan risiko.

Pada akhirnya, daya tarik sportsbook bukan semata-mata terletak pada kemungkinan hasil akhir. Pengalaman mengikuti pertandingan, membaca statistik, dan memahami dinamika permainan juga menjadi bagian dari ketertarikan tersebut.

Dengan pengetahuan yang memadai, sikap kritis, serta batas yang jelas, penggemar dapat melihat sportsbook sepak bola secara lebih realistis: sebagai aktivitas berisiko yang membutuhkan pertimbangan, bukan jalan pintas untuk memperoleh keuntungan.

By Henry Taylor

On Wednesday, August 5, the Chatham County Board of Commissioners held a special meeting to hear the thoughts and concerns of residents regarding a proposed natural gas pipeline from the utility company Enbridge. More than 300 people who are against the development attended, and 50 of them spoke directly to the board.

The pipeline would stretch 28 miles from Siler City to Moncure and pass through the private property of residents. While Enbridge says it would be used to support the county’s growing population and industry, many residents fear the environmental impacts, the negative effect on property values and that the pipeline would be used to support a proposed data center. Some have already received notice from the company that their property could soon host an easement. Enbridge plans to use eminent domain laws to survey and ultimately create 50-foot-wide easements on private property in order to complete the 12-inch wide pipeline.

“Fossil fuels are not the future, they are truly fossils, dinosaurs of the past,” said Susie Crate, a Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University who lives in Bynum. “We need to preserve and protect the precious farmland and heritage that is remaining in our county. And we need to listen to the residents, both long-term and newly arrived, who are speaking out and saying no.”

…

Another speaker at the meeting was Sara Heilman, the clean energy strategist at NC WARN, a nonprofit which advocates for environmental causes across North Carolina. She said while the state is rapidly developing, a natural gas pipeline would cause more harm than good.

“Any investment that North Carolina makes into fossil fuel infrastructure is one that further entrenches us in a fossil fuel future,” said Heilman. “If we do in fact need more power to fuel growing businesses in the state, I think it’s important that we fuel those  businesses with clean energy. Local solar installations, battery installations…these are faster to install, cheaper, much more equitable and less polluting than these proposed fossil fuel projects.”

She said both her organization and the Haw River Assembly are urging the county to ask the state to require an environmental impact statement. They also want the county to ask the state to require individual permitting for any area where the pipeline would cross water sources, rather than allowing Enbridge to use one permit for the whole project. These are ultimately state-level decisions – as Chatham County Commissioner Amanda Robertson shared in a written statement from the board.

Continue reading

The post Chatham County Residents Speak Out Against Proposed Enbridge Gas Pipeline — Chapelboro appeared first on NC WARN.

EWG statement on FDA’s new GRAS proposal Iris Myers August 7, 2026

WASHINGTON – Today the Food and Drug Administration proposed a new rule to amend the “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS, food chemicals loophole. 

The GRAS regulatory loophole has, for years, allowed companies to add new, potentially harmful chemicals and other substances to snacks, drinks and more without first undergoing FDA safety review.

When Congress created the GRAS loophole in 1958, it was meant to apply largely to ingredients widely recognized as safe, such as salt, yeast and chicken broth.

But the loophole means that now almost all chemicals added to food are greenlighted by the food industry, not the FDA. Since 2000, nearly 99 percent of food chemicals added to commerce came into the market through the loophole, a 2025 Environmental Working Group analysis found. 

The following is a statement from Melanie Benesh, EWG’s vice president for government affairs:

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is correct that the GRAS system is broken and in urgent need of reform. And eliminating the pathway that allows companies to self-certify chemicals as “generally recognized as safe” without notifying the FDA is the first step toward meaningful reform.

But true GRAS reform requires more than mandatory notification. It must also include strong, science-based safety standards and thorough, independent FDA review before chemicals are allowed in our food. And it must address the thousands of substances already on the market that have not been meaningfully reviewed in decades.

Americans deserve a system where food safety decisions are made by independent experts at the FDA – not by the companies that profit from selling these chemicals.

###

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action.

Areas of Focus Food Ultra-Processed Foods Food Chemicals Press Contact Iris Myers iris@ewg.org (202) 939-9126 August 10, 2026

This article The inside-outside strategy behind New York’s rent freeze was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

This June, tenants in New York City notched a major victory: The city’s Rent Guidelines Board, or RGB, voted to freeze rents for all one- and two-year leases in rent-stabilized units. Quickly, local and national media trumpeted the decision as a victory, a proof of concept even, for NYC’s democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who had pledged to ensure such a freeze on the first day of his campaign. Because the mayor appoints RGB members, the story became one of Mamdani conjuring the victory through sheer force of will.

But the freeze also comes as a result of decades of targeted tenant organizing across the city as longstanding communities are priced out of their homes. One of the groups that has led the charge is CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities, an organization of working-class Asian immigrants that launched the Chinatown Tenants Union, or CTU, in 2005. The group’s members have been showing up to RGB hearings for 20 years, testifying for freezes and staging actions to prevent expected hikes.

CAAAV Voice, CAAAV’s electoral arm, also holds the distinction of being one of the few groups that endorsed Mamdani on the first day of his campaign, thanks to his history of action — he was arrested at a June 2024 CAAAV protest — and his pledge to adopt the movement’s emerging demand that the next mayor freeze rents for the entire four-year mayoral term.

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On the heels of the rent freeze victory, I sat down with Julie Xu, a longtime organizer with CAAAV and chapter lead of CTU, to discuss how initiatives to combine base building with electoral politics helped create the conditions for the freeze, and how having a democratic socialist in the mayor’s office  allows the tenant movement to “revisit the strategies of the past.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Tell us about the origins of the rent freeze demand and how it is rooted in your organizing work.

So New York City’s rent stabilization system is the biggest in the United States, and one of the most important in the world when you’re talking about forms of rent control. 

As you zoom in on a neighborhood like Chinatown, it’s almost 50 percent of the housing stock and an incredibly important source of housing, especially for low-income immigrants. A lot of our members can only stay in a neighborhood like Chinatown that is in Manhattan because of rent stabilization. 

Previous Coverage

Abolish rent. Yes, for real.

From the beginning, our work has always been about organizing tenants. One of our founders, Ms. Liang, who is a teacher in the neighborhood, talks about doorknocking [early in CAAAV’s history] and seeing conditions of neglect: a student wearing a full puffer jacket indoors in the winter because there was no heat, or children being bitten by rats and pests because of the neglect of the apartments in Chinatown. So at our core it’s been about how we correct that and make the neighborhood a dignified landing place for folks and also prevent the violence of eviction, the violence of gentrification. 

CAAAV tenant leaders began testifying [for a rent freeze] and showing up to the RGB in 2006, just a year after the founding of the Chinatown Tenants Union. The core demand has always been about who has say over our neighborhoods: real estate or the tenant majority. 

CAAAV members rally at the preliminary vote of the Rent Guidelines Board on May 7, 2026. (Cal Hsiao/courtesy of CAAAV)

We understand rent hikes as part of a wheelhouse of tactics that organized real estate wields to maintain housing as a system of profit. This is why our tenant leaders have called for a rent freeze and rent rollbacks over the decades.

Our tactics have shifted over time, but the Rent Guidelines Board fights have been a critical vehicle for politicizing newer members around shared conditions of rent hikes and disrepair, and creating a ladder for leadership development through testimony and actions.

Did a lot of the work from the beginning center around establishing consciousness about the conditions and giving people ways to talk about the things that they were experiencing?

It’s really central to how we understand our work as an organization. I think having a base and having that orientation toward outreach is a large part of what makes the organization so strategically sharp. 

In the moment when Trump was elected, everybody was saying Asian and Latino voters were moving to the right. The reason that was perceived as a rightward shift was because the Democratic establishment was not making a case to our people. A lot of the movements of the right are far better resourced than those of the left, so it was like a vacuum. So what we were experiencing and seeing was that it’s not just that our people are moving to the right, it’s actually that we’re not giving them a vision. We’re not giving them something that they can actually see themselves in. 

What was CAAAV’s relationship to electoral politics prior to Mamdani’s mayoral campaign? Is that something that’s only recently become more of a strategic focus?

CAAAV Voice was founded in 2021, and the electoral work it did really came as a result of some of the changing strategies we had for organizing. 

[Before that, CAAAV] went through many different phases. There was experimentation around community land trusts. There was a vision of having a building tenant association on every block in Chinatown. We experimented with community-led rezoning plans as places to try to impact the logic of real estate and the logic of capital that’s shaping all of housing. We undertook all these different types of organizational experiments, and the lesson for us was that it always felt like it got stopped at the mayoral level. 

Especially in Chinatown, trying to pass the Two Bridges Community Plan [a 2016 proposal intended to stop the development of a series of luxury apartment towers in the neighborhood] under [former Mayor Eric] Adams became the chokepoint in realizing we actually didn’t have enough power to have a say. Our long-term strategy is about breaking the bonds between real estate and the state, and in this fight against these four luxury towers, we were correctly identifying that these were some of the worst speculative actors. But then in trying to pass the Community Plan, we were getting stopped at the Department of Buildings and getting stopped at the mayoral level. 

That was a big lesson for us. Additionally, there have been existing coalitions that show up to the Rent Guidelines Board every year, and under Adams it did feel like theater because it was very clear that the folks that were on the RGB were not really listening. They were looking at their phones. Everybody was very frustrated, and then the results would come out, and it was just not clear what type of power we had on this institution or in the process at all.

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I think so often organizations actually separate base building and electoral politics completely, right? Or run them on separate tracks. What we have been trying to experiment with [since forming CAAAV Voice], and have made some advancements towards, is how do we not separate those so much? 

This election was an amazing opportunity to talk to people about something with real stakes. We canvassed in new neighborhoods in Brooklyn, like Sunset Park, to reach our base. Now, after the election, we’re going back to those neighborhoods to do deep outreach and build off of the election conversations to do long-term, neighborhood-centered base building. 

CAAAV Voice was one of only a handful of groups to endorse Mamdani on the first day he announced his campaign. What were some of the discussions that went into that decision, and was there any precedent within the organization for such an early endorsement?

This is where having a base and developed leaders was really essential to making an assessment of the moment. Our elders were very clear that we needed to have some demand during this election, especially because the mayor [appoints] the RGB. It was our youth who were hesitant about electoral politics. They don’t see how the government works well. They have a lot of doubts about elected officials making a lot of promises that they don’t keep or they won’t keep. So there was push and pull. 

It was at our annual CAAAV leadership assembly in 2024 that we were hashing these struggles out and getting clear on our annual goals for the organization. There, we made the decision to make the four-year rent freeze demand [for mayoral candidates] and committed to grow our organization to be able to actually have the power to enact that demand. 

We had also worked with Zohran in the past. We had worked with him in our Innovation QNS campaign [a successful 2022 effort to push for significantly more affordable housing within a proposal to build over 3,000 units in Astoria]. We had a trusting working relationship with him from that. He had also come to RGB and in 2024, Zohran was actually arrested at our action. So leaders had that memory of seeing him show up and seeing him being willing to put his body on the line for tenants. And internally our members were saying, “This is a moment for us to act.” All of those pieces coming together made our endorsement process very clear.

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At that leadership assembly, did it feel like the demand had reached a fever pitch in the aftermath of winning a version of a rent freeze repeatedly under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, and then having the Eric Adams administration so aggressively strip that away? Did it feel like that was part of the higher intensity of this demand?

[The Adams administration’s] 12 percent raise over four years was callous. Our members talk all the time about how shocking an experience it was when we actually went to where Adams was supposedly living in Brooklyn and were met by 30 to 40 police officers. This is just normal coordinated tenant action, and the amount of police repression was I think very impactful on them and how they experienced the Adams administration.

New York City has had a democratic socialist mayor for the last seven months, and the mayor got elected thanks in part to this promise for a four-year rent freeze. But until June, he hadn’t actually delivered on it yet. After Mamdani’s inauguration, how did CAAAV orient as an organization around making sure that this was a promise that was actually carried out?

One of the clearest pieces we could see from our study of history is that there needed to be a strong community labor coalition to make sure that this project is successful. 

We were one of the founding members of People’s Majority Alliance [a coalition to get out the vote for Mamdani in the November 2025 election that included organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America and unions like United Auto Workers]. All the organizations in People’s Majority have membership bases and were willing to take the risk and organize and act.

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And so through building that coalition, and seeing that the rent freeze [vote] is coming up, we worked really hard to bring in labor siblings that weren’t always a part of the Rent Guidelines Board campaign. We chose to bring in two organizations where renters made up a majority of the membership — New York Taxi Workers Alliance, [or NYTWSA], and PSC-CUNY [or the Professional Staff Congress at City University of New York]. So much of organizing is siloed in different sectors. There’s immigration, there’s housing, there’s labor. But the reality is that our youth members are going to CUNY, whose professors are also union members. They are also paying high rent and are trying to fight for a contract that can give them more wages and benefits, so they can pay this rent. 

In practice, there’s so much more overlap, and so we were able to bring in labor siblings to this fight. Members from both NYTWA and PSC-CUNY spoke at the preliminary vote and publicly amplified our rent freeze demand in press interviews and on social media. Because the rent board’s hearings are held on CUNY campuses, PSC-CUNY also led a number of town halls and participated in testifying in borough-based hearings. These alliances carry forward and we want to keep figuring out how we organize together. 

Now that a rent freeze has been won again, including the first-ever two-year rent freeze, what are the conversations like among your members and within the organization as a whole? On the heels of such a massive victory, where does the focus turn now and what kind of work needs to happen in order to keep your members, especially those who have been showing up to the RGB for so many years, activated and engaged in the fights to come?

That’s the big one. We’re seeing this as a real opportunity, this moment, and we want the campaign that we eventually take on to be one that is structurally reforming the systems, so that whoever the next mayor is, tenants have more power. I think there’s a lot of ideas for what it could look like. 

But we’re really willing to revisit strategies of the past. Building organizing was [historically] really difficult and individualized, but how can that look different in this new period? What needs to happen for it to look different? How does government need to relate differently, or how does even the housing movement need to change our practices to be more effective? 

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We’re really wanting to assess where we’re strong and where we’re weak, and build closely with aligned working class organizations. It’s also not useful to divide, so how are we creating new systems so that the cogovernance project that we’re all undertaking — making working class people the leaders of the city — is more possible?

We see our role very clearly as trying to build a tenant movement ecosystem, but how do we actually define what tenant unionism is in the city? There are real, interesting questions of structure that are coming up. What does a democratic union in a tenant structure look like, and how do we have that citywide? It’s always been a little bit of a wilderness, where there has been really great organizing that’s happening in this wilderness, but so much of it has been pockets where there are good organizers and the right conditions for it. 

Now it feels like the moment for us to actually be talking to each other or struggling with each other way more closely, because it’s such a golden opportunity.

This article The inside-outside strategy behind New York’s rent freeze was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

With the inspector general’s independence compromised, Congress is the only oversight left. It should start issuing subpoenas

DENVER — Three Interior department staffers told POLITICO they watched officials routinely shred official documents and use disappearing Signal messages, even for routine scheduling, to keep communications from being preserved as the Federal Records Act requires. “They’re terrified of written records,” one former official said. Two other former officials said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum used a private email account for department business early in his tenure. Interior staff described a “culture of secrecy” under Burgum, who wanted to add a secure conference room, or SCIF, near his 6th floor office even though Interior already has a SCIF three floors below.

Today’s reporting comes one day after news broke that the Interior department’s Office of Inspector General acquired a new employee: Dennis Kirk, a co-author of the federal workforce chapter of Project 2025 and a former senior personnel official in Trump’s first term. The OIG declined to confirm the hire. Kirk arrives at an office that has had no Senate-confirmed inspector general since January 2025, when President Trump fired 17 inspectors general across the government without giving Congress the 30 days’ notice federal law requires.

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

“Interior’s watchdog was fired, left vacant for eighteen months, and is now hosting one of the architects of Project 2025. At least five investigation requests from members of Congress are sitting in that office right now, and its integrity has been compromised. Congress cannot outsource its constitutional oversight duty to an inspector general’s office taken over by the White House.

“The next step must be subpoenas, not letters. Chairman Westerman and Chairman Lee hold the gavels and the authority to compel documents and sworn testimony, and every week they decline to use it is another week the shredders can keep running. The House and Senate must fully investigate Interior’s Signal use and records-retention violations, Burgum’s personal email, and the ethics office file on his North Dakota meetings, then put the secretary under oath about all of it.

“Burgum’s reflecting pool debacle plays into all of this as well. A department caught withholding exculpatory evidence from federal prosecutors carries that credibility problem into every courtroom. Interior employs thousands of federal law enforcement officers whose testimony can send people to prison, and it defends itself against dozens of public lands lawsuits at any given moment. To address this credibility crisis, Congress needs to build a factual record now, under oath, because nobody else is positioned to do it.”

The referrals already sitting at the OIG

House Natural Resources Committee members have asked the acting inspector general to open investigations into three senior Interior officials:

• Karen Budd-Falen, associate deputy secretary, over the $3.5 million water rights deal her husband’s ranch secured with a lithium mining company that had approvals pending before Interior during her first Trump term tenure. She never disclosed the profit. Budd-Falen also worked on grazing and land management policy for more than a year before receiving a partial ethics waiver in March 2026 while still holding BLM permits for her ranching operations in Wyoming and Nevada.
• Jenifer Chatfield, deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks, for advancing permit matters benefiting her family’s captive wildlife business. The New York Times reported that Chatfield moved a permit application listing her as one of the applicant facility’s veterinarians through the agency’s permitting process within a day.
• Matthew Giacona, acting BOEM director, for working on the same issues he lobbied on for an oil and gas trade association.

House Natural Resources Committee members have separately asked the OIG to examine how Interior handled the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool vandalism allegations, and Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Martin Heinrich, the ranking members of the Environment and Public Works and Energy and Natural Resources committees, sent their own request on August 4.

A credibility problem beyond the Reflecting Pool

On July 31, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro moved to dismiss felony vandalism charges against former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, telling the court that Interior had provided less than fulsome information at the outset and that prosecutors would not have sought a grand jury indictment had the department turned over evidence already in its possession. The motion disclosed that a National Park Service employee had flagged the peeling liner on June 11, eight days before Hearn’s arrest. Interior’s eventual production indicated a rushed and botched installation by the contractor, working under no-bid contracts on a project whose costs grew from an initial estimate of $1.5 million to $2 million into more than $16 million. The day after the dismissal filing, Burgum claimed again that vandals had damaged the pool.

Whitehouse and Heinrich told the Inspector General that Interior’s withholding of exculpatory evidence walked Justice Department lawyers into a violation of their obligations under Brady v. Maryland and Giglio v. United States, the latter of which requires prosecutors to disclose information bearing on the credibility of a government witness.

Interior employs thousands of federal law enforcement officers across the National Park Service, U.S. Park Police, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Indian Affairs. A documented federal finding that Interior personnel withheld exculpatory material from prosecutors is potential impeachment evidence about those individuals in future criminal cases where they testify, which could put poaching prosecutions, Archaeological Resources Protection Act cases, and other public lands enforcement at risk.

The same finding brings risk on the civil side as well. Courts reviewing Interior’s decisions under the Administrative Procedure Act presume the agency acted in good faith and generally confine review to the administrative record the agency itself assembles. A federal prosecutor’s on-the-record conclusion that the department withheld material evidence could give litigants a basis to challenge that presumption and seek discovery beyond the record. Interior is a defendant in dozens of public lands cases, and Burgum is named in most of them.

Burgum’s ethics problems

Burgum’s January 2025 ethics agreement barred him for one year from participating in matters involving North Dakota without written authorization from agency ethics officials. Public Domain reported that his official calendars show two 2025 meetings in his Washington office with former North Dakota colleagues he had appointed or served alongside: Attorney General Drew Wrigley and Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring. The calendars contain no record of ethics officials weighing in beforehand, though they show he consulted ethics staff before dozens of other meetings. Interior called them “personal meetings” with “old friends.” During Burgum’s tenure as governor, North Dakota sued the Interior department at least five times, and Wrigley signed a brief supporting Utah’s attempt to seize more than 18 million acres of federal public land.

Interior briefly pulled the calendars off its records library, then reposted them after Public Domain asked about their disappearance.

Why the watchdog can no longer do this work

Mark Lee Greenblatt, the Interior inspector general Trump fired in January 2025, warned this week that installing a political operative inside an independent oversight office creates a conflict that erodes public confidence in the office’s independence. He noted that Dennis Kirk’s placement inside an IG’s office has drawn objections before, when he was assigned to the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General earlier this year.

Interior manages roughly 500 million acres of public land, the national park system, Tribal programs, and hundreds of billions of dollars in public assets. Its inspector general is the office responsible for reviewing senior-level misconduct, contracts, grants, ethics, and whistleblower retaliation inside that department.

What Congress should compel

The Center for Western Priorities is calling on the House Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to use their subpoena authority to obtain:

1. Interior’s records-retention policies and guidance covering Signal and other ephemeral messaging platforms, along with any communications directing or approving the destruction of records.
2. All Interior-related communications from Burgum’s personal email accounts, and any documentation of whether those messages were forwarded to official accounts within the 20 days the Federal Records Act allows.
3. The Departmental Ethics Office file on Burgum’s meetings with North Dakota officials, including any authorization sought or granted, and an explanation of why the secretarial calendars were temporarily removed from Interior’s website.
4. All documents concerning Dennis Kirk’s hiring, his job description, his reporting lines, and any communications between the OIG, the secretary’s office, and the White House regarding his placement.
5. The status of every pending OIG referral involving a senior Interior official, and a written commitment that Kirk is walled off from each.
6. The complete June 11 National Park Service email thread on the peeling liner, its full distribution list, and every Interior communication about what the department told and withheld from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
7. Sworn testimony from Burgum, Chief of Staff JoDee Hanson, Karen Budd-Falen, Jenifer Chatfield, Matt Giacona, and Acting Inspector General Caryl Brzymialkiewicz.

Congress should also refer the alleged records destruction to the National Archives and Records Administration, which is required to be notified of any unlawful removal or destruction of federal records.

LEARN MORE

• POLITICO: Inside Doug Burgum’s rocky tenure at Interior (Aug. 7, 2026)
• E&E News: Interior adds Project 2025 author to inspector general’s office (Aug. 6, 2026)
• Mark Lee Greenblatt: Statement on the Reported Placement of Political Operative Inside DOI OIG (Aug. 4, 2026)
• House Natural Resources Committee: Huffman Blasts Trump Scheme to Plant Project 2025 Architect Inside Interior’s Watchdog Office (Aug. 5, 2026)
• Public Domain: Records Show Trump Interior Secretary Met With Former North Dakota Colleagues (July 29, 2026)
• Senate Environment and Public Works Committee: Whitehouse, Heinrich Urge Inspector General to Probe Trump DOI Deception Amid Reflecting Pool Saga (Aug. 5, 2026)
• House Natural Resources Committee: Letter to Acting Inspector General Caryl Brzymialkiewicz on Jenifer Chatfield (April 10, 2026)
• Burgum ethics agreement (January 2025)

Featured image: Doug Burgum, Kathryn Burgum, and Donald Trump at the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, X.com

The post Interior allegedly shreds records while Trump installs a Project 2025 author inside its watchdog office appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Today, Senator Bill Cassidy, announced that he will vote to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General.

Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, issued the following statement in response:

“This is an appalling outcome for the rule of law. Todd Blanche is Donald Trump’s lawyer. He is committed to lawfare and Donald Trump’s political vendettas, not rule of law defense and the American people. He should not become our permanent attorney general. We are disgusted by those who are allowing his confirmation to continue.”

Protect the Southeast Lake Cahuilla Cultural District

blog by Maya Grace Hausman

“I know that the Earth is alive, and she should not continue to be abused … I am hopeful that this society is ready to wake up.” Carmen Lucas, Kwaaymii Elder 

What is the Southeast Lake Cahuilla Active Volcanic Cultural District?

The proposed Southeast Lake Cahuilla Active Volcanic Cultural District is a 11,162-acre landscape located along the southeastern shore of the Salton Sea in Southern California. It has religious and cultural significance to the Kwaaymii, Kamia, Kumeyaay, Cahuilla, and Quechan Peoples. 

The unique desert landscape there was formed by a group of active volcanoes. Boiling mud pots bubble, geothermal steam rises into the air, and the Salton Sea occupies part of what was once Lake Cahuilla, California’s largest lake that ebbed and flowed in the desert. The valley floor is below sea level, and the mountains rise more than 5,000 feet around it. Tribal elders describe the mudpots as the heartbeat of Mother Earth and the rising steam as her breath. 

This important landscape is tied to the Creation stories of a number of California Indian tribes, such as the legend of the Great Snake, and holds religious importance. The region’s resources were and still are used for obsidian tools, clay sources, medicinal plants, and mineral paints. The region also encompasses land that Tribes have used to teach and to pass down histories, identities, and traditional knowledge to their children since time immemorial. 

“You can see the heartbeats and the steam. That is her breath, Mother Earth.”  Carmen Lucas , Kwaaymii Elder

These lands are currently under threat from industrial development fast-tracked by the Lithium Valley Specific Plan. The plan would allow geothermal powerplants, lithium extraction, and data centers to be built next to these culturally important sites without environmental study. 

State experts have warned that these projects will cause “significant and unavoidable” harm to the tribes’ resources. Sacred views will be impacted. Huge industrial buildings and cooling towers may block views of the mountains and night sky, which are essential for tribal ceremonies. Furthermore, the “heartbeat” may stop beating, as heavy drilling could alter the underground pressure and potentially cease the bubbling of the mudpots.

A geothermal facility is visible from the sacred site at Obsidian Butte

On top of this, “Lithium Valley” may have severe environmental impacts that Imperial County fails to fully address in their Programmatic Environmental Impact Report, such as further impairment to air quality and overuse of limited water. 

Listing on the National Register would provide some protection for these sacred sites. Every future project in the district would have to confront its impacts on the landscape honestly, in public, under the law. 

Why the National Register of Historic Places?

The National Register of Historic Places was established in 1966 under the National Historic Preservation Act and is administered by the National Park Service. It is the official registry of historic places considered worthy of preservation by the United States government. Listing carries legal weight. Any project that needs federal permits or funding must go through a formal review of its impacts on a listed site. 

In California, a place listed on the National Register is automatically added to the California Register of Historical Resources. Under state environmental law, that means agencies must treat harm to the district as significant and take real steps to avoid or reduce it. 

Often, tribal historic sites emphasize natural features with sacred and cultural connections, such as archaeological sites or natural landscapes. Elements of these landscapes are “Tribal Cultural Resources.” California protects these under the California Environmental Quality Act (or CEQA). California law requires agencies to consult with local tribes early in any land development process. The aim is to avoid or lessen any impacts to tribal heritage resources.

The ultimate goal of any site on the National Register is “stewardship of place,” or preserving and respecting these special environments for both current and future generations. 

What comes next

Gaining state and federal protection for these irreplaceable sites is urgent. Here are the next steps:

1. Put the district on the agenda: we are calling on State Historic Preservation Officer Julianne Polanco to add the  Southeast Lake Cahuilla Active Volcanic Cultural District nomination to the November meeting of the State Historical Resources Commission, along with positive staff recommendation. 
2. Vote for eligibility: When the Commission meets, they must vote to recommend this place as eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. This vote conveys that the landscape is a vital part of American and tribal history. 
3. Move the nomination to the national level without delay: Once the state board approves the nomination, it should be sent to the National Park Service. 
4. The National Park Service will conduct a federal review of the nomination, coming out with a final decision on the listing within 45 days. 

Take Action: Defend the Heartbeat of Mother Earth 

This land does not exist simply as a means of extracting resources – nor does any land, for that matter. Instead, it contains an important, living history for the Kumeyaay, Kwaaymii, Kamia, Cahuilla, and Quechan people. Right now, this landscape is under threat from industrial development that could silence its “heartbeat” and block sacred views. While renewable energy is something to strive for, it cannot come at the expense of sacred land, and of the people who care for it. 

You can help ensure these lands are protected. Sign your name today to tell state and federal decision-makers that you support the Southeast Lake Cahuilla Active Volcanic Cultural District. 

Take action now to protect this district, the natural landscape, and its people. 

The post Defend the Heartbeat of Mother Earth  appeared first on Earthworks.

Max Wilbert and Will Falk were recently interviewed on LEE CAMP's show, Unredacted Tonight. They joined to talk about the absurd, nearly $50,000 fine that the Bureau of Land Management has levied against them for building composting toilets on land that is currently being destroyed for the 1,100 acre, 400-feet deep open pit part of Lithium Nevada's "Thacker Pass" mine.

The post CELDF on the Lee Camp show, Unredacted Tonight: Thacker Pass Lithium Mine Should be Flushed appeared first on CELDF - Community Rights Pioneers - Protecting Nature and Communities.

On a hot late July evening at Nuckolls Brewing in Santa Fe, a train rumbled past the outdoor event not once, but twice—a fitting soundtrack for a conversation about the forces barreling through New Mexico’s public lands. The Center for Western Priorities brought a live taping of The Landscape podcast to town as part of the Keep Parks Public campaign. CWP launched the campaign and road tour last summer to highlight attacks on America’s public lands by Congress and the Trump administration, and to encourage folks to fight back by connecting to local advocacy groups making a difference on the ground.

The panelists represented four different corners of the conservation world: Charlotte Overby, vice president of conservation field programs at the Conservation Lands Foundation; Keegan King, founder and executive director of the Native Land Institute and a Pueblo of Acoma tribal member; Andrew Black, director of Tribal Lands and Waters at the National Wildlife Federation and founder of the interfaith Earthkeepers 360; and Elaine Leslie, who spent more than 25 years with the National Park Service, including as Chief of Biological Resource Management, and now sits on the executive council of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks. Elizabeth Hightower Allen provided welcome remarks on behalf of RE:PUBLIC, an independent journalism outlet covering public lands that is headquartered in Santa Fe. RE:PUBLIC and the Conservation Lands Foundation co-hosted the event.

Asked to name the single biggest threat facing New Mexico’s public lands, King didn’t hesitate: “Right now, I think we’re all pretty alarmed by this administration’s attempts to sell off public lands,” he said, adding that holding the line for the next two years has become his organization’s top priority. Overby agreed, and flagged a quieter danger: advocate burnout. “We’re sort of one attack after another,” she said, urging fellow advocates to pace themselves and still “get out and see these places.”

The conversation kept circling back to two flashpoints close to home for the Santa Fe audience. The first was the Caja del Rio, a 106,000 acre landscape located on federally managed U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land just outside Santa Fe. Black described the area as home to one of the most dense concentrations of petroglyphs in the country, and a critical wildlife corridor between four mountain ranges. “It’s desert spirituality at its finest,” he said. “It’s subtle and it’s hidden and it’s complex.” King added that Tribal nations have pushed hard for legislation, introduced by New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich, that would permanently protect the area. The bill recently cleared its first committee hearing in Washington, D.C.

The second was oil and gas drilling near Chaco Culture National Historical Park, where an expedited public comment period on BLM’s proposal to shrink or eliminate the 10-mile protective buffer around the UNESCO World Heritage site had closed the day before the taping. King, fresh off a trip to Washington, D.C. with roughly 50 Pueblo leaders, reported that more than 250,000 comments poured in during the rushed comment period, the vast majority in favor of keeping the buffer intact. He described BLM Director Steve Pearce, a former New Mexico congressman, as respectful in meetings but noncommittal on what comes next. Black was less charitable about the process itself, noting the scoping period landed during Holy Week and Passover with almost no notice: “It’s a huge slap in the face,” he said, calling it part of a broader pattern of squeezing out public input and disregarding Tribal sovereignty and protection for cultural sites nationwide.

Leslie, drawing on her decades inside the National Park Service, connected the dots between drilling proposals, mining interests, and the administration’s push to shrink monuments and defund agency science. Asked why the public keeps getting cut out of these decisions, she didn’t mince words: “I think it’s greed—Follow the money.”

Still, the panel closed on a hopeful note. King pointed to a conservation movement increasingly centered on Land Back and Tribal co-stewardship agreements as “a real end goal,” not just new national monument designations. Overby described a rally of young Pueblo advocates she’d witnessed the day before, timed to the close of the Chaco comment period as an encouraging sign of how much the public cares about their public lands. Black framed the moment as a choice: “Where will you stand?” he asked, on whether the land is a community to belong to or a commodity to extract from. Leslie shared her concern for the future of the National Park Service and America’s public lands, while expressing her hope for seeing more young people at the table going forward.

The Santa Fe stop is one of many along the Keep Parks Public tour, which kicked off in July 2025 in Denver. The advocacy campaign and road tour has already visited Las Cruces, Tucson, Flagstaff, Moab, Salt Lake City, Grand Junction, and Jackson. The tour heads back to Tucson on August 28, with potentially more stops to be announced soon. You can share your own story and join the campaign at keepparkspublic.org.

The post New Mexico leaders condemn Trump administration’s attacks on public lands appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Russia’s war against Ukraine continues to reshape the global nuclear industry in ways that extend beyond the battlefield. Western governments are investing in uranium enrichment capacity to reduce dependence on Russian nuclear fuel, operators of Soviet-designed reactors are discovering that decades of technological ties to Rosatom cannot be severed overnight, and Ukraine’s occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) remains caught in a conflict that increasingly threatens not only its present safety, but its long-term future.

These three developments dominate Bellona’s June Nuclear Digest, underscoring how nuclear security, energy policy and geopolitics have become increasingly entangled.

Urenco takes center stage in the West’s fuel strategy

Urenco announced in June that it will launch a second major expansion of its uranium enrichment facility in Eunice, New Mexico, adding another 2.1 million separative work units (SWU) of annual capacity by 2036. The project is part of a broader effort to expand enrichment capacity across the United States and Europe as Western governments work to reduce their dependence on Russian fuel services.

Today, the Eunice facility remains the only commercial producer of low-enriched uranium in the United States. Washington is simultaneously investing in several domestic enrichment projects, but Bellona argues that rebuilding the country’s nuclear fuel supply chain will remain a lengthy process.

According to Bellona nuclear expert Dmitry Gorchakov, Urenco has quietly become indispensable to the American market. The company now supplies about 70 percent of U.S. demand for enriched uranium, with roughly 30 percent coming from its U.S. facility and up to 40 percent from its European plants. Imports from Urenco’s facilities in the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands accounted for 57 percent of U.S. enriched uranium imports in 2025—more than twice Russia’s 24 percent share. Even if Washington succeeds in building significant domestic enrichment capacity, Gorchakov concludes, the United States is likely to eliminate Russian supplies “primarily thanks to Urenco.”

The announcement illustrates that reducing reliance on Rosatom is no longer simply a question of finding alternative suppliers. It requires rebuilding industrial capabilities that much of the West allowed to atrophy over several decades.

Breaking away from Rosatom remains a slow process

Developments in Bulgaria, Slovakia and Armenia demonstrate that moving away from Russian nuclear technology is proving far more complicated than replacing fuel contracts.

In Bulgaria, the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant once again received exemptions from European sanctions allowing continued imports of certain Russian equipment because key components of its Soviet-designed systems still lack suitable alternatives. At the same time, Czech and Ukrainian firms continue modernizing reactor control systems that should eventually enable further diversification.

Slovakia’s fourth Mochovce reactor has now been loaded with fuel, but despite extensive Western participation in completing the project, the unit will initially continue operating on Russian fuel while Westinghouse and Framatome complete licensing of replacement fuel.

Armenia presents an even more politically sensitive case. While the European Union continues financing safety upgrades and alternative emergency systems at the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant, Moscow has openly criticized Yerevan for employing Western contractors without Russian coordination and has warned that doing so could jeopardize Rosatom’s safety guarantees. Taken together, Bellona’s Dmitry Gorchakov says, these cases demonstrate that dismantling decades of cooperation in the VVER reactor sector is proceeding “very unevenly and not without difficulties.” Bulgaria still requires repeated sanctions exemptions because some equipment “cannot be qualitatively produced by alternative suppliers,” while Slovakia’s transition to Western fuel is progressing “not as actively” as in countries such as Finland or the Czech Republic. Armenia, meanwhile, reveals that diversification has become more than a technical issue. Russia’s sharp reaction to Western involvement shows that, for Moscow, the issue is “not simply a technical or economic question, but a question of losing political influence in an important region.”

Zaporizhzhia’s future is becoming the greatest concern

Military threats around the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant continued throughout June. The station remained dependent on a single backup transmission line after its main external power connection stayed out of service, forcing four separate switches to emergency diesel generators during the month. Drone activity repeatedly disrupted repair work, while IAEA inspectors continued to face restrictions on access to important areas of the site.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, a drone strike damaged a building at the Central Spent Fuel Storage Facility in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, only a short distance from stored spent nuclear fuel. Although no radioactive materials were released, the incident underscored the vulnerability of civilian nuclear infrastructure far beyond Zaporizhzhia itself.

For Bellona’s Alexander Nikitin, however, the central question is no longer simply whether Zaporizhzhia can avoid a nuclear accident while the war continues. Rather, he argues that the station is likely to be “destroyed to such an extent” that, regardless of who ultimately controls it, operating Europe’s largest nuclear power plant will become “impossible without extensive reconstruction.” The greatest danger, he warns, remains the possibility that damage to nuclear facilities or radioactive materials could result in radioactive releases beyond their protective barriers.

The attack near the spent fuel storage facility also illustrates a broader lesson. As Nikitin observes, if “tomorrow a stray shot or strike” were to hit an inadequately protected spent fuel storage installation, the consequences “could be very real and extremely severe” for both people and the environment. The war has demonstrated that even nuclear facilities far from the front cannot be assumed to be immune from attack.

More than four years after Russia seized Zaporizhzhia, Bellona argues that the challenge is no longer limited to preventing a nuclear disaster in the present. Increasingly, it is about whether Europe’s largest nuclear power station—and Ukraine’s broader civilian nuclear infrastructure—will emerge from the war in a condition that allows them to operate safely again.

The post Urenco expands, Europe moves unevenly away from Rosatom, and the future of Zaporizhzhia grows increasingly uncertain appeared first on Bellona.org.

The intriguing subtitle of Clara E. Mattei’s Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention suggests that the author has some fresh observation or insight to add to existing analyses of movements that have threatened capitalism’s existence. A Marxist reader of the book might expect, perhaps, that Mattei intends to complement (or correct?) the summary and analysis offered by Colin Barker in the last chapter of Revolutionary Rehearsals, in which he discusses the conditions, commonalities, and potential of the five monumental workers’ struggles covered in that volume.

Mattei, an economist currently working at the University of Tulsa, does, in fact, describe what she sees as the path towards ending capitalism, although it comes in the last ten pages of the book (more on this below). The rest of the book consists primarily of a critique of capitalism, along with a particular thesis about the role of economists and economic theory in maintaining what she calls the “capital order.” That thesis, in turn, motivates the prescription she eventually offers.

Most of the critique of capitalism Mattei presents – and even much of her discussion of mainstream economic theory – is basic to Marxism. One is tempted, therefore, to view it as a sort of primer, written for those just beginning to consider that a different economic order is necessary and possible. Here is how she herself describes her audience (p. 14):

This book is for all those who wake up in the morning with a sense of profound dissatisfaction. I intend to challenge the fatalist notion that nothing can change and the individualist notion that it is all our fault, or the fault of those weaker than us. Instead, I want to clarify that classist economic decisions are the basis of the major problems afflicting our time. I want to clarify the mechanisms that oppress us and identify the freedoms for which we must fight.

Portions of this book might work well as an introduction to anti-capitalist discourse. But her ideas (non-Marxist, as I read them) regarding economics and the primacy of economic ideas in maintaining capitalism—and certainly her concluding prescription—require separate analysis.

Mattei walks us through several basic tenets of socialist thinking: Capitalism is a historically specific system, quite new in human history; it came into being via violent processes, often supported by states, that led to complete dependency on market exchange for human survival; it is a class-based system in which political power is relatively autonomous from economic power; its “freedom”—the freedom of the marketplace—contrasts with the unfreedom of the workplace; its dynamics lead to outrageous, continually reproduced inequalities (both within nations and between “developed” and “underdeveloped” ones); and its tendency to increase productivity comes at the cost of bouts of unemployment for workers.

Her characterization of neoclassical economic theory is also quite standard: Beginning in the late nineteenth century, economists presented their science as a “natural” one based on allegedly eternal characteristics of human behavior and capable of being applied with the mathematical precision of the physical sciences. Those economists quite consciously saw their project as countering Marxist and other class-based theories of the capitalist economy, as well as providing a basis for what eventually became macroeconomic management of it. What is non-standard in Mattei’s discussion, though, is how she uses the term “political”: She applies it to the power that capitalists have to make economic decisions regarding investment and production, as well as to the more formal political power that governments and central banks have to influence the economy. It is in this sense that she presents mainstream economic theory as “depoliticized”: The theory ignores the power of capitalists to manage production and influence market prices.

Economics itself, on the other hand, is (as Mattei announces in the title of her introduction) “a political act.” She begins by discussing the world’s first international economic conference, organized by the League of Nations in the aftermath of World War I. Concerned about the militant and often revolutionary workers’ movements of that period and fearing the destabilizing consequences of mounting worldwide inflation, the assembled industrialists, financiers, politicians, and economists resolved to implement austerity measures. In order to force the entitled and morally deficient workers to “work hard, live hard, save hard” (in the words of one of the English delegates), they argued, social welfare spending should be slashed.

Mattei traces the origins of the use of economic theory to support austerity policies to this historical episode. The starkest applications of these policies are in cases where authoritarian governments assumed power in the wake of militant workers’ movements or other systemic threats to capitalism.

Benito Mussolini’s fascism is the classic—and primordial—case. Italy’s postwar “Red Biennium,” characterized by factory occupations and increasingly political workers’ councils, had to be ended. Weakening the workers’ movement by both physical violence and austerity measures—cutting social welfare spending, raising interest rates, and shifting tax burdens from capitalists to workers—was exactly what the fascist regime implemented. In Mattei’s telling, economists played a central role. Maffeo Pantaleoni, a founder of neoclassical economic theory, had become a fascist, as had his protege Alberto De Stefani, and they along with two liberal economists became a sort of brain trust to Mussolini.

The case Mattei makes linking the new “pure economics” of mathematical equations to austerity and even violently authoritarian policies is a strong one. Her first book, The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way for Fascism is primarily an exploration of this point. (See David McNally’s interview with Mattei in Spectre). In Escape from Capitalism, she quotes Luigi Einaudi, one of the liberal economists who eventually advised Mussolini and who later became the first president of the post-Mussolini republic (p. 58):

When the worst happened … and the occupation of factories by armed workers and the institution of Soviets in factories seemed to point to an imminent communist revolution in Italy … [y]ouths of the middle class indignantly grouped themselves into “fasci”. … The communists are everywhere defeated … This renewed feeling of hope in the future of our country is not the least important cause of the better tone in foreign exchanges.

The glowing praise these economists afford to the National Fascist Party is matched by their reverence for the new, “objective” economic theory: “a nucleus of doctrines that are independent of opinions, as well as of ethical, political and religious predilections. Something akin to physics and mathematics.” And Mattei herself, referring to the austerity prescribed by the international conferences shortly preceding the advent of fascism, characterizes what she considers a pivotal moment in the relation between this young theory and state policy:

The experts … knew for sure … that the logic of capitalism would not recover without forceful intervention by the state, which would weaken the workers by transferring resources from the many to the few. Here lies the quintessential achievement of macroeconomics as it has long been practiced, modifying and disciplining citizens’ behavior by fiscal and monetary policy. (p. 56)

Elsewhere Mattei discusses other instances when economists have advised authoritarian regimes, for example,the “Chicago boys” sent by the U.S. State Department to work with Augusto Pinochet in Chile and the international economists who prescribed “shock therapy” for Boris Yeltsin’s post-Soviet Russian government. She also reminds us that economically prescribed austerity is not limited to such regimes. The U.S. Federal Reserve uses interest rates—sometimes in an extreme way as in the “Volcker Shock” of 1979—to tame inflation by causing unemployment and reducing workers’ purchasing power. Fed and Treasury officials (she mentions Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell) sometimes say the “quiet part” out loud by announcing that “pain” is necessary to reduce inflation.

A case can be made that austerity in some form is an essential and permanent feature of capitalism, depending on one’s definition of austerity. But I think Mattei overstates her contention that capitalism’s need for austerity is the primary driver of mainstream economic thinking. Is it right to view “transferring resources from the many to the few” as the “quintessential achievement of macroeconomics” that enables the “logic of capitalism” to recover? Redistributive policies in particular – transfers from rich to poor – (always limited in scope and time, as Mattei correctly argues) are sometimes prescribed (in order to increase demand) by the same macroeconomics profession that in other circumstances recommends austerity. And certainly the vast infusions of capital by the state that we witnessed after the 2008 crash (in this case “bailing out” financial institutions to avert catastrophic collapse) must be considered as a significant macroeconomic achievement.

Part of Mattei’s central thesis seems to be that mainstream economic theory was developed for the purpose of weakening the working class, and that economists have played a leading role in attacks by the state on labor. I think this both overstates the role of theory and presents its application in too crude a form. But she even goes further, and attributes to economists the creation of an ideological misapprehension of the world that grips everyone living under capitalism.

She is surely correct in saying that mainstream theory obscures class distinctions and mystifies the functioning of a capitalist economy. It also, as she argues, puts a veneer of objectivity and inevitability behind policy prescriptions. But her “intervention” regarding the elimination of capitalism appears to consist of the claim that academic economic theory creates an ideological barrier that impedes anticapitalist initiatives, along with suggestions for how to breach that barrier.

As with other aspects of her argument, she indicates right away in the introduction where she will be going:

I wrote this book to expose how that dominant message [of academic economics] blinds us to alternative economies. … By hiding the true nature of the economic system, they atrophy our minds, blocking any possibility of transformative action. But it is possible to escape from capitalism. (p. 11)

And a bit further on:

We must re-democratize the economy… That is a better way forward than anything capitalism has or can offer. What is the first step in this direction? It is a radical change of perspective. Only if we learn to look at the world differently can we act differently… The time is ripe to turn towards a truly modern study of economics built from the works of classical political economy. (p. 13)

In these passages Mattei appears to suggest that those looking for alternatives to capitalism need first to go through a process of rejecting mainstream economic theory. For the moment, we can put aside the question of whom she considers to be the subject, or agent, of economic change. (Who are the “we” who need to think differently: intellectuals? workers? everybody?) We can also ignore the fact that socialists have studied “the works of classical political economy” and attempted to apply them in new conditions for over 150 years, and overlook what it means to “re-democratize” an economy which has at no time since hunter-gather societies been democratic. Let us simply examine Mattei’s prescription for “escaping” capitalism in its own terms.

The route by which we can end capitalism, according to Mattei, becomes fully clear in the book’s last chapter, entitled “Democracy is Anti-Capitalism.” Most of what she has to say in that chapter regarding the limits of democracy under capitalism is, again, quite standard. One could quibble with the fact that she claims capitalism limits democracy to electoralism: She ignores liberal (or “bourgeois”) democratic rights (like freedom of speech) and legally granted rights like the right to form unions, etc., though of course those rights have definite limits.

Perhaps the last ten pages of the book, though, which contain her prescription for the escape route, should have been put into a separate chapter. Here she first reprises what she has said in the introduction:

The first step toward change is to lay bare that what counts as a social failure is not at all a failure for the logic of capital. To fight this inhumane logic that organizes our society, we must abandon the mystifying language of neoclassical economics in favor of a simple but profound explanation of our economic system, which can shake our beliefs and spur us into action…. What would happen if the majority of the people realized that in the last three years, about two-thirds of the wealth created has gone into the hands of 1 percent of the global population? (p. 107)

Is she really arguing here that it is primarily “the mystifying language of neoclassical economics” that holds back workers and others in struggling to meet their needs? Do “the majority of the people” view the world as presented in an Econ 101 textbook? The majority already believe that wealth increases most among the already wealthy! If realizing the errors of capitalist macroeconomics could itself “spur us into action,” revolutionary movements would long since have become common.

Let her continue:

I am often pressed with the question “So what do you suggest? Revolution?”. In our imagination, the term “revolution” is associated with something bloody, barbaric, and wrong. But it shouldn’t have to be…Each of us can take steps to politicize our lives. And by “politicize” I mean participate in the transformation of the material and social reality around us. The steps can be as small as connecting with your neighbors to build community. (pp. 108-109)

The Marxist notion of revolution and its centering of working-class agency don’t seem to play a role here. But Mattei does offer examples of what she means by the transformation of reality: Students can organize against their institution’s investment in corporations that profit from human rights violations; citizens can vote against and protest cuts to public welfare spending; they can also pressure politicians to raise taxes on the rich. None of these, though, create a society “that is based on different principles.” For that, people have to begin to organize production collectively.

Mattei tells us that the world is “brimming” with such organizations, and proceeds to discuss some of them. She mentions an agroecological commune outside of Sao Paolo, Brazil and its connection to Brazil’s landless workers movement (MST), whose democratic structure she emphasizes. This collective management of rural production by the direct producers is complemented by urban factory production; she cites fifty self-managed factories in Brazil and another four hundred in Argentina. “The idea that private capital is essential for production and investment is a myth. …Alternatives to private investment are real, from collective ownership by workers to public investment.”

It appears, then, that the society Mattei hopes we can escape to is one consisting of worker co-ops and state-funded infrastructure. This of course is no new model; various versions of “market socialism” have advanced similar prescriptions. All of these, though, and particularly ones that envision the achievement of full social change by means of incremental steps, fail to consider that market dependence makes the same demands (to increase productivity, undercut the competition, and attract new financial resources) that capitalism does. If it were possible to put such models into practice, they would, in short order, reproduce capitalism.

A real assault on capitalist power requires certain conditions that cannot simply be brought about by growing numbers of individuals freeing their minds from the straitjacket of neoclassical economics and taking steps towards collective action. Among the indicators that such conditions exist, to be sure, is the organization of production and distribution by workers themselves. But the existence of worker co-ops in the context of a capitalist economy is not itself an indicator of potentially revolutionary conditions.

Such conditions have in fact existed in the last century, sometimes in individual countries (France 1968, Portugal 1974, etc.) and once in an entire continent: Europe after the first world war. Earlier in the book, Mattei discusses this period, mentioning events in Germany, Hungary and Britain before going into more detail regarding Italy’s “Red Biennium.” While she points out the massive extent of the movement for “popular self-government,” and does mention Turin’s workers’ councils and their democratic structure, she spends more time on the role of politicians and socialist intellectuals. Here she highlights the role of Antonio Gramsci and his comrades writing in L’Ordine Nuovo. That publication chronicled, and reflected on, the factory councils that had begun to control and organize production democratically.

Mattei comments on the interplay between workers’ self-activity and the intellectual reflections which led to new theoretical conclusions and suggestions about what would be necessary to reconstitute society: “L’Ordine Nuovo contributed to the deep conviction that no true social revolution is possible without a revolution in the way we understand society. Gramsci named this mutually reinforcing connection between theory and collective action ‘praxis’” (p. 54).

This formulation implies, as Mattei does elsewhere, that liberatory ideas have to precede liberatory activity. But further down the same page she writes:

Gramsci and his comrades now understood that emancipatory knowledge had to emerge from collective organizing in the workplace and could thus support action from the bottom up. As “absolutely original institutions” of the proletariat, the councils functioned as nuclei of a new state.

The first sentence of this passage can be read as generally consistent with her discussion at the end of the book, apparently identifying the transition away from capitalism with the proliferation of worker cooperatives and increased state participation in the economy.

But the second sentence provides a stark contrast, especially in its reference to a new state form. In her closing discussion, Mattei refers to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s public housing initiatives and Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada’s construction of community centers as examples proving that private capital is dispensible. Clearly, she is referring here to the existing state apparatus, and indicates no need for that capitalist state to be replaced by something else.

This seems in contradiction with a discussion earlier in this final chapter, quoting Ralph Miliband’s The State in Capitalist Society, and pointing out that political parties participating in government act to uphold capitalism, even when they oppose the interests of particular capitalists. She does not seem to recognize, let alone attempt to resolve, this contradiction. One wonders whether she has considered the difference between the European workers’ councils of 1917-1922 and the contemporary South American cooperatives she has mentioned.

In the end we are left wondering whether Mattei believes that the kind of movement exemplified by the early 20th century workers’ councils is necessary to bring capitalism to an end, or whether, perhaps, they only represented the requirements of an earlier era. Indeed, from what she says in this volume, it would appear that we do not now need much investigation or analysis of social movements and their history in order to develop the ideas we need.

I do think, though, that a book covering some of the same material, perhaps equally as short and written for a newly radicalizing audience, would be useful. I’m not sure if a book of this nature about the Europe-wide workers’ movement after World War I exists – something along the lines of China Mieville’s October (about the Russian Revolution) and much shorter than Pierre Broue’s brilliant, 900-page The German Revolution, 1917-1923. Given Mattei’s argument about the usefulness of unemployment for capitalism in weakening labor, perhaps a historical survey and statistical analysis – again, for a popular audience – correlating high unemployment with a weak labor movement and low unemployment with a strong one would be another useful contribution.

Mattei’s own earlier work The Capital Order, linking economic theory with fascism, is itself such a book. Perhaps we can expect another from her.

The author would like to thank Charles Post and Sam Salour for very helpful conversations and comments on a draft of this review.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”

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