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Seattle just passed a pair of bills aimed at giving the city’s theoretical commitment to Vision Zero real teeth— and the pressure is on to pass the third part of the package, which proponents say could really take the Emerald City’s street safety aspirations to the next level.

On Monday, the Seattle City Council unanimously approved two out of three of the policies collectively known as the SAFER Streets package — short for “Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Equitable and Responsive” — which sponsor and transportation committee Chair Rob Saka said could help “move Vision Zero from an aspirational policy into durable law.”

Those approved policies include a push to get city contractors to install “side guards” that prevent pedestrians and bicyclists from being swept under the wheels of trucks, as well as granting the city’s Traffic Engineer the dual title of “Chief Safety Officer” and new powers to install quick-build safety improvements after a crash.

The third policy — whose vote Seattle Bike Blog’s Tom Fucoloro says was punted until “at least November 10” due to concerns about historic districts — would make even more ambitious changes.

Those include requiring “daylighting” treatments every time certain roads are repaved to make it easier for drivers to see oncoming cyclists and walkers; upping the frequency at which the city updates its Vision Zero action plan from every five years to every three; and enhancing data collection and reporting requirements for traffic safety concerns across the board, among other measures.

Taken together, Chair Saka said those initiatives would represent a leap forward in the city’s fight to end traffic deaths and serious injuries, which critics warn may be stalling out. Pedestrian deaths nearly doubled in Seattle between 2024 and 2025, despite a groundswell of demand for more action to stop the bloodshed.

“At least in Seattle, we know the tools that can save lives,” Saka added. “This is about putting those tools into municipal law, empowering people to act faster, and just making safety a part of how Seattle operates every single day.”

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Saka said the SAFER Streets package was directly inspired by Seattle advocates, who demanded policy change following a rash of recent road deaths in the cycling and pedestrian communities.

In particular, he cited the killing of Christian Sayler, 30, who died on June 1 at the hands of a turning garbage truck driver, as well as the death of 76-year-old Maridee Bonadea, who a different truck driver killed in Saka’s district just two weeks later. Some advocates say both riders could have been saved if the vehicles had been equipped with side guards.

“We’re reminded all the time that there’s more work to do,” Saka said. “I’ve personally been to a fair amount of tribute rides and ghost bike memorials, and spoken extensively with impacted families and victims of car violence … Local advocates are demanding immediate changes.”

Seattle may be uniquely primed for those sorts of changes since the election of Mayor Katie Wilson, whose background as a transit organizer helped propel her into office last year. Wilson signed a Vision Zero executive order in August, many measures of which heavily overlap with the SAFER Streets package; it’s also bolstered by an eight-year, $1.55 billion transportation levy enacted in 2024, hundreds of millions of which are specifically earmarked to save lives.

Much of the money could sit on the shelf, however, if the council doesn’t take action to spend it, Saka said. And Wilson’s orders could easily be rolled back if they’re not codified into law before she leaves office.

“The truth of the matter is that personnel change … and elected officials change [too],” he added. “Just because the mayor acts or does not act, that doesn’t absolve me as a lawmaker of my responsibility to keep people safe on our roads and our streets.”

Recommended Truck Deaths Are Up 71% — Will NHTSA Require New Tech? Kea Wilson May 15, 2023

In addition to truck side guards — which have been a goal for safety advocates across the country for years, and which Boston has required on city-owned at city-contracted vehicles since 2014 — Saka said his package would pave the way for broader change, especially if its stalled elements can find passage. He’s particularly passionate about the bill’s potential to speed the city’s response to installing infrastructure after fatal crashes, which he says often takes far too long.

As the self-proclaimed “unapologetic King of Potholes” — a moniker he even lists on his LinkedIn bio — Saka says he’s proud that his district addresses 80 percent of the reported road defects within 72 hours, and doesn’t accept that the city can’t act with similar urgency when someone dies.

“It could be six-plus months between the time of a fatality and when any actual remediation or safety upgrade is made to address the root causes of that fatality,” he added. “This [bill] puts us on a path to a faster response time.”

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Even if every component of the SAFER Streets package passes, Saka said there will still be more work to do to ensure Seattle becomes the first large US city to actually achieve Vision Zero. Considering how local historic boards have opposed the kind of daylighting measures the bill proposes in the past, that’s a big “if.”

“There’s no legislation there’s no piece of single piece of legislation — or legislative package, or executive order — that can guarantee no more traffic deaths or serious injuries,” he said. “But I do know that without [this package], we’re going to continue floundering.”

Still, he said that the time is ripe to pick this low-hanging fruit — and hopefully, inspire other US cities to get more aggressive about saving lives, too.

“At least in Seattle, I think Vision Zero is moving beyond an ideological constituency and becoming basic municipal public safety governance,” he added. “That’s a good thing. People win; taxpayers win; the residents and visitors of the city of Seattle win.”

Cutting ultra-processed foods may ease depression, new study finds Anthony Lacey October 28, 2026

• Diets with less ultra-processed food may help to relieve depression symptoms.
• A small new pilot study adds to a growing body of evidence linking UPF to mental health.
• EWG’s Food Scores flags ultra-processed foods to help you make simple, healthy swaps.

Cutting back on ultra-processed food, or UPF, may help improve symptoms of depression, according to a new study. 

UPF such as sugary drinks, salty snacks and frozen meals have already been shown to be strongly tied to chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

These findings add to the growing evidence that what we eat may also play a role in our mental health.

Get your free guide: EWG's Guide to Food Additives Study links eating less UPF to fewer depression symptoms

The study, published in JAMA Psychiatry in September, is among the first to examine whether cutting back on UPF can improve symptoms of depression and ease some symptoms of anxiety. 

It involved 20 participants with depression who regularly consumed large amounts of UPF. They were told to follow either their usual diet or a low-UPF diet for four weeks, then switched to the other diet for another four weeks. 

Researchers then measured changes in their self-reported depression and anxiety symptoms.

Study participants who cut their UPF intake by about 85% percent experienced moderate to large improvements on three measures of depression. Anxiety symptoms also improved modestly.

The findings may reveal some new insights about the way food affects our mood and mental health.

But this was a small pilot study, and improvements in depression and anxiety symptoms were self-reported. More research is needed to determine whether reducing UPF can directly improve depression symptoms. 

Why might ultra-processed foods affect mental health?

Researchers are still trying to understand why a diet high in UPF may be linked to depression. One possibility is that some UPF contain additives that may affect the gut microbiome. Because the gut and brain communicate with one another, researchers are investigating whether changes in the gut microbiome could influence mood. 

Another possibility is that diets high in UPF may displace minimally processed foods that provide fiber, vitamins and minerals important for overall health. 

States are taking action on ultra-processed foods

Scientific evidence has done little to persuade the federal government to protect us from harmful chemicals in our food. But action at the state level is forcing the issue and driving meaningful change. 

California’s Real Food, Healthy Kids Act last year created the nation’s first legal definition of UPF. The law also requires schools to phase the worst UPF out of meals. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom also recently signed AB 2244, an EWG co-sponsored law that creates the first state-backed “non-ultraprocessed certified” label. This voluntary seal is designed to help shoppers in California more easily identify foods that aren’t ultra-processed – a big step toward making healthier choices more accessible.

How to cut back on UPF

About 70% of packaged food in the U.S. is ultra-processed, which makes it difficult to avoid. It’s also designed to be craveable and hard to resist.

Cooking from scratch takes time and energy, which can be tough for those trying to balance nutrition, convenience and cost. And experts say that can be especially challenging for people with depression.

You don’t have to aim for perfection. Cutting back on ultra-processed foods in any amount is a good place to start. Begin by swapping some packaged snacks for fruit, nuts or other minimally processed options. And at the grocery store, make a point to check ingredient lists to find products with fewer additives.

EWG’s Food Scores can help take some of the guesswork out of grocery shopping. The database rates foods based on nutrition, ingredient concerns and degree of processing, making it easier to compare products and find healthier options. 

You can also use EWG’s Healthy Living™ app to check products while you’re at the store.

Nicole Pajer is a freelance journalist.

Areas of Focus Ultra-Processed Foods Guest Authors Nicole Pajer (for EWG) October 28, 2026

• More than 20 communities in 11 states have transportation referendums on the ballot this November (Smart Cities Dive).
• One is a 0.5 percent sales tax in Seattle to support bus service (Seattle Times; paywall).
• Another is in the Bay Area, where Max Mautner notes that residents pay more in taxes to subsidize highways than they do for transit.
• …and in Florida, an amendment to cut property taxes would devastate transit funding (Tampa Bay Times).
• A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposal would require autonomous vehicles to use cyan lights to indicate there’s no human driver. (The Verge)
• Parking in a garage is much more expensive than parking on the street in most big cities, which is the opposite of the way it should be. (Government Technology)
• Amtrak will have an online public hearing about its restructuring next month. (Trains)
• Chicago’s new transit agencies has broad powers to develop land. (Sun-Times)
• The new Crosslake Connection in Seattle is shifting transit riders from buses to trains, allowing Sound Transit to beef up bus service elsewhere. (Seattle Transit Blog)
• Dallas Area Rapid Transit’s newly hired CEO is under investigation by authorities in Florida, where he previously led Jacksonville’s transit agency. (Dallas Observer)
• Valley Metro is asking for public input on the West Phoenix light rail line’s route. (KJZZ)
• Only one third of New Orleans jobs are accessible by transit, severely limiting opportunities for residents who don’t own cars. (Lens)
• The Birmingham suburb of Clay lacks sidewalks, but Jefferson County has no plans to build any. (ABC 33/40)
• Albuquerque installed a protected bike lane on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. (Journal)
• Seoul started running a self-driving shuttle. (Korea Times)
• London has officially closed shop-filled Oxford Street to vehicular traffic. (The Guardian)

Living Sin Patron: Recuperating Work and Life from Argentina to Europe By Marina Sitrin “One self-managed workplace may not end capitalism, but the experience helps flex the collective anti-capitalist muscle” (Makis, Vio.Me, Thessaloniki, Greece)...!!.!!!))-.

The basic form a sustainable and just alternative society must take By Ted Trainer Introduction There is now much recognition of the fact that present systems are not only not working well for us but are generating a global polycrisis that must soon result in catastrophic global breakdown. There are many proposals regarding the nature of a more sustainable and just system. I want to argue that when the nature of our global predicament is properly understood there is only one basic form tha…

Solidarity Economy: A Historical Overview By Melanie E L Bush and Nokuthula Hlabangane Introduction Our era is one of heightened contestation. The capitalist world system has entered its end stage and all aspects of life - political, social, ecological, economic, and more -alternatives)))Alternatives)---Alternatives)TapestryAlternativesalternativesTapestryAlternativesGTAGTAGTAGTA))))-!.TapestryAlternatives.......vs........

At a campaign rally on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said his administration is going to dismantle restrictions on methane, one of the most common and potent planet-warming greenhouse gases. 

The new rule, proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency in response to complaints from the oil and gas industry, revises a Biden-era rule targeting methane leaks and would relax methane monitoring and emission-control requirements. 

The agency has planned to repeal these rules for months, saying that they posed a “monumental threat” to the economy and an “undue burden” on the oil and gas industry. But it wasn’t until the rally on Tuesday night in Lubbock, Texas, where Trump was campaigning on behalf of Ken Paxton’s bid for the Senate, that the president announced the long-awaited changes. 

“Tonight, I’m officially terminating Biden’s expensive and unnecessary methane regulations to save consumers and energy producers $45 billion in costs, unlock vast quantities of Texas natural gas, and produce 210 million barrels of oil,” Trump said in between rants in which he described praise from Chinese President Xi Jinping and claimed to have more “Indian blood” than Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts. 

The EPA’s proposal follows other sweeping reversals of Biden-era environmental policies that are also likely to exacerbate global warming, pushing the planet closer to a climate hotter than any humans have experienced before. Just last month, the EPA repealed a rule that limits carbon emissions from power plants, a move which is likely to extend the lifespan of coal-fired power plants. Environmental groups say weaker restrictions on methane would also worsen air pollution in communities that live near oil and gas operations. 

“Any proposed rollback to the federal methane rule is a slap in the face to families who are exposed to oil and gas pollution where they live, work, and play,” said Celerah Hewes, a campaign manager at the nonprofit Moms Clean Air Force. Hewes recently protested alongside other environmental activists outside of an industry conference in New Mexico where Lee Zeldin, the head of the EPA, spoke about the agency’s plan earlier this month.

Methane, the greenhouse gas at the center of the EPA’s new proposal, is emitted by oil and gas operations, landfills, and cattle farms. It’s also the primary component of natural gas used to heat homes. Methane emissions make up about 12 percent of the greenhouse gases released by the United States every year and are roughly 80 times more potent at warming the planet than carbon dioxide over a period of 20 years.

“Cutting methane emissions from the oil and gas industry is the fastest way to fight climate change,” said Tsion Amare, a policy expert at the Environmental Defense Fund. “This rule could severely set back the advances we’ve made over the years.”

The earlier methane rule, finalized at the end of 2023 under the Clean Air Act, was among the Biden administration’s most ambitious attempts to reform the oil and gas industry. It required operators to monitor their overall emissions, inspect their wells and pipelines for leaks, and upgrade their equipment to prevent escaping gas. They were also required to phase out or sharply cut back the routine practice of flaring, in which excess methane is burned off rather than being captured for use as natural gas.

Methane is flared off during an oil drilling operation in the Permian Basin in 2022 in Midland, Texas. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Amare said these limits were some of the “strongest in the world“ and positioned the United States as an international leader in curbing the climate pollutant. The EPA estimated the rule would prevent 58 million tons of methane from being emitted in the next 15 years, as well as prevent 400 billion cubic feet of natural gas — enough to heat nearly 8 million American homes during winter — from being wasted every year. 

In March 2025, Trump’s EPA said it would no longer enforce the methane rule and began the process of formally rescinding it. The newly released proposal would cancel the Biden administration’s Super Emitter Program, which used satellite imagery and other remote-sensing methods to catch large leaks, and required operators to investigate and address them. It also reverses Biden-era limits on routine flaring, loosens requirements on certain types of wells, and gives operators a 30-day window to repair a leak.

The recent changes are all part of President Trump’s so-called “energy dominance” agenda, a catchphrase used to justify similar roll backs since the first hours of his second term in office. In a recent action proclaiming this October as “National Energy Dominance Month,” the president boasted that his administration has “unleashed” millions of acres for oil, gas, and coal, approved thousands of drilling permits, “saved” more than 100 coal plants, and pulled out of international climate agreements. 

Read Next Trump vowed to stop an ‘energy emergency.’ Then he created a real one. Jake Bittle

“The Trump EPA is committed to fixing this so the U.S. can reach its full energy potential,” Zeldin said in a statement about the Biden administration’s methane regulations earlier this month. 

The weakened methane restrictions will especially benefit companies that run low-producing “stripper” wells by allowing them to pollute more. These wells account for just 5 percent of the country’s oil and gas but more than half of the industry’s emissions. According to reporting by ProPublica, lobbyists from this industry have gained “unprecedented influence” during the second Trump administration. One owner of a company that buys up stripper wells, Jeffery Hildebrand, has also been one of the oil industry’s biggest donors to Trump’s political campaigns. 

“Under crooked Joe Biden, Democrats crushed the small oil and gas operators,” Trump said while announcing the changes. “They’re great operators, too.”

The president’s statement leans into a false narrative about these operators, experts said. Stripper-wells are often discussed as if they’re run by small, mom-and-pop companies that don’t have the financial means to comply with the stricter regulations. But in reality, more than half of them are owned by large companies that operate more than a thousand wells, said Darin Schroeder, the methane legal and regulatory director at the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental nonprofit. Hildebrand’s Hilcorp Energy Company, for instance, is thought to own nearly 19,000 low-producing wells. Another company, Diversified Energy, owns more than 50,000 of them. “Just because they’re a marginal producer doesn’t mean they’re a marginal polluter,” Schroeder said.

An oil pumpjack in the Permian Basin oil field in 2022 in Crane, Texas.
Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Because these stripper wells make up more than half of the oil and gas industry’s emissions, letting them off the hook is going to have a significant climate impact, Schroeder said. Allowing more of these emissions gives the world less time to tackle climate change before the worst consequences take hold. “Reducing methane in the short term really gives you a big bang for your buck, and gives us more of an on-ramp to address carbon dioxide,” he said.

Pollutants released alongside methane also pose a health risk to people living in oil-producing regions by contributing to the buildup of ground-level ozone, which can damage lungs and worsen asthma. The Biden-era rule would have incidentally filtered out these toxins, such as benzene, a known carcinogen, and other volatile organic compounds, which can also cause ozone to form, along with methane. 

Nearly 1 in 10 Americans live in a county with more than 1,000 stripper wells. And Texans may have the most to lose, said Amare, who is based in Dallas and specializes in the state’s energy and environmental issues. The state has more oil and gas than any other and an estimated 136,000 stripper wells. The public health consequences tend to disproportionately affect people of color who live near wells in places such as Texas’s Eagle Ford, she said.

The Biden administration had tasked states with implementing its regulations. But Texas has repeatedly delayed creating and adopting the necessary plans. Now, experts like Amara say that without pressure from the federal government the state is unlikely to curb its methane emissions, which amount to 19 percent of the U.S. total.

Other states, including Colorado and New Mexico, already have more stringent methane regulations on the books, and some, like Pennsylvania, are making plans to comply with the former Biden administration’s rule. Experts say that makes them less likely to lower their standards just because the federal government has.

And states may be financially motivated to capture methane anyway. An Environmental Defense Fund analysis found that New Mexico has saved an estimated $125 million worth of natural gas each year that would have otherwise been leaked, vented, or flared. The nonprofit also estimates that the entire industry has lost some $7 billion worth of natural gas since the Trump administration stopped enforcing the methane rule last year. “All of this waste of gas is something that definitely needs to be discussed more,” Amare said.

toolTips('.classtoolTips3','Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other gases that prevent heat from escaping Earth’s atmosphere. Together, they act as a blanket to keep the planet at a liveable temperature in what is known as the “greenhouse effect.” Too many of these gases, however, can cause excessive warming, disrupting fragile climates and ecosystems.'); toolTips('.classtoolTips7','A powerful greenhouse gas that accounts for about 11% of global emissions, methane is the primary component of natural gas and is emitted into the atmosphere by landfills, oil and natural gas systems, agricultural activities, coal mining, and wastewater treatment, among other pathways. Over a 20-year period, it is roughly 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump’s EPA is letting America’s leakiest oil and gas companies off the hook on Oct 27, 2026.

Growing up in San Francisco, the 48 Quintara was my lifeline. It got me across the city to school in the Sunset, to hang out with friends in West Portal, and then back to the Mission for soccer practice.

Whether I sat up front with the seniors and their grocery carts or was crammed in the back, wishing someone would crack the window, 35 cents got me wherever I wanted to go, surrounded by a microcosm of San Francisco’s wonderful people and cultures.

My son is two years old now, and the 29 Sunset is his lifeline. We take it to daycare, the playground, to the pediatrician, and to see his grandparents on the other side of the city. But if the Bay Area fails to pass the two transit measures on the ballot this November, his lifeline will go away.

RTM, the Regional Transit Measure, will add a half-percent sales tax in Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, and San Mateo Counties and a 1-percent tax in San Francisco. For transit agencies facing a downward spiral of insufficient funding, RTM is a critical lifeline. BART could close up to 15 stations and cut service by 70 percent. Caltrain would run one train per hour, and Muni could cut one-third of their service. In San Francisco, Measure H also needs to pass to prevent further Muni cuts that could eliminate up to 20 routes, double wait times, and end regular nighttime services.

My organization, Transform, works with low-income communities throughout the Bay Area, providing ‘Know-how-to-go’ travel trainings and signing folks up for transit benefits programs to help them get around easily and affordably. When we ask the people we serve what would happen if their bus line was cut, the answers are harrowing:

“I wouldn’t be able to get my shopping necessities.”

“Seeing a doctor would be difficult.”

“I don’t know…it’s necessary for survival.”

Public transit is essential for everyone in the Bay Area, but it is a lifeline for our most vulnerable residents. According to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Snapshot Survey, 44 percent of transit riders have a household income under $50,000 a year. For two-thirds of all transit trips, the bus or train is the only way they can get around.

The cost of living in the Bay Area is so high; it’s tough to ask residents to pay new taxes. But the cost of losing transit is much higher. A new SPUR report found that families would pay $3,280 more per year in transportation costs if the Regional Transit Measure fails. For the 30 percent of households that don’t own a car, that cost could skyrocket as high as $20,000. Failing to pass the Regional Transit Measure would also drive up housing costs. To meet our growing housing need, we need to build 441,176 new units by 2031, including 180,000 units at 30-80 percent below market-rate.

California has recently passed numerous laws encouraging housing development near transit for middle- and low-income residents. These include exemptions and streamlined approvals, waiving minimum parking requirements to lower building costs, and loosening zoning restrictions for affordable housing. If the regional measure fails and transit service gets cut, these landmark housing laws will be significantly weakened or rendered ineffective, further increasing the cost of living as housing and transportation costs spike.

That’s why Transform and our partners have spent almost a decade building a strong coalition of housing, labor, and community organizations to bring the Regional Transit Measure to the ballot. We know transit is often the fastest and most cost-effective way to get where you need to go, and that the Bay Area’s economy, housing, and climate goals depend on it. Public transit is a lifeline for many, but it is also a joy for all. I cherish the smiles when my toddler shimmies up onto an open seat, the honks from friendly bus drivers as we depart, and the sense of belonging that riding the bus brings in our increasingly polarized world. I want a future where my son can enjoy all the people, cultures, and opportunities the Bay Area has to offer. I want him to grow up in a place with enough housing so everyone can afford a home. I want transit to be the lifeline for him that it was for me.

Please vote yes on Measure RTM and Measure H this November.

***

Zack Deutsch-Gross is the Executive Director of Transform, a Bay Area nonprofit that works to reshape housing and transportation decision-making around equity, climate, and community. He lives in Ingleside with his wife and two-year-old son.

The Trump administration is threatening to strip California of its authority to protect its coastline unless state regulators agree to demands that could benefit offshore oil companies and other powerful interests. The move could make it easier to restart dormant oil operations and expand offshore development, while limiting California’s ability to challenge projects that threaten its coast. 

While the state has not publicly discussed legal options should the administration move forward with its threats, there is no legal precedent for the federal government to act in this manner with the dozens of states that have similar deals. It doesn’t take a fortune teller to see this story ending up in court like the administration’s other pro-pollution, anti-California actions.

What Happened

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued draft findings demanding that California’s coastal agencies complete more than a dozen “corrective actions” or risk losing federal approval of the state’s coastal management program. Federal funding for the program has also been suspended pending resolution of the alleged deficiencies. The report is not yet available online, but the Los Angeles Times received a copy through a public records request.

The demands seem more political than anything having to do with protecting the environment. Among them are a requirement the California Coastal Commission must meet with SpaceX, which happens to be owned by Trump ally and GOP mega-donor Elon Musk. The commission must also meet with Sable Offshore Corp., a Texas-based oil company seeking to restart a dormant oil operation off Santa Barbara County. Sable has been under investigation by California’s Senator Adam Schiff for using political donations to influence federal policy. Sable gave $300,000 to a Super PAC supporting Trump’s last campaign. 

“This is a five-alarm warning to every job and industry that relies on our sandy beaches and beautiful bluffs for its livelihood,” Schiff told the Los Angeles Times. “Soon, you too could see your environment for sale to Big Oil, Elon Musk, and any other high bidder that buys its way into the White House ballroom.”

California has participated in the federal Coastal Zone Management Act since 1978. The law gives the state a role in reviewing federally regulated projects that could affect its coast, including development in federal waters. While the administration tries to paint the state and the California Coastal Commission as obstacles to progress, the Commission has approved 96% of the permit applications it receives as submitted. 

A Review With a Predetermined Outcome?

The administration has portrayed its investigation as a response to what it calls California’s “environmental extremism” and alleged political bias against offshore drilling and SpaceX’s launch activities. But an earlier federal review reached a very different conclusion.

According to the Los Angeles Times, a review conducted during the Biden administration found that California was successfully implementing its coastal management program and gave its agencies high marks. The Trump administration nevertheless ordered a new evaluation focused on industries and projects the White House wants to advance.

As part of the legal requirement to complete its review, NOAA was required to hold a public hearing and take written input. Public feedback overwhelmingly favored preserving California’s coastal authority. More than 23,000 written comments were submitted, with approximately 95% supporting the state’s ability to protect its coast, according to the Surfrider Foundation. Hundreds of Californians also spoke at an August public hearing in Santa Monica.

Surfrider says the agency relied on roughly a dozen comments critical of California when developing its proposed corrective actions, even as the draft report acknowledged that parts of the state’s program are excellent.

California’s Coast Is Not a Bargaining Chip

In an October 24 statement published by the Surfrider Foundation, California Policy Associate Director Jennifer Savage argued that the review was designed to benefit companies favored by the White House.

“[The review] was never about coastal management. It was about making it easier to develop controversial projects favored by the White House and which benefit the administration’s allies, including SpaceX and Sable Offshore Corp.,” Savage wrote.

She added: “It’s a demand that a state agency promise outcomes to specific companies before it has seen their applications.”

California’s coastal protections do not automatically prohibit offshore projects. They give regulators a process for evaluating environmental impacts and determining whether development complies with state coastal policies.

What Happens Next?

The California Coastal Commission, State Coastal Conservancy, and San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission have been given until November 16 to respond to the draft findings. The Coastal Commission requested a 15-day extension, according to the Los Angeles Times.

NOAA will then issue its final findings. The federal government can pursue withdrawal of its approval of California’s coastal program if the state fails to address the identified deficiencies, potentially weakening its ability to challenge projects affecting the coastline.

Surfrider is urging NOAA to drop corrective actions unrelated to coastal management and preserve the federal-state partnership that has helped protect California’s coast for nearly 50 years.

This article How Serbian students toppled an authoritarian was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

On Oct. 25, Serbia voted and the Student List won. Late that evening, President Aleksandar Vučić — the man who has dominated the country’s politics since 2012, steadily hollowing out its courts, media and elections along the way — went on television and admitted that his Serbian Progressive Party and its allies had lost. The final count isn’t in yet, but the result is not in doubt. Candidates selected by the Students List protest movement have more than half the vote and a majority in the 250-seat parliament.

For more than 20 years, our team at the Belgrade-based Center for Applied NonViolent Actions and Strategies, or CANVAS, has worked with activists from dozens of countries on one question: How do ordinary people defeat a government that looks unbeatable? This time the answer came from our own streets, again. We want to explain what happened, because movements elsewhere will try to learn from it, and we’d like them to learn the right lessons.

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You can’t understand Sunday without understanding the 14 years before it, since Vučić first came to power.

Most people in Serbia learned to live with a low, constant fear. You assumed your phone wasn’t really yours. Amnesty International later confirmed what many suspected: Spyware was being installed on the phones of activists and journalists, sometimes while they sat in a police station. If you spoke up, a tabloid might put your face on the front page the next morning with a story about who was supposedly bankrolling you. People lost jobs and contracts for being on the wrong side. Plenty stopped saying what they thought, even at the kitchen table.

We see this pattern in almost every country we work in. That kind of power doesn’t have to arrest everyone. It only needs everyone to believe they could be next.

How it started

On Nov. 1, 2024, the concrete canopy at the Novi Sad railway station fell and killed 16 people. The station had just been renovated. Everyone understood immediately what that meant: The money meant to keep people safe had gone into someone’s pocket. Within days, “Corruption kills” was written on walls across the country.

Students shut down their colleges and refused to go back to class. Many observers abroad missed how important this was. A march lasts an afternoon. The blockade of the universities lasted for months and took a whole part of society out of normal life. In our field we call that noncooperation, and it is far more powerful than protest alone. Every regime depends on people showing up and doing what is expected of them. The students stopped.

For two years the students were arrested, followed, slandered and called foreign agents. Cars drove into crowds. People were beaten. The government gave them every excuse to respond with violence, and they didn’t.

A protest marshal at the front of a crowd during the largest march in Serbia’s history on March 15, 2025 in Belgrade. (Gavrilo Andrić / protesti.pics)

At the largest protest in Serbia’s history, in Belgrade on March 15, 2025 — with between 275,000 and 325,000 people, according to the independent Archive of Public Gatherings — student marshals in yellow vests kept the crowd calm and blue flares showed people the way out if things went wrong. None of that was improvised. The students organized themselves. The assembly of each fakultet (a specialized college within a university) chose its marshals. Before every big action they went over the same things again and again: how to spot provocateurs, how to calm a tense moment, how to move a crowd out safely. At CANVAS, we teach this in every training we run: Nonviolent discipline doesn’t happen by itself. It is planned, practiced and repeated until it’s second nature. The students did exactly that.

Here is why it mattered so much. Violence was the one thing the regime wanted from them. A single burning car would have given the government its “terrorists” and sent the cautious middle class back indoors. 

Because the students stayed nonviolent, everyone could join. Grandmothers did. Farmers did. People who had never been to a protest in their lives did.

What it cost

People sometimes talk about nonviolent action as if it were the soft option. Anyone who watched these students over the past two years knows better.

They walked across Serbia. They arrived with bloody socks and taped-up blisters, slept wherever someone offered a floor, and set off again in the morning. In village after village people stood by the road with bread, hot tea and blankets, and a lot of them were crying. Those marches reached places that no rally in Belgrade ever could, places the government thought it owned.

Wherever they stopped, they talked with people. In town squares, school yards and village halls, they explained why they were marching and listened to what local people were angry about. They also urged residents to set up their own citizens’ assemblies, and in many towns people did, often for the first time in their lives.

Their professors paid a price, too. When fakultets sided with their students, the government cut university salaries to a small fraction of what they had been. Some professors received nothing at all for months. The president went on television and said that instead of salaries, they would get potatoes. Schoolteachers who backed the protests were punished the same way. These are people with children, mortgages and parents to look after, and they stayed with their students anyway.

A list with no politicians on it

Then the students did something we had not seen done quite like this anywhere.

They didn’t hand their momentum over to the opposition parties, and they didn’t run for office themselves. They wrote their own rules for the slate of candidates that they would support. No students could be on the list. Nobody from the ruling coalition. No officials from the opposition parties. No extremists.

For more than a year, over 80 student assemblies in six university cities proposed names, argued about them, interviewed people and vetoed the ones they didn’t trust. It was slow, messy and deeply democratic. We think that is exactly why it worked. Nobody could say it was cooked up in a back room.

What came out was a list of 250 people, one name for every seat in parliament, who were respected long before politics: professors, teachers, doctors, actors, artists and athletes. 

Serbia doesn’t have local districts. The whole country votes as one constituency for party lists, seats are shared out by each list’s share of the vote, and they are filled in the order the names appear. So the order matters, and the first name on the list was a cardiologist from Novi Sad. A former governor of the National Bank shared the list with one of the best basketball players this country has ever produced. Several opposition parties pulled their own lists and backed the students instead, which could not have been easy for them.

Tens of thousands gathered at Slavija Square in Belgrade on Oct. 22 ahead of the general election. (Gavrilo Andrić / protesti.pics)

The people on that list don’t agree about much. Some are on the left, some on the right, and some have never thought of themselves as political at all. State-owned media called that chaos.

We see it the other way around. Movements win by bringing huge numbers of people on board, and huge numbers of people never share one ideology. If the list had looked like one camp, it would have attracted one camp. Because it looked like Serbia, almost anyone could find someone on it they trusted.

What held it together was simple. Nobody wants another leader the whole country has to obey and adore. Nobody wants to live again in a place where a handful of people get rich off everyone else. The students put it on their posters in three words: “Serbia or Mafia.”

Healing from a cancer

The best way we can describe where Serbia is today is this: we’ve had the diagnosis, and treatment has just started.

For years the country lived with a cancer — with captured courts, captured media, public money flowing into private pockets, and fear as the normal background of life. It spread slowly into nearly every institution.

Sunday’s defeat of Vučić didn’t cure it. Sunday made treatment possible.

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Anyone who has sat next to someone they love during chemotherapy knows what comes next. It takes a long time. It hurts. Some weeks the treatment feels worse than the illness. There will be setbacks and bad results, and people saying things were better before. The old networks won’t leave quietly, and some reforms will fail the first time they are tried.

But this cancer can be beaten. And the whole body has to heal, including the neighbors, relatives and colleagues who voted for the other side on Sunday. They aren’t the disease. They’re part of the country that has to get well.

What we ask of each of us

No government can do this healing by itself. Here is what we think it will take, and from whom.

1. The new governing majority: Start with institutions, not with settling scores. Establish courts that are actually independent, a public broadcaster that tells the truth, and clean elections — all of which will outlast any government. And open a full, public investigation into the surveillance of citizens, so no one is tempted to do it again.

2. The movement: Don’t let the assemblies fade away. They built this list, and they are the best protection Serbia has against the next strongman, including one who might come from inside the movement itself.

3. Friends abroad: Support Serbian institutions and citizens rather than personalities. In practice, that means long-term funding for independent media, watchdog groups and local citizens’ assemblies; sending judges, auditors and prosecutors from your own countries who can work alongside Serbian colleagues rebuilding theirs; and support tied to concrete rule-of-law results rather than to warm words for whoever is in office. And please stay for the whole treatment, not only the first week.

4. Activists in other countries: Don’t copy the slogan. Copy the method. Go beyond marching to real noncooperation, train for discipline instead of hoping for it, and build unity out of your differences.

Serbia has just shown that nonviolent action still works when it’s planned, patient and carried by many hands. Now it has to show that a country can heal. We intend to be part of that work: training the next generation of organizers, writing down honestly what worked and what didn’t, and holding the new government to the same standard the students held the old one.

A version of this article first appeared on CANVAS’ newsletter.

This article How Serbian students toppled an authoritarian was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

CONTACT: Kayla Ritchie | kayla@unbendablemedia.com 

Climate Justice Alliance-led coalition warns the Bipartisan American Affordability & Jobs Act would roll back environmental safeguards, expand corporate power, and deepen environmental injustice.

WASHINGTON, DC — Today, Climate Justice Alliance, joined by more than 100 environmental, faith, and labor organizations, led a letter urging U.S. Senators to reject the Bipartisan American Affordability & Jobs Act (BAAJA), a “permitting reform” proposal slated for a November 9, 2026, vote. The action comes as the nation marks the 35th anniversary of the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, where the foundational 17 Principles of Environmental Justice were drafted. 

The coalition argues that this legislation undermines those principles; in part because  “BAAJA codifies environmental injustice and discards the civil rights of Black, Indigenous and people of color by permanently locking in fossil fuel infrastructure in communities that legislators have already sacrificed time and time again.”

The coalition identified key sections of the legislation that, if passed, would deregulate federal protections, codify mining on public lands, limit peoples’ access to legal redress, and expand the buildout of more fossil fuel projects. This comes at a time when the Trump Administration is already wreaking havoc on multiple federal protections, including public health and legal safeguards. 

Among the over 75 rollbacks, we are concerned BAAJA will:

• Gut foundational environmental protections. Eviscerating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), ripping up key protections of the Clean Water Act, weakening the Endangered Species Act, and codifying the highly problematic Mining Regulatory Clarity Act that gives mining companies free rein over public lands, all while simultaneously preventing ordinary people from challenging harmful projects in court.
• Lock in harmful projects indefinitely. Title IV would make it much harder for federal agencies to revisit certain permits; even when communities experience worsening air pollution, water shortages, or other harms that weren’t fully understood when a project was approved. Communities could be left living with the consequences while the government’s ability to respond is sharply limited.
• Give project developers new legal benefits with no parallel protections for communities.. Protecting big business rather than people by granting project developers the new ability to bring a ‘disparate treatment’ claim in the courts–a concept rooted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This expands legal avenues for corporations while failing to offer equivalent protections to communities facing environmental injustice.

With a Senate vote approaching, the coalition  warns that the legislation would advance an agenda that rolls back environmental justice protections while leaving frontline communities to bear the consequences. The letter ends with a hard truth that has been felt for too long by too many, “Your closed-door deal bolsters the work of the Trump administration which is hell-bent on dismantling environmental justice at every turn, and we are beyond outraged at what you are saying our lives are worth. Reject this travesty.”

Read the full letter here.

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The post More than 100 Environmental, Faith and Labor Groups Urge Senators Heinrich and Whitehouse to Reject Permitting Bill Ahead of November 9 Vote appeared first on Climate Justice Alliance.

Members of ECOSOL MX Network redecosolmx@gmail.com. For contact: Marcos Cortez Bacilio, marcosbacilio@gmail.com; Celina Valadez, celinavaladez@yahoo.comalternatives

Beacons of Hope in Citrus Country: Weaving Autonomy, Biodiversity, and Economies for Life in Veracruz and Puebla By Amanda Gpe. Macías Caballero and Jesús Flores Cruz Introduction Across the agricultural landscapes of northern Veracruz and northeastern Puebla, Mexico, amid the scent of orange blossoms and the green of the milpa, a quiet yet vibrant transformation is taking shape. Faced with the multiple socio-environmental crises caused by the agroindustrial model, peasant and Indigenous c…