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File:  ltr to Congress, 76 scientists 2012.pdfResource Type: Letters

File:  ltr to Congress, 76 scientists 2012.pdfResource Type: Letters

On May 13, 2026, The Henry Ford is hosting a screening of their new film documenting the success of their Farm to School Lunch Across America initiative in New York City. 

The event, taking place at the Tribeca Film Center, begins at 6:30PM ET. A panel discussion featuring author and nutritionist Marion Nestle, Chef Michel Nischan of Wholesome Wave, former USDA Midwest Public Affairs Director Alan Shannon, and journalist Kate Bittman will kick off the evening. This will be followed by a screening of the documentary “The Henry Ford’s Farm To School Lunch Across America” and a reception. 

“This documentary is more than a film—it is an invitation. Through Farm to School Lunch Across America, we are shining a light on communities proving that school meals can nourish students, strengthen local economies, and support farmers caring for the land,” Spence Medford, Senior Vice President and Chief Advancement Officer for The Henry Ford, tells Food Tank. “Our hope is to spark a national conversation around school-supported agriculture and inspire more communities to adapt what’s already working.”

The Henry Ford’s program brings together culinary experts and chefs, farmers, food advocates, and policymakers to amplify the importance of fresh, seasonal meals for students across the United States. Through this work, they try to underscore the need for free, regeneratively grown school lunches for all. 

The pilot program, launched in 2024, reached seven schools in six communities to connect farmers, chefs, and fresh food resources during National Farm to School Month in October. During visits, a film crew captured model school meal programs and interviewed chefs, including Alice Waters and Rick Bayless, along with school meal leaders and innovators.

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Photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture

The post The Henry Ford Brings Farm to School Film to New York City appeared first on Food Tank.

The so-called “Rubber-Stamp Rule”, an effort by the Trump administration to “Make America Nuclear Again”, violates key components of the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) and Energy Reorganization Act, according to comments filed this week by 13 organizations including the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) and Beyond Nuclear. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) proposed rule will allow reactor designs that the Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Defense (DOD) have approved to bypass required safety reviews by the NRC.

In a separate comment filing in March, 11 state attorneys general concurred with the organizations’ findings that the Department of Energy ‘s new policy to exclude “pilot reactors” from both NRC licensing and environmental reviews violates existing law. In that case, the Department of Energy announced, in violation of federal law, that it would exempt previously untested reactors that it approves to be built and operated from any review of their environmental impacts.

“Along with the DOE’s environmental ‘free pass’ policy, the whole ‘expedited licensing’ regime the administration is attempting to set up appears to be illegal,” said Tim Judson, executive director of NIRS and co-author of comments filed to the NRC. “The White House is trying to create a ‘regulatory tunnel’ around NRC’s safety regulations. That would mean DOE’s biases and obviously false assumptions about the safety of nuclear power plants become the new normal, exposing the public to unacceptable dangers to our health and safety.”

The NRC’s proposed regulation would allow companies that want to build a nuclear reactor of the same design as one DOE has previously approved to merely submit documentation of that approval and claim that the previously built reactor “is safe.” Such companies would likely never have to go through a detailed safety review by NRC to build and operate such reactors. In 1974, Congress amended the Atomic Energy Act to prohibit such a scheme.

“Fifty years ago, the Atomic Energy Commission was abolished because they became too much of a promoter and lost the confidence of Congress and the public over safety,” said Paul Gunter, director of the reactor oversight project at Beyond Nuclear. “The NRC was established to provide a regulator that prioritizes safety and is obligated not to take shortcuts for a production agenda. Instead, half a century later, we are on the same dangerous collision course, casting aside the NRC in favor of the DOE, which doesn’t have the experience or the staff to get the industry in line with safety and security. This capitulation to the Trump agenda could lead to the NRC being abolished altogether, because nobody will have confidence in them.”

The groups also told NRC that it cannot simply “rubber-stamp” reactors that the military builds, either. “And while the law allows the DOD to build its own nuclear reactors,” said Tim Judson of NIRS, “it does not allow the NRC to skip safety reviews for civilian nuclear plants just because they use the same designs. The military routinely exposes its personnel to dangers that civilians are supposed to be protected from.”

“In its eagerness to short-circuit reactor safeguards, the Trump administration is once again doing what it does best – demonstrating a complete disregard for the law,” said Linda Pentz Gunter, executive director of Beyond Nuclear. “But nuclear technology is too inherently dangerous to operate as an outlaw. Ignoring those dangers will put millions of Americans at risk of another catastrophic nuclear accident.”

• NIRS, BN, et al comments on NRC Proposed Rule — https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/DocketID_NRC-2025-1503_Comments_-BeyondNuclear-NIRS-etal.pdf
• Comments on DOE Categorical Exclusion Policy — https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/2026.03.04-NIRS-et-al-Comments-re-DOE-categorical-exclusion-for-advanced-nuclear-reactors.pdf

On Saturday, May 9th, laid-off workers at Toronto-based produce delivery service Mama Earth led a rally to protest union busting in their former workplace. The...

The post Mama Earth workers fight back against union busting first appeared on Spring.

Rate design can reduce grid costs, but first utilities need upgraded billing systems.

Improve your storm response with targeted design approaches on the distribution grid.

Storage is no longer about the breakthrough tech, but who can build and deliver a system at scale.

The last federal transportation law gave states more than enough money to fix every crumbling highway and bridge in America — but a disturbing share of departments of Transportation sunk that windfall into expanding highways instead, a new report found. And unless Congress learns from its mistakes and finally requires transportation officials to “fix it first,” we will continue to set billions of taxpayer dollars on fire.

A stunning 16.3 percent of U.S. roads that were eligible for federal money were still rated in “poor” condition in 2024, according to a recent Transportation for America analysis — despite Congress providing state DOTs with $56.8 billion in largely unrestricted transportation funds that year alone, and nearly $1.5 trillion over the 30 years prior.

Experts say it would take $43.2 billion per year to maintain all of the country’s existing roads in “acceptable” condition, or roughly 23 percent less than Congress authorized annually under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

And the authors of the report say the waste may be even worse than it seems.

Because increasingly lax reporting standards conceal broken roads from public view, and DOTs routinely mis-categorize expensive expansion projects as simple “maintenance” or lump them into a mysterious “other” category, Transportation for America suspects the national highway network is actually even more drastically overbuilt than it appears on paper.

That means that even a steep increase federal dollars may not be enough to repair our rapidly expanding transportation network — at least without using that money to shift people onto modes other than driving and take pressure off our battered asphalt.

“We’re still adding to the system faster than we’re able to take care of it,” said Mehr Mukhtar, the group’s senior policy associate. “We’re still seeing inconsistencies and a lack of transparency in reporting standards. And all of this just leads us to the conclusion that until we see a meaningful shift in our priorities, and in how we’re tying our spending to our outcomes, the backlog of roads in poor conditions is going to persist — and likely it’s going to worsen.”

Mukhtar traces much of America’s pothole crisis to a long-standing tradition of giving states broad latitude over how they spend their federal “formula” dollars, or grants doled out to DOTs based on a pre-determined government calculation.

In the absence of federal rules to rein them in, many states pick ribbon-cuttings for new and “improved” — i.e., widened — highways over the unsexy work of repaving the lanes they already have, even if those lanes are falling apart.

A whopping 24 states chose to spend less than $2.35 on maintenance for every dollar they spent on expansion — a ratio that Transportation for America says is alarming — despite the fact that those states have a higher share of roads in poor condition than the national average.

Worse, experts say those expansions won’t come close to accomplishing the goals they’re theoretically supposed to achieve. Decades of research has shown that widening roads does nothing to fix traffic jams over the long term, encourages drivers to fill newly added lanes, and saddles communities with compounding long-term maintenance obligations that they can’t keep up with.

It’s a little like adding a ballroom to a house when the roof is so leaky that rain is pouring in — except that ballroom is somehow accelerating a traffic violence crisis that claims nearly 40,000 lives a year, super-charging climate change, and amplifying income inequality by reducing access to jobs, rather than, say, hosting waltzes.

“That’s fiscally irresponsible, and it’s a burden on taxpayer dollars,” Mukhtar added.

Of course, not all states are neglecting their maintenance backlog in favor of climate arson — and some of them are even offsetting the worst offenders.

Communities like North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Vermont won applause from the report’s authors for strong repair-to-expansion ratios, which helped bring their average road conditions above the national average — though, to be fair, many of those states have a high share of depopulated rural roads that need less-frequent maintenance than highly trafficked urban arterials. Still, Mukhtar credited those communities with lowering America’s total share of roads and bridges in poor condition by three percentage points between 2018 and 2024.

But she warned that extremely modest progress won’t be enough to outrun America’s looming maintenance obligations. The report says every new lane-mile of highway built will cost future taxpayers $47,300 per year to maintain in good condition — roughly the cost of a year’s out-of-state tuition at a decent public university — and America built 119,257 of them in the six years the researchers analyzed.

Worse, even some of the “good” states are still delaying maintenance until its bridges are on the brink of collapse, driving maintenance costs well above the average. Mukhtar pointed to Michigan, whose maintenance spending, which looks impressive on paper, actually masks the fact that the Wolverine State tends to postpone repaving until roads are so bad that they need to be totally rebuilt.

“With the costs of construction ballooning and inflation rising, even those same dollars don’t get stretched as far now as they would have decades ago, if [states] started prioritizing repair earlier,” she said.

With the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act due to expire on Sept. 30, Mukhtar said Congress has a rare opportunity to restore sanity to the transportation system and finally require states to “fix it first,” rather than adding endless new ballrooms to a falling-down house.

That might look like setting “tangible goals, such as reducing the backlog by half,” requiring federal agencies to collect better data on the actual condition of roads, and establishing enforceable mandates that state DOTs be more transparent about how taxpayer dollars are spent.

And until they actually do, no voter should believe a politician who pledges to “fix America’s crumbling roads and bridges” — because nearly $57 billion a year later, they still haven’t done so.

“Whenever a transportation bill is passed, we hear the same thing come out of Congress time and time again: the same rhetoric about fixing crumbling roads and bridges, and why we need to increase funding,” said Mukhtar. “But I think what we need to see this time around are enforceable requirements, which actually compel states to spend that money on fixing it first.”

• The Guardian asked experts how to fix traffic-choked cities, especially in light of high gas prices. The answers: Expand and improve transit, create more space for pedestrians and cyclists, focus on providing alternatives for commuters traveling into the city core from car-centric suburbs, and address the reasons why people choose to drive, such as service hours and safety concerns.
• Uber is shifting tactics away from fighting with local governments and labor unions as it seeks to roll out robotaxis, according to Axios. Meanwhile, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating Uber partner Avride after at least 16 documented autonomous vehicle crashes (Tech Crunch).
• Urban trees counter half the heat island effect from climate change in cities, but less so in poorer neighborhoods, according to a new study. (Associated Press)
• Seattle’s Sound Transit adopted a two-decade plan to close a $34 billion budget gap in future capital projects. (KOMO)
• The first Vision Zero report from Indianapolis indicates that traffic deaths fell to 85 last year from a high of 120 in 2021, but a number of major roads remain dangerous. (WTHR)
• Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell, whose major accomplishment has been passing the “Choose How You Move” transit expansion referendum, will run for re-election. (News Channel 6)
• San Antonio is considering dropping speed limits on neighborhood streets from 30 miles per hour to 25, but in places where it’s already been done, it hasn’t had an effect on driver behavior. (Report)
• Amtrak is adding cars to its Missouri River Runner route to accommodate additional riders traveling to the World Cup in Kansas City. (Mass Transit)
• Construction on Baltimore’s long-awaited Purple Line is complete, but service won’t begin until late 2027 at the earliest. (Maryland Matters)
• An Omaha traffic reporter is still out of work after having been hit by two different drivers in separate crashes; one as a pedestrian, one while she was behind the wheel. (KETV)
• Cincinnati’s Red Bike bikeshare had a record number of users in 2026. (CityBeat)
• Kansas City opened a new bike and pedestrian bridge on Grand Boulevard. (Fox 4)
• Lime introduced a new type of bikeshare bike in Seattle that looks like a scooter with pedals. (Seattle Bike Blog)
• Pending the governor’s signature, South Carolina recently became the first East Coast state to adopt the “Idaho stop,” allowing cyclists to proceed through a yield sign or red light when it’s safe to do so. (Palmetto Walk Bike)
• A lot of people like to ride the D: The new Metro line in Los Angeles opened last weekend to great fanfare. (Streetsblog LA)

In a triumphal move back toward democratic rule, Hungary's new leader Péter Magyar took his oath of office Saturday in a "regime-change" ceremony rich with symbolism before thousands of jubilant constituents. The sense of a hopeful new political era resonated in Magyar's tribute to a victory for "ordinary, flesh-and-blood people" - and in the gleeful moves and air guitar of unstoppable "dancing machine" and new Health Minister Zsolt Hegedűs. Lookit this guy boogie. Damn, we can't wait.

The day's celebration" marked Magya's stunning defeat last month of authoritarian Viktor Orbán after 16 years in power. A 45-year-old lawyer who founded the center-right Tisza party in 2024, Magyar won a two-thirds majority over Orbán’s nationalist Fidesz party, which will allow him to roll back many of Orbán’s policies. Tisza now controls 141 seats in the 199-seat Parliament, with over a quarter held by women; Fidesz won 52 seats, down from 135, and far-right Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland) took six. Magyar has vowed to restore democratic institutions, clamp down on corruption, repair ties with the EU, where Orbán often vetoed key decisions including support for Ukraine, and unlock about $20 billion of EU funds to help jump-start Hungary's struggling economy,

Magya was sworn in at the sprawling Parliament building as tens of thousands of Hungarians gathered outside in Kossuth Square. Marking the sea change his victory represents, the EU flag flew for the first time since Orbán’ removed it in 2014, and the Beethoven-inspired European anthem Ode to Joy, symbolizing peace and solidarity, rang out. "Today, every freedom-loving person in the world would like to be Hungarian a little," Magya told the crowd in a message aimed at healing the deep divisions of Orbán's rule. "You have taught (the) world that the most ordinary, flesh-and-blood people can defeat the most vicious tyranny...Today is the fulfillment of a long journey made together (to) once again be a common homeland for all Hungarians."

As the party went all day and into the night - when Magyar took on DJ duties - the high point of its joy and fervor may have come after Magyar's speech when Zsolt Hegedűs, unable to restrain himself, broke out into dancing as the singer Jalja began performing The Hanging Tree: "Strange things have happened here." Hungary's new 56-year-old Health Minister and an internationally recognised orthopaedic surgeon who spent 10 years working for the UK's NHS, Hegedűs had already gone viral last month when, on stage after Magyar's landslide victory, he busted out some fiery dance moves and air guitar in his excitement. This time, he said he wasn't planning a repeat performance. Then the music started...And 140 Party members joined in.

"I could see the audience had been waiting for this," he said. "I didn’t want to let down the people.” So off he went, delighting everyone (except, possibly, his kids if he has any) with his slick moves. The next day, he ascribed it all to his "emotional roller-coaster" since Magyar's victory, with his chance to repair Hungary's health care system, take down Orbán's hate-mongering propaganda, urge people to focus on their mental health. "It's not that I'm going to start dancing in Parliament, but I want (to) encourage people to adopt a healthy lifestyle...Go outside, dance, be together," he said. "The weight has begun to lift from people’s shoulders." America, weary, ravaged, hungry for peace, just imagine the miracle of it. And for now enjoy his glee.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Program (FTLRP), launched in 2000, sought to correct colonial-era land inequalities by redistributing land from approximately 4,500 white commercial farmers — who held over 70% of arable land — to millions of landless Black Zimbabweans. While rooted in legitimate grievances, the program’s hasty and often violent implementation triggered severe economic collapse, social disruption, and environmental degradation.

This case study examines the FTLRP’s historical context, motivations, and wide-ranging impacts, drawing critical lessons for future land reform efforts across Africa and beyond.

Read the case study here

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

Investment in Africa’s Agrifood Systems Is Growing—But Not Enough

A new joint report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa, the World Food Programme, and the African Union Commission finds that since 2018, the African continent has seen a general upward trend in government spending on agriculture, forestry, and fishing. In 2022, public expenditure in these sectors amounted to US$16 billion, up from US$12.6 billion in 2020 and US$14.6 billion in 2021. 

While encouraging, the investment is still not enough to meet targets for ending hunger and transforming food and agriculture systems in a region where hunger has increased for eight consecutive years. 

Private sector funding in the form of bank credit and foreign direct investment is particularly low and far below potential, the authors state. The perceived high risk of investing in food and agriculture markets remains a key barrier to financing solutions that can boost food and nutrition security for communities. 

That’s why the report urgently calls for public-private collaboration that will de-risk investments. Policy reforms that are inclusive of women and youth are needed as well. The report also identifies climate finance—which rose nearly 50 percent in two years—as an untapped opportunity if decisionmakers can align this funding with food systems transformation that builds resilience.

COP31 Presidency, IEA Team Up to Push Clean Energy

The COP31 Presidency recently announced a partnership with the International Energy Agency (IEA) to speed up the transition to clean energy. This comes during what IEA’s Executive Director Fatih Birol calls “the biggest energy crisis in history”

Murat Kurum, Turkey’s Minister of Environment, says that it will take collaboration to “transform the crisis into an opportunity.”

While details of the partnership are still limited, one of the most important pillars of this transition will focus on clean cooking, helping the roughly 2.3 billion people reliant on polluting fuels like charcoal, firewood, and waste switch to cleaner cooking solutions. This move can not only reduce emissions but also lower the associated negative health impacts.

The Environment Minister also shared that the IEA will conduct special research on the impact of recycling, which will inform the COP31 Presidency’s agenda on cutting emissions from waste—a top priority for Turkey. 

New South Wales Prepares for Food Waste Prevention Laws

Beginning July 1, sites in New South Wales that generate 3,960 liters of waste a week will be required to separate food waste from their general waste. This will impact larger operations including hotels, food courts, and other high-volume venues. 

By July 2028, the rules will apply to sites that produce at least 1,980 liters of waste per week. By 2030, it will apply to those generating at least 720 liters. 

Currently, households spend roughly AU$2,000 every year on food that goes uneaten. And by 2030, the government states that the country’s landfills will not be able to accept additional waste. 

The New South Wales Environment Protection Authority is offering programs and grants that will help businesses comply with the new laws. 

While their timelines vary, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, and Queensland are also moving toward circular economy frameworks that will prioritize diverting organic waste from landfills. 

Agricultural Cooperatives Offer Resilience and Hope

A new policy paper from the Co-operative Party finds that agricultural cooperatives could “unleash growth” and boost food security in the United Kingdom. 

At a time when the conflict is driving fuel and fertilizer prices higher, co-ops offer stability. By allowing farmers to pool resources, and share risks, and invest collectively, this model can improve resilience in the face of volatile input markets. 

Paul Gerrard, Director of public affairs at the Co-operative Group, says that a co-op “naturally lends itself to sharing costs and spreading risk” while making “the day-to-day fundamentals of farming more efficient.”

There are around 500 agricultural co-ops in the UK and around half of UK farmers are estimated to be members of a co-op of some kind. But the paper says there is “significant room for expansion.” A new Farming Roadmap for England, which will be published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). The report’s authors believe this Roadmap is an opportunity to formalize a commitment to expanding co-ops even further. 

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 Danie Kawed, Unsplash

The post Food Tank’s Weekly News Roundup: Australia Cracks Down on Food Waste, COP31 Pushes Clean Energy, Ag Co-ops Offer Hope appeared first on Food Tank.

As the legal battle continues over access to Mifepristone, commonly known as the abortion pill, National Nurses United demands an end to what nurses say is “an all-out class war against health care for women.” On May 4, the Supreme Court restored nationwide access to mifepristone by mail, pausing until at least May 11 a lower-court ruling in Louisiana v. FDA that had restricted it.

We reject the US-Israel War on Iran. We stand in solidarity with all those fighting back against the US’ escalating aggression – unnecessary, avoidable, and already unleashing profound destruction in global energy and food systems.

As fertilizer and energy prices surge, smallholder food producers bear the brunt of skyrocketing production costs, while large industrial agriculture corporations are positioned to capture windfall profits. This crisis has once again demonstrated that industrial agriculture is unable to reliably feed the world, echoing the disruptions seen in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Industrial agriculture – marked by fossil fuel-based synthetic fertilizers, import-dependence, export-orientation, deforestation driven global commodity chains – is fundamentally ill-equipped to cope with the recurrent shocks that now define our global reality. 

At the same time, the environmental costs of this system are becoming impossible to ignore. The widespread use of synthetic fertilizers drives ecosystem degradation, contaminates waterways, fuels harmful algal blooms, harms wildlife, creates dead zones in aquatic ecosystems, and contributes to soil degradation and biodiversity loss. Fertilizers are also responsible for some of the most dangerous agricultural emissions, releasing potent greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide and methane. 

Far from enhancing resilience, fertilizer-dependent industrial agriculture is actively undermining the ecological foundations on which food security depends. Fertilizers don’t feed people; they sustain an extractivist approach to food production where nearly half of the world’s grain, instead of feeding millions of hungry mouths in the Global South, is diverted to animal feed, propping up global industrial livestock production. 

The current crisis is a long-overdue indictment of the very foundations on which food economies are built, and a critical opportunity for transformation. What we are facing is no longer simply a matter of urgency. It is a question of survival. The continued reliance on fertilizer-intensive industrial agriculture is neither sustainable nor resilient. 

We must urgently phase out this model and transition toward equitable, humane and agroecological food systems, an approach based on food, land, and water recognised as fundamental rights–not mere commodities- that puts people, animals and our environment at the center. It can restore ecosystem health, reduce dependence on fossil-based inputs, and build resilient and locally adapted food systems. Only by making this shift can we secure true food security through food sovereignty and ensure that nutritious, affordable food remains accessible to all.

The post Statement: US-Israel War on Iran is Having Devastating Impact on Agriculture in Global South appeared first on Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice.

This article Mothers are the most underestimated force for change was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

When Trump won the first time in 2016, I drank shots of tequila in front of my computer and then passed out in anguish. When Trump won in 2024, I couldn’t do that. This time around, I was a mom. 

By afternoon on election day, the red shifts on the map became overpowering — and yet I still had to pick up my son from childcare. I had to get him dinner, sing songs in the bathtub and make up stories for his stuffed animals. I still had to create a world that was joyous, delicious and full of love even though I was horrified by the political present.  

This is a very particular muscle I have had to build since becoming a mother. It’s different than building a practice of hope. It’s beyond feelings and all about the tangible needs of life. It’s being able to turn hope into something physical even when deeply worn down. Moms, aunties, grandmothers and other caretakers — we have to pull ourselves off the couch and make the sandwiches and brush the hair. 

Every day, in the face of whatever the greater world holds, we build our own pockets where injustices are righted, love is given and joy is present. We calm down tantrums with love and humor. We teach lessons on sharing and taking turns. This complicated dynamic mothers must hold, of nurturing children while social injustice rages, is something I’ve seen resonate across social media recently, with many women commenting on the realities of keeping children loved and happy while the world burns. 

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Mothers are the everyday weavers of utopia. Philosophers, journalists, tech experts, Hollywood writers and pundits may throw up their hands and proclaim that our species is doomed, and yet in millions of homes around the world, mothers and caregivers are ensuring that on the contrary, we do live in a world of joy where resources are shared. The past few years of being a new mom have taught me we need to do more than survive; the real magic comes with what we co-create with our children — the evidence that a better world is possible. 

One of the unique aspects of motherhood is that, even while you’re dealing with the immediacy of food, shelter, joy, love, raising a human also means having one foot in the future. The writer and healer Prentis Hemphill said in a recent podcast episode, “Children as Sacred,” that “our culture actually seems to be anti-children and to me therefore anti the future. … What a child compels you to do is create, what a child compels you to do is nurture, to plant a seed, to think about what will grow beyond your life.”

This is no small feat, and might be one of the most underexamined sources of social change out there. Mothers are inherent futurists, just as gardeners are. Even when our children are in the womb, we have to be mindful of every chemical we come in contact with and what it could do to their development down the line. When our kids are growing up, we are constantly aware of how much of their future self is molded from the compendium of all the lessons we teach them. 

“Almost all of parenting is digging really deep for reserves when you are out of it,” said Jenny Zimmer, the co-executive director of the group Mothers Out Front. “Like you’re out of energy, you’re out of time, you’re out of patience, you’re exhausted, and you’re still finding the reserves to set [your kids] up for success.” 

It is this deep commitment to not just hoping for a better future, but knowing that it is formed through the actions we choose today, that directly links what we do now to what will become.

A better future is being built by the everyday work of caretakers to instruct the next generation that love and goodness can exist.

There’s nothing quite like the early years of motherhood for forcing people to realize they can’t do it all on their own. If you try to do all the things yourself, you will quickly break. It is with the village, the community that life gets a bit easier. “Mothers can do more because we know how to work together,” Zimmer noted. 

My formative activist years were working with the Burmese pro-democracy movement, and I remember witnessing women’s meetings where heavy discussions were held on moving aid to refugee camps, or monitoring elections — all while someone’s baby was being passed around from woman to woman. A group of women would chop up fruit to share, and others would help clean up. Communal care was the fundamental driver that allowed more women to step into leadership and peace-building. 

In Minneapolis and other cities besieged by ICE recently, it’s regularly mothers who are organizing food to deliver to those in need, raising money for affected families, forming safety patrols at kids’ schools and participating in ICE watches. Ashley Fairbanks helped start the group Stand with Minnesota, which is a center point of a lot of the mutual aid. In a recent interview with The Guardian, she said “We’re building a helper reflex where, instead of encountering a problem and saying that we can’t do anything, we’re just trying to do it.” 

There is so much to learn from mothers in Minnesota who are showing that the future can be better — by moving their anguished bodies to attend protests, deliver diapers and pick up their neighbors, and showing our children and our communities that we can operate with more humane ways of being. 

America does not have the best track record with positive visions of the future. The vast majority of films set in the future are dystopian, with a stalwart hero making their way through techno-fascism. In fact, when I tried to find films with a positive vision of the future, where humanity was able to come together and create something better — it’s pretty much just the “Star Trek” movies and “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” and even in those the vision of the future Earth is limited (“Star Trek” mostly takes place off Earth, and “Bill & Ted” gives us just a  few minutes’ glimpse of the peaceful future). 

What we need are the mother-filled stories of creation. How from small seeds, wondrous things can be born. Constructing a better future won’t come from some miracle technology that propels us forward. It comes from the everyday work of caretakers to instruct the next generation that love and goodness can exist.

Two directly opposed worldviews vying with each other in America right now are the much-publicized, hyper-individualized ideology of pseudo-macho tech oligarchs, and the quieter reality of mothers leaning into collective movements for a better world. A patriarchal worldview tells us that social change comes through highly publicized “wins” or technological silver bullets. 

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In my conversation with Zimmer, she spoke about how working with mothers has shifted her understanding of what social progress looks like. “I had to reframe victory in my mind from a big win to basically like a journey. There’s always going to be opposition,” she said. “And so when I think about bringing my kids into organizing spaces with me, it’s less that I want them to see my team win something. And it’s more that I want them to see that a good life is spent in a collective project of trying to make things good for everybody.”

A mother’s commitment is incalculable. Rebecca Solnit wrote to me that the concept of motherhood comes down to the idea that “there is a superpower in being absolutely unshakably committed to something/someone morally and in every other way, to your last breath, and because that commitment wants to see goodness all around, doesn’t it manifest goodness?” The future of this planet is being deeply shaped every day by caretakers moving forward with love and an unfeigned commitment to a better future. Once we recognize this for the superpower it is, we can build more systems that embrace its potential. 

If we start accepting that mothers are a powerful force for good, then we need to support systems that can scale their engagement. Mexico City has built 15 “Utopias,” large community centers aimed to take some of the burden off of low-income caregivers. Bogota, Colombia is experimenting with manzana del cuidado, or care blocks, which support caregivers by clustering services together. Many other countries are enacting policies like extended maternity and paternity leave, subsidized child care and health care benefits that help mothers be more able to engage with public life. 

It would be hugely beneficial to society if instead of isolating and limiting people who have a “helper reflex” superpower, we instead built more ways to expand the utilization of this skillset. Mothers are a crucial force for change, not only in our homes and communities, but on a much wider scale — if they have the support they need to unleash their superpowers.

This article Mothers are the most underestimated force for change was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

In a filing made public on Friday, ABC accused Federal Communications Commission regulators of violating its free-speech rights and called out FCC Chairman Brendan Carr for attempting to punish the broadcaster for airing political content that displeased the Trump White House.

The FCC had reportedly ordered Houston station KTRK-TV, which ABC owns and operates, to file a formal request asking whether The View qualified for the Equal Time Rule exemption when it booked an interview with Texas senatorial candidate James Talarico. The request wasn’t warranted as the FCC had specifically granted The View this exemption in a 2002 order.

The Equal Time Rule, under Section 315 of the Communications Act, requires that broadcast stations provide equal access and airtime to all legally qualified political candidates if they permit any one candidate to use their facilities. The rule does not apply to bona fide newscasts, news interviews, news documentaries or on-the-spot news events (like political debates).

“The Commission’s actions threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech, both with respect to The View and more broadly,” reads ABC’s filing. “It is therefore imperative that the Commission act quickly to assure broadcasters that it will uphold its long-established standards protecting broadcasters’ good faith news judgment in including political candidates in bona fide news programming.”

ABC has not always defended its free-speech rights. In December 2024, the company paid $15 million to resolve a meritless Trump defamation lawsuit against the network and its anchor George Stephanopoulos. In September 2025, Disney decided to temporarily suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night program after Chairman Carr threatened to take action following comments the comedian made during his opening monologue.

Free Press Co-CEO Jessica J. González said:

“I’m pleased that ABC has finally learned that bullies don’t stop when companies cower in a corner. The FCC chairman has blatantly and repeatedly abused his power to silence speech that displeases Trump. This doesn’t just violate the First Amendment rights of broadcasters on the receiving end of Brendan Carr’s tactics; it also harms the broadcasters’ audiences. People deserve access to diverse viewpoints over the airwaves, and the ways in which ABC and other broadcasters have repeatedly capitulated to the administration has chilled free expression and access to information.

“Chairman Carr’s overreach is startling and unpopular across the political spectrum. After Donald and Melania Trump demanded that ABC fire Jimmy Kimmel for making a joke they didn’t like, Carr announced that he would conduct an early review of ABC’s broadcast licenses — an abuse of power that Senator Ted Cruz and people of all political stripes condemned. I urge ABC and its parent company Disney to continue fighting for free speech. Doing anything less deprives audiences of the diversity of viewpoints that are critical to the health of a democracy.”

ABC is accusing the Federal Communications Commission of violating the First Amendment and chilling press freedom, in a regulatory filing in its dispute with the FCC over whether “The View” is a bona fide news program exempt from the agency’s equal time requirement.
The following can be attributed to Freedom of the Press Foundation Chief of Advocacy Seth Stern:

“We commend ABC for standing up for itself and the First Amendment. The legal theories the FCC asserts against broadcast licensees are frivolous and unconstitutional, and FCC Chair Brendan Carr knows it, but he hopes broadcast licensees will nonetheless self-censor rather than pick a fight.

“It’s about time news outlets start telling Carr and his Donald Trump lapel pin to kick rocks. Otherwise, he’ll continue manufacturing bogus pretexts to harass and jawbone licensees that air content his boss doesn’t like. News outlets should be emboldened after seeing The New York Times, Media Matters, The Washington Post, and others go on offense against the administration in court and win. Carr won’t stop until a judge forces him to, and hopefully ABC plans to make that happen, both here and in Carr’s equally ridiculous retaliatory license renewal proceeding in response to comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s jokes.”

Demand for key grid hardware has soared since 2019, due to large load growth, integration of new energy generation resources, and investment to modernize the aging grid. This demand is driving up equipment lead times and prices. In fact, if you need a large power transformer, you may have to wait up to four years. The stakes are high for American businesses and consumers: the grid supply chain crunch is already impacting utility bills, threatening reliability, and stalling critical projects, from power plants and data centers to new housing construction.

While recent investment announcements in domestic grid component manufacturing will help ease shortages in the coming years, these developments on their own are not enough to secure America’s grid supply chain. Policymakers can leverage a range of proven industrial policy tools to boost the capacity, coordination, and competitiveness of US grid component manufacturing. Addressing the gridlock is an opportunity to reinvigorate domestic manufacturing, strengthen US energy security, improve energy affordability, and propel economic growth.

The post Solving the Gridlock: America’s Electric Supply Chain Opportunity appeared first on RMI.

Registered nurses at Bay Area Kaiser facilities will hold a rally at Kaiser San Francisco Medical Center on Monday, May 11, to protest Kaiser’s plan to terminate nurses who are DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, recipients waiting for the federal government to renew their work documents.