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California lawmakers pass bill to create landmark ‘non-ultra-processed’ food label Iris Myers August 26, 2026

SACRAMENTO – Today the California Legislature took a major step toward protecting public health by passing a first-of-its-kind bill to create a certified “non-ultra-processed” food label intended to make it easier for consumers to choose less-processed foods in the grocery store.

Assembly Bill 2244, authored by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino), would develop a state certification program for products that are not ultra-processed, or UPF. If enacted, it would create a new standardized and government-backed seal for non-UPF foods.

It would also require some of the largest grocery stores to highlight these products in store so they’re easier for shoppers to identify. 

The Environmental Working Group is cosponsoring the bill, which now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk for his signature.

“Parents shouldn’t need a Ph.D. in chemistry to understand what they’re feeding their kids,” said Gabriel. 

“AB 2244 will empower consumers with clear, trustworthy information and make it easier for them to locate healthier foods that are free from harmful additives. This new seal doesn’t limit consumer choice, it just makes informed choice possible,” he added.

A new standard for healthier food

Under AB 2244, the state would create a standardized label bearing the phrase “Non-Ultraprocessed Certified.” Products would not be permitted to carry the new label if they are classified as UPF under state law. 

Some types of food, such as substances or additives used to manipulate taste and quality, would not qualify for the new label. These food chemicals, such as dyes, flavor enhancers, non-sugar sweeteners and processing aids, are used to make food hyperpalatable and irresistible. 

AB 2244 builds on a precedent-setting earlier law by Gabriel. AB 1264 set the first U.S. legal definition of UPF and banned the worst UPF from K-12 public schools. 

If Newson signs AB 2244, the California Department of Public Health would oversee approved agents’ independent certification of products that meet the state’s non-UPF standard and qualify to use the label. 

AB 2244 would direct the department to accredit these third-party agents no later than June 1, 2029. It would also require product recertification at least every three years.

“This is about setting a higher bar for what we consider healthy food and helping consumers make wise choices,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, EWG senior vice president for California. 

“Consumers deserve labels they can trust. And families deserve a simple way to tell which foods are closer to what comes from a kitchen rather than a factory.”

“If enacted, the bill would establish a state-verified seal for foods free from the additives, emulsifiers, food dyes and flavors that have come to define the modern American diet,” she added.

Transparency and accountability

The bill includes these strong oversight and transparency measures:

• Certification agents must register with the state and disclose all certified products
• The state can audit certification records at any time
• The state would maintain a public, online list of certified products 
• Misuse of the label would be illegal and subject to enforcement

These provisions are designed to ensure the label’s credibility.

Making healthier choices easier

In addition to creating the label, the bill would require large food retailers to display certified products carrying the label in a way that’s easy for consumers to identify, such as through special signage or physical separation within the store.

This requirement would apply to any grocery store that sells more than 25 individual non-UPF-certified product types and brings in more than $10 million in annual sales. 

Addressing the rise of UPF

UPF are industrially manufactured, chemically modified products often made with harmful additives to enhance taste, texture, appearance and shelf life. 

In the U.S., these foods make up more than two-thirds of children’s diets and more than half the typical adult diet.

Experts say ultra-processed food and drinks, particularly soda, are engineered to trick people into consuming more than they want.

Scientific research has linked diets high in UPF to serious health harms, including cancer, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, metabolic disorders such as Crohn’s disease and fatty liver disease, and mental health issues.

Obesity is chief among the health problems linked to UPF. Rates of obesity in the U.S. and globally have skyrocketed in tandem with the rising UPF consumption.

Help for consumers

Despite these concerns, consumers have no clear, standard labeling system to help them identify UPF.

With federal regulators slow to update oversight of food additives and processing, states are increasingly taking action to protect public health.

AB 2244 builds on California’s leadership in addressing harmful food chemicals and improving transparency for consumers. 

“Because companies are not required to disclose an ingredient’s purpose, it can be really difficult even for experts, even for people like me who have a doctoral degree in nutrition, to look at a food package and determine whether a food is ultra-processed or not,” said Alyssa Moran, ScD, MPH. 

Moran is deputy director of the Center for Food and Nutrition Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

“And from a behavioral science perspective, we also know people seldom use information on the back of food packages to make food decisions. So that is exactly why clear, science-backed labels on the front of food packages can be so influential in helping people to make better choices,” Moran said.

“If we want to meaningfully curb disease, we need a suite of complementary policies that limit the availability of ultra-processed foods, while promoting non-ultra-processed alternatives. I firmly believe this is the only way we’ll make progress,” she added.

Consumers can consult EWG’s Food Scores database to find products that are less processed. Food Scores also flags unhealthy ultra-processed food and drinks and can help identify alternatives.

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

Areas of Focus Food Ultra-Processed Foods Food Chemicals California UPF labeling legislation now heads to Gov. Newsom’s desk Press Contact Iris Myers iris@ewg.org (202) 939-9126 August 28, 2026

Haiti through the eyes of a peasant woman and activist from Tèt Kolé, a member organization of LVC. From the countryside, she speaks to us about food sovereignty, agrarian reform, feminism and resistance, and shows us another side of Haiti, far from the dominant narratives.

The post Haiti: “We are the ones who produce food, we are the force of the land and of life.” appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Fairplay Executive Director Josh Golin released the following statement today:

“This is a watershed moment for the growing movement to protect children from addictive and dangerously designed social media. In addition to a significant financial penalty, the state attorneys general have secured the most significant injunctive relief yet from Meta, including a number of measures to protect young people’s sleep, such as disabling Instagram overnight for minors’ accounts. The settlement also requires disabling addictive and harmful features like displays of like counts and plastic surgery filters and new guardrails to protect children from predatory adults. We also greatly appreciate that Meta will be required to identify both under-13 and under-18 users without infringing on the privacy of adults. We thank the state attorneys general for their historic leadership in fighting for our children’s safety and well-being online.

“This settlement also underscores the need for KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act. As internal documents have shown over and over, Meta and other social media companies deliberately design their products to addict kids, and that is the root cause of so many mental health difficulties and serious online harms for minors. While it’s gratifying to see state attorneys general take action to hold companies like Meta accountable, we also need our federal government to step in to force these companies to make their products safe for kids by design so that every child on every platform will be protected, both now and in the future. KOSA has robust, bipartisan support from over three-quarters of the US Senate. We call on Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Charles Schumer to bring the bill to the floor for a vote next month.”

Climate change has reduced snowpack by 36 percent and streamflow by 13 percent across the western United States, and more than half of those impacts have been triggered by emissions from fossil fuel companies and cement manufacturers, according to a new report released today by University of California, Merced and Union of Concerned Scientists. Additionally, the report ties one-tenth of the observed groundwater loss in California’s Central Valley directly to emissions from these companies. In response, Aaron Regunberg, director of Public Citizen’s Climate Accountability Project, issued the following statement:

“Millions of Americans are experiencing historic water scarcity. We now know that a small number of fossil fuel companies are responsible for a significant portion of this disaster. And they knew full well what they were doing. Already in 1988, companies like Shell were issuing internal reports predicting that climate change—caused by the burning of their fossil fuel products—would create ‘significant changes’ in ‘precipitation patterns’ that ‘would impact on the human environment, future living standards and food supplies’ and could have ‘major social, economic, and political consequences.’ Yet fossil fuel companies lied to the public about this reality for decades, and continue to block the climate action we need to address this crisis. These companies need to face accountability.”

© Anthropological Survey of IndiaA key UN body has urged the Indian government to suspend the controversial Great Nicobar project, in a major blow to the scheme’s reputation. #

“We lose more than half of everything that we expected to be able to build with the combination of market forces and proactive policy,” said Amanda Levin, NRDC’s director of policy analysis.

This was an international webinar for the People's Climate Summit held in Antalya, Turkey, parallel to COP31 in November, featuring Max Wilbert (CELDF's Co-coordinator of the Community Resistance & Resilience Program and author of Biocentric) as the main speaker.

The post Greenwashing: The Central Strategy of Next-Generation Industrialism with Max Wilbert appeared first on CELDF - Community Rights Pioneers - Protecting Nature and Communities.

This article is part of Food Tank’s primer series, “Food Tank Explains.” Each installment unpacks the ideas, innovations, and challenges shaping today’s food and agriculture systems, offering clear insights into complex topics. To explore more articles in the series, click here.

Food fraud is the intentional deception regarding a food or food ingredient for economic gain. These practices include substituting a cheaper or unauthorized ingredient, misrepresenting a product’s quality or origin, or otherwise altering what buyers believe they are purchasing. Fraud can occur anywhere along the food supply chain, from raw materials and ingredients to finished products, labels, and packaging.

Food fraud, which the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization describes as an uncomfortable and unfortunate part of agrifood systems, takes many deceptive forms, each posing unique public health, economic, and environmental risks.

Adulteration is the addition of unauthorized and often harmful substances, while substitution and dilution involve replacing or reducing a valuable ingredient with a cheaper alternative—mixing lower-cost vegetable oil into olive oil, adding inexpensive syrups to honey, or selling a cheaper fish species as a more expensive one.

Mislabeling misrepresents characteristics such as a food’s identity, origin, quality, or production method. Examples include selling conventional products as organic or farmed seafood as wild-caught. Other common forms of food fraud include fraudulent packages resembling popular products, and the sale of stolen or diverted products.

These practices pose significant risk to food safety and public health. Undeclared substituted ingredients can expose consumers to allergens, while adulterants may introduce toxic substances.

In 2023, hundreds of U.S. children were poisoned after consuming applesauce made with cinnamon adulterated with lead chromate, a lead-based pigment used to enhance color. Formalin, a product used to preserve human bodies, is illegally used to preserve meat and milk, and has been linked to cancers of the nasal cavity and leukemia.

Methanol, a product typically used in a variety of industrial and household products, is added to alcohol to increase the alcohol content. According to a Médecins Sans Frontières database, ethanol-adulterated alcohol has caused more than 1,000 poisoning incidents in over 80 countries, with consequences including permanent blindness, brain damage, and death.

Responding to food fraud imposes a significant burden on the global economy and food producer livelihoods. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) estimates US$10–15 billion per year, while noting that more recent estimates reach US$40 billion. According to the World Trade Organization, food fraud can also create an unfair competitive advantage for fraudulent businesses, diverting significant revenue from legitimate producers.

“Consumers are falling victim to a bait and switch, and the fishers who play by the rules are paying the price,” says Max Valentine, campaign director of Oceana’s illegal fishing and transparency campaign in the United States.

Food fraud can also pose significant environmental risks. The unreported use of highly toxic chemicals and pesticides in food production, and the proliferation of illegal and unregulated fishing, is driving overfishing and biodiversity loss.

And food fraud erodes confidence in the food system. Food supply chains rely on businesses, regulators, and consumers being able to trust representations about what products contain and where they come from, and deliberate falsification undermines that trust.

New and improving technologies are expanding the tools available to identify fraud. Analyzing chemical bonds or isotopes can now be used to assess a product’s composition or geographic origin, according to research published in Trends in Food Science & Technology.

According to the FDA, analytical DNA sequencing and barcoding can help detect species substitution in products such as seafood. And emerging tools such as portable testing equipment and machine-learning models may allow faster authenticity checks.

Traceability technologies can also create more detailed records as products move through supply chains. The more data collected and added to the blockchain, the harder it is for a company to lie about their product, Jayson Berryhill, Co-Founder of Envisible, tells Food Tank. “You have an immutable ledger of what was claimed at a certain time, which creates a disincentive for fraud,” Berryhill says.

But prevention and detection remain a global challenge. Fraudulent practices are designed to escape notice, and fraudulent products often closely resemble authentic ones in appearance, taste, and composition. And, according to research published in the Journal of Food Protection and PNAS, increasingly complex, opaque, and global food supply chains are amplifying opportunities for fraudulent practices.

According to FAO, the FDA, and research published in Trends in Food Science & Technology and Food Packaging and Shelf Life, technology cannot prevent food fraud on its own. Data and data-based tools are unlikely to be a complete solution because food fraud ultimately involves human behavior, FAO explains. A response requires a blend of regulatory measures, enforcement, industry cooperation, and consumer education, according to the World Trade Organization.

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 Vitaly Gariev

The post Food Tank Explains: Food Fraud appeared first on Food Tank.

A study from Scotland found that living near an accessible urban woodland significantly lowered the likelihood of being prescribed antidepressants.

Read more on E360 →

The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) invites applications from qualified African researchers to support the first phase of the African Food Baskets initiative. Ten Country Researchers will be selected—one from each participating country—to document the foods, dishes, beverages, recipes, food sources, menus, stories, proverbs and cultural knowledge that shape their country’s food heritage.

The initiative forms part of the TAFS Project, funded by Sida, and contributes to AFSA’s My Food Is African campaign. It aims to preserve and promote African food knowledge while building a continental resource for advocacy, research, education, communication and policy engagement.

The first phase will cover ten countries, selected to ensure regional balance across Africa and representation of Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone contexts. The final list of participating countries will be determined after the applications have been reviewed.

Using the African Food Baskets KoboToolbox Toolkit, selected researchers will work with communities and local knowledge holders to document their country’s food basket. The assignment will include community engagement, field data collection, photography, validation of findings, and submission of a complete country data package and brief narrative report.

Applications must be submitted to afsa@afsafrica.org by 6 September 2026 and may be submitted in English, French or Portuguese.

Please refer to the full Terms of Reference (TOR) for details on the scope of work, eligibility criteria, deliverables, timeline, selection process and application requirements.

Download the Terms of Reference:
[English] | [French]

The US is expected to resume its attempt to sink measures for a greener global shipping sector at closed-door talks between governments at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in early September.

The US and oil-producing allies like Saudi Arabia want to weaken a proposed plan for cleaner fuels that aims to reduce planet-heating emissions from the industry, which relies heavily on dirty bunker fuels. Shipping currently represents 3% of global emissions.

Those that want a softer system are likely to back a Liberian proposal which expert analysis suggests would see emissions fall by only half at most by 2050, far short of the sector’s agreed climate goals.

After several years of debate, governments provisionally agreed in April 2025 on the “Net-Zero Framework” (NZF), a series of emissions reduction targets for shipowners, backed up with financial rewards for meeting the targets and fees for missing them.

But in October 2025, after a high-profile intervention from US President Donald Trump and threats of sanctions and visa restrictions, the US convinced a majority of voting nations to postpone the adoption of the NZF for a year.

Ralph Regenvanu, climate minister for the Pacific nation of Vanuatu, called the delay “unacceptable” given the urgency of accelerating climate change.

After a round of low-profile talks in May, the first of three further sets of talks on how to clean up shipping will begin at the IMO’s riverside headquarters in London on Tuesday, culminating in a final public session in November.

Em Fenton, who follows the talks as senior director of climate diplomacy at Opportunity Green, an NGO focused on aviation and shipping, said governments should not be sidetracked by alternative proposals to the NZF, calling them “a distraction from a hard-fought multilateral compromise”.

“If countries want to deliver a just and fair maritime transition, there is really only one choice: back the NZF and stand together in solidarity against those who would tear it apart,” Fenton added.

Five proposals on the table

Governments will discuss five different proposals submitted in advance of next week’s meeting. The most ambitious of these is from the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, which has proposed a levy on the entirety of a ship’s emissions rather than just those above a certain level, as the NZF envisions.

That had been the original demand of Pacific nations before the NZF was provisionally adopted in April 2025. At the time, Tuvalu’s transport minister Simon Kofe described the NZF as disappointing and not ambitious enough.

For this reason, six Pacific countries abstained in the vote on the NZF. While they supported the original plan for its adoption in October 2025, they have used the delay to push again for more ambition.

John Kautoke, advisor to a group of Pacific nations called 6PAC+, told Climate Home News that the NZF “cannot diminish its already inadequate ambition. If anything, the NZF must increase in ambition if we are going to renegotiate its parameters.”

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Analysis by the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST) suggests that, of the five proposals, only Tuvalu’s would meet the 2030 and 2040 emissions reduction targets for global shipping that were agreed by governments in 2023. Those were for cuts of 20% between 2008 and 2030, 70% by 2040 and then reaching net zero “by or around, i.e. close to 2050”.

Despite this, the UK, Australia, Canada and South Africa have formally proposed that governments adopt the NZF, which won support in a 63-13 vote among governments at the April 2025 talks. Trump’s US walked out halfway through.

According to IMarEst’s analysis, while the NZF proposal will not be enough to meet the industry’s targets, it will reduce emissions more cheaply than the Pacific proposal.

A proposal by Brazil – which fought hard for the NZF last October – suggests tweaking the framework to make meeting targets easier in the short term and harder in the long term.

While this compromise will make it more appealing to the owners of polluting ships and countries that support them, IMarEst estimates it would lead to higher cumulative emissions than either the NZF or Pacific proposals.

The NZF stipulates that fees for high-polluting shipowners should be be put into a Net Zero Fund and used to promote clean shipping fuels and a fairer transition. The Brazilian proposal would delay raising and spending these funds by two years, from 2029 to 2031.

Liberia’s proposal weakens emissions cuts

The US and Saudi Arabia are likely to swing behind a new proposal from Liberia, whose government makes millions of dollars a year selling the right for shipowners to register their vessels in the small West African nation via a US-based company.

This proposal would weaken the emissions reduction targets. IMarEst says it would cut the industry’s emissions at most by a half by 2050, falling far short of the target agreed in 2023 for international shipping to reach net zero “close to 2050”.

It would also replace the NZF’s fees for missing targets with a carbon trading system. As a result, there would be no Net Zero Fund and therefore less money available to incentivise green fuels and make the transition more equitable for poorer nations.

Pacific advisor Kautoke said that, as well as preventing shipping from reaching zero emissions by 2050, Liberia’s proposal would mean the Pacific “will not receive any support to deal with the disproportionately negative impacts created by the cost of the transition”.

“We get a double blow if we adopt the Liberian proposal,” he warned. “We get all the cost of a transition without any support, and we have an industry that continues to burn fossil fuels to an unforeseen point.”

Japanese proposal favours shipowners

Japan has submitted a late proposal to amend the NZF so that shipowners have more control over how the fees they would pay for emitting above a set threshold are spent.

University College London professor Tristan Smith has argued that this change means there will be no central mechanism to incentivise investments in clean fuels. He wrote on LinkedIn that under the system put forward by Japan, shipowners would be able to select which green projects their fees would go to. They could choose their own or those of a sister company or other shipowners, rather than funding broader just transition projects that would benefit marine workers or developing countries hit by rising shipping costs.

Despite its flaws, Smith added that Japan’s proposal “could still get taken seriously by some, given how appealing it may seem to shipowners who have consistently demanded control of revenues, and given how the US and other member states have pushed back against the IMO Net Zero Fund and [greenhouse gas] pricing.”

Tacit or explicit approval?

Next week, governments are expected to make statements saying which proposals – or which aspects of proposals – they prefer. Another set of talks will be held from November 23-27 before a potentially final round from November 30-December 4.

A new framework to tackle shipping emissions could be adopted at those talks if two-thirds of countries that are present and signed up to a regulation called Marpol Annex VI – endorsed by just over 100 states – vote in favour of it, as they did in April 2025.

The US and its allies are also trying to change the rules to make the next stage more difficult. Decisions that have been adopted at IMO meetings usually take effect automatically unless a certain number of countries object within a certain time period decided by governments, a system known as tacit approval.

But the US wants that to require explicit approval instead, so that any new emissions standard would not come into force unless enough governments – representing a certain percentage of the world’s shipping fleet – actively indicate support for it.

Critics say this change would give a small number of countries with large shipping registries the power to block implementation. Liberia has the world’s biggest shipping registry, run by an American company, followed by Panama and the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

Liberia and Panama have supported the US at the talks on the Net-Zero Framework. The Marshall Islands has long been one of the most vocal supporters of climate action in shipping but, with its officials and shipping registry income vulnerable to US retaliation, did not sign on to the recent Pacific proposal vowing to strengthen the NZF if it is re-opened.

Brazilian negotiator Adriana de Medeiros Gabinio warned in April that the NZF’s opponents are trying to change the rules by which it comes into force as a “safety net to block” it.

The post Battle over cleaning up shipping set to resume at London talks appeared first on Climate Home News.

Headline News:

• “Is Maine Finally About To Make Wind Power Happen?” • For nearly two decades, Maine has tried to build utility-scale wind in the northern reaches of the state. Utility regulators just brought that vision a little closer to reality by choosing an 800-MW wind farm proposal and a 1.2-GW transmission line plan from the bids it received earlier this year. [Canary Media]

Moose in Maine (US FWS, CC BY-SA 2.0)

• “Mongolia Positions Itself As Asia’s Next Data Centre Hub” • Mongolia is positioning itself as a global data centre hub, signing agreements for 863 MW of data centre capacity on the sidelines of a UN conference on desertification that had 197 delegations in Ulaanbaatar. Mongolia offers cheap renewable energy, a cold climate for cooling, and lots of land. [Euronews]
• “Homes In London Are Cracking As The Clay They Are Built On Shrinks” • The soil in most of greater London is clay, which is highly sensitive to variations in moisture content. When the clay gets dry, it shrinks. This summer, as London went through five intense heatwaves, that shrinking happened in many parts of the city, and it damaged homes. [CleanTechnica]
• “Korea To Build Renewables Equal To 45 Nuclear Reactors By 2040” • South Korea will expand renewable energy capacity to 220 GW by 2040, the government said. Assuming utilization rates of 80% for nuclear power, 20% for solar, and 30% for wind, that is roughly the amount of electricity 45 nuclear reactors could generate. [Seoul Economic Daily]
• “A ‘Jungle’ Grows In The Arctic, But Warming Is Changing Earth’s Mini-Greenhouse” • Up close, “the tundra’s kind of like the jungle,” said one plant biology student. Researchers are studying this ten-inch-tall jungle to see how climate change is affecting it. Will its plants evolve to cooperate or to compete in the new conditions? [ABC News]

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

In June 2025, Donald Trump sent thousands of ICE agents into Los Angeles to show that he could carry out mass deportations in the national stronghold of the Latinx and immigrant rights movement. But mass militant action defeated Trump, and he was forced to withdraw most of his agents from LA.

Four months later, Trump sent his thugs into Chicago, another stronghold of the Latinx and immigrant rights movement, hoping for the decisive victory that had eluded him in LA. But once again, mass, militant action stopped him, and he was forced to withdraw most of his thugs from that city.

In September, Trump’s high command, such as it was, met to assess the lessons of LA and Chicago and to prepare for an even more massive attack to win the decisive victory that they still hoped for. As part of those discussions, they discussed the legal attacks that they used in LA and Chicago to weaken the movement by arresting, prosecuting, and jailing its leaders and militants, and formulated an even more draconian policy. Using Charlie Kirk’s death as a pretext, this policy was announced in the National Security Presidential Memorandum Number 7 (NSPM-7), which Trump signed on September 25, 2025.

In words that fall somewhere between those of Joe McCarthy and Adolph Hitler, NSPM-7 declared that the “attacks” on ICE officers” and the protests against ICE and the regime were the product of “sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats and violence.” NSPM ordered the relevant federal agencies to investigate “all participants in these terroristic conspiracies” and “the networks, entities, organizations, funding sources and predicate actions behind them.” It directed the attorney general to devise a plan to arrest and prosecute the militants and “disband and uproot” the networks and organizations that had supported the “violence.”

In words, NSPM-7 targeted antifa, but its description of antifa made clear that it targeted the Left and the entire movement:

Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; extremism on migration, race and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion and morality.

Following the dictates of NSPM-7, Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the Justice Department, the FBI, and other federal law enforcement to attack the movement with every method that had been used against organized crime. She ordered all U.S. attorneys to charge “violent” protesters with the “most serious, readily provable offenses,” to refuse to offer pleas to lesser offenses, and, if a conviction resulted, to ask the court to impose the highest sentence permitted by law.4Trump’s order also ordered Bondi and other agency heads to act against non-profit and other organizations who supposedly encouraged the “violence.” The regime has recently published proposed regulations to do that, and while that attack is important, for reasons of space, this article does not address that question.

In words, NSPM-7 was the most serious legal attack on the Left and the progressive movement since Nixon’s COINTELPRO. In fact, its objectives went far beyond COINTELPRO, because a plan for ethnic cleansing backed up by a plan to “disband and uproot” the organizations that oppose the ethnic cleansing” is a distinctly fascist plan.

The threats represented in NSPM-7 are ominous, but while we must take them seriously, we cannot be mesmerized by Trump’s words. On many occasions, labor, civil rights, and other movements have defeated unjust prosecutions and rendered unjust laws unenforceable by organizing mass action against them. We must thus examine not only the words of the decree but whether the regime has the material means and the political support needed to carry out that decree.

On that crucial point, on the day Trump signed NSPM-7, large sections of the Latinx and immigrant communities and of the working and middle class already opposed ICE and Trump. They knew that Trump’s claim to be fighting “violence” was a lie because they had seen him pardon the 1600 thugs who had marauded through the Capitol and had seen him cheer on the right-wing terrorists who had murdered and threatened their way across the country. Most of all, they had seen ICE drag immigrants from homes and cars and beat them on the streets.

Soon, they saw much worse in Minneapolis, as countless videos showed ICE agents murder Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and the growing opposition also listened as Trump slandered the victims and announced that neither the federal nor the state governments would investigate those murders. Even more importantly, people saw mass resistance and the semi-general strike that forced Trump to withdraw most of his thugs from the city.

Ten months after Trump signed NSPM-7, his political support had dropped dramatically—and as that support fell, it had a dramatic effect on the regime’s ability to sustain the legal prosecutions it had filed under NSPM-7.

Trump had hoped that his prosecutions would force protesters to submit. In most places, however, the opposite occurred. Brave protesters, facing federal indictments for the first time in their lives, stood up. Despite burdens on their finances, health, families, and personal lives, they continued to fight as the legal proceedings dragged on. Defense committees sprang up to defend them, and lawyers came forward to help. Mistakes were made, and there will be time to evaluate those mistakes, but on a national scale, the overall effort defeated Trump’s plan to disrupt and uproot the movement.

Uneven outcomes

There were different outcomes in individual cases and in different areas. Since it is impossible to review each case and each area, this article will review the prosecutions in   Prairieland, Texas, where the movement was weak, and in LA, Chicago, and Minneapolis, where the movement was exceptionally strong.

As we will see, in Prairieland the policies of NSPM-7 led to one of the greatest legal outrages in U.S. history. In the main Prairieland trial, the federal government convicted ten people and sentenced them to a total of 450 years in prison for a ten-person demonstration in which common fireworks were set off, a few cars were vandalized, and a single protester may or may not have shot and wounded a police officer who was aiming his gun at another fleeing protester. Prairieland is the true face of Trumpism, and while it has not been exposed as fully as it should be, we will show the lies and the extreme brutality that the regime used to attack the movement.

As we will also see, there were very different results in LA, Chicago, and Minneapolis. In those cities, the regime arrested and indicted hundreds of protesters on various felony charges, but the movement against ICE and Trump in those cities penetrated deeply into the middle and working classes and thus into the overwhelming majority of those who served as grand jurors and jurors. As Trump bellowed out his usual threats, a silent rebellion grew in which the grand jurors, jurors, and even some judges rejected indictments, acquitted defendants, or dismissed the charges. That, in turn, led to prosecutors dismissing cases that they could not win. There were some convictions, but as defendant after defendant walked free, Trump’s threat to disrupt and uproot the movement turned into mere words.

The movement2In this article, the term “movement”  describes the more-or-less open protests and opposition to ICE. It is critical to recognize that there is another and much larger movement against ICE among the Latinx and other immigrant communities and specifically among the undocumented immigrants in those communities. That movement resists ICE in many ways, but it’s not possible to  record here the regime’s persecution of it because it is largely subsumed in the ICE arrests and deportation campaign which is shrouded in secrecy. needs to understand how the regime won its brutal victory in Prairieland and how it lost in LA, Chicago, and Minneapolis because the lessons learned are vital in the struggle against the pending indictments against anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis and pro-Palestinian protesters in Detroit, and in what the movement must do to prevent and defend against the prosecutions that are yet to come.

The movement needs to understand how the regime won its brutal victory in Prairieland and how it lost in LA, Chicago, and Minneapolis because the lessons learned are vital in the struggle against the pending indictments.

While the defense of the movement is the key focus of this article, if one looks closely at these events, one can see Marx’s Old Mole at work as actions by jurors and grand jurors reflect the growing hatred and militance from key sections of the working class and the oppressed and their desire action to end all of Trump’s attacks and of the system that gave birth to those attacks.

The tools of repression

In her Memo, Bondi provided a list of 22 specific crimes that federal law enforcement and the U.S. attorneys must consider for any individual who fell within the sweeping scope of NSPM-7.

The most common of those charges were federal felonies for interference with federal agents and destruction of federal property. For decades, state and local governments have used comparable charges to attack various movements, but Bondi directed the U.S. attorneys to file federal charges because she and Trump wanted to inflict as much punishment as possible on activists who dared to fight against ICE and Trump.

In addition to those charges, Bondi’s list included three federal crimes that had been enacted in the past specifically to punish militants and other opponents of the regime.

The first such crime is “riot,” which carries a maximum sentence of five years, and which Congress had enacted in the dying days of the Johnson Administration to prosecute Black activists who had supposedly incited the great urban rebellions of the 1960s. As with most reactionary statutes, it was written broadly so that it could be used to prosecute anyone who incited and took an overt step towards creating a riot in any assembly where three or more people were present. As we will see, Bondi stretched that crime beyond its limit in the Prairiewood prosecutions.

The second such crime is “providing material support to a terrorist act,” which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years. Enacted after September 11, it was aimed at those who assisted in sending the jets into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. As we will see, Bondi has stretched that crime beyond all recognition by charging the Prairieland protesters who set off fireworks—which contained about two tenths of a gram of gunpowder—with assisting a terrorist attack.

The third such crime is “conspiracy,” which has a reactionary history that stretches back to the early nineteenth century when it was used to prosecute labor unions and their officials. In essence, it says that if two or more persons agree to commit an unlawful act and one of them takes an act to further that agreement, any person in the conspiracy may be found guilty of any later unlawful act taken by another member of the conspiracy even if the person charged (a) had no role in that act (b) did not know the person who had committed that act, and (c) was not even present when that act occurred.

The three charges vastly increase the penalties that can be exacted for particular events, and all three of them authorize the regime to use informants, search warrants, grand juries and much else to rummage through public statements and private conversations to find random statements—including statements about a person’s political beliefs—that can be stitched together to prove intent to incite a riot or to provide aid to terrorism or a conspiracy to obstruct ICE.

In a trial on any of those charges, the judge will instruct the jury that an individual has the right to their own beliefs but will then say that to incite a riot, provide “material support” to terrorists, or agree with others to interfere with ICE extends beyond protected beliefs. As the line between protected beliefs and unprotected action is nebulous at best, the government will turn a trial on any of these charges into an attack upon the beliefs of the defendant and of any organization with which the defendant is associated.

The nightmare in Prairieland

The best way to describe the danger posed by NPSM-7 and the charges issued under its authorization is to tell the story of the horror that decree inflicted upon twenty-two people who were associated with a July 4 protest in front of ICE’s North Texas Detention Facility (“Prairieland”).

The ten protesters who were the central defendants in these cases did not tell their story in court because the defense decided not to call any witnesses. They believed that the prosecution’s case had been weak. The protesters, however, gave a detailed account of the events to a prize-winning reporter from the Texas Monthly. What follows is a summary of  the events based on his report and on reports from others who have reported on  the Prairieland cases.

The Prairieland facility is in Alvarado, Texas, a rural and ex-urban town of 8,000 located 35 miles south of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, where over 8 million people live. The ten protesters included Latinx and white people, many of whom were gay or trans. They lived in Dallas-Fort Worth; most were members of the Emma Goldman Book Club, the Socialist Rifle Association, and similar organizations; and all were part of the anarchist and left milieu.

In July 2025, they were angered by Trump’s attack on Los Angeles and discussed what they could do to assist undocumented immigrants in Texas. They soon settled on a plan to hold a noise demonstration outside Prairieland. They purchased some Roman candles and fireworks to make noise, scheduled the protest for 10:30 P.M. on July 4, and publicized the event on a Signal chat. Because Texas is an open-carry state with a large Klan presence, they decided to bring rifles, including AR-15s, for defense, but everyone agreed that the weapons would remain in the cars unless there was an armed threat.

After a short stop for some target practice and instructions on what to do in the event of an attack, they arrived at an assembly point near the ICE facility at about 10:00 P.M. Leaving the weapons in the cars, they walked towards Prairieland carrying the fireworks in a cooler. Unknown to most of the protesters, however, Benjamin Song, a former Marine reservist, remained behind and stood outside the grounds of the facility with an AR-15, which he planned to use if there was an attack on the protest.

At about 10:30 p.m. some of the other protesters began to set off Roman candles and other fireworks outside the security fence around the building. Not surprisingly, ICE officials in the facility called the local police. Two ICE employees also came out, saw the protesters, and asked them to leave. Many did just that. While most would agree that the entire event was an ill-advised and risky plan, to this point, no one had violated any state or federal law other than perhaps an unenforced local ordinance on the use of fireworks.

At some point, however, two protesters broke into a parking lot and began to spray-paint anti-ICE slogans on a guard shack and a few vehicles. As the two ICE agents outside the building pursued the two spray painters, a local police officer arrived. Knowing nothing about what had occurred, he immediately saw the smoke and two unknown individuals running by his car, one of whom wore a mask and was dressed in black. As he got out of his car, he drew his Glock and pointed it at the fleeing individuals, one of whom was a protester and the other of whom was an ICE employee chasing the protester. Holding his AR-15, Song appeared a distance away in the opposite direction. Suddenly, Song and the officer fired their weapons, and the officer was hit by a projectile in his upper left shoulder.

By this point, it is essentially undisputed that the two protesters  had broken federal law by damaging federal property. Far more seriously,  Song may have committed far more serious crimes if, as the prosecutor claimed, Song had shot at the officer for no reason. But if, as  Song claimed, he had shot in a different direction to distract the officer and the officer was unintentionally hit by a shot from his rifle or from the officer’s Glock, he may not have committed any federal crimes. In any event, there is no claim that any of the other nine people, some of whom had left the scene, had personally done anything unlawful.

But as other local, state, and federal police officers arrived at the scene, they arrested the protesters who were still on foot, those who had reached their cars, and those who had driven a short distance away from the scene. As the officers searched the cars, they found other weapons, bulletproof vests, and anarchist literature. In the following days, the local police and the FBI searched the homes of those who had been arrested, and they arrested and searched the homes of anyone who had communicated with those who had been arrested. Six days later, the police arrested Song. In total, the FBI, ICE, and the state and local police arrested and charged 22 people with various state and federal offenses.

From the initial arrest forward, the local police, the FBI, most of the media, the governor, and the Justice Department claimed that the ten protesters had used fireworks to lure ICE officials out of the building where the protesters could ambush them. Acting on the ambush theory, the state charged all ten people at the scene with assault on a police officer, organized criminal activity, and aiding in the commission of terrorism. The federal government charged all ten with attempted murder of two ICE officers and of the local police officer. And the Department of Homeland Security issued and widely publicized a statement that said that “On Independence Day, a group of approximately 15 rioters violently attacked and shot at the brave law enforcement operating ICE Prairieland Detention Center that houses monsters including pedophiles, human traffickers, murderers, and terrorists.”

This case [Prairieland] was almost tailor-made for NSPM-7.

This case was almost tailor-made for NSPM-7. In October, the federal government obtained an indictment that charged all ten protesters with inciting a riot, providing material support to terrorists, conspiring to use an explosive in a criminal act (i.e., the fireworks), and using that explosive in the commission of that crime.The case went to trial in February before an extremely conservative judge who had been appointed by Trump. To prove its case, the U.S. attorney paraded across the stand every officer who had been near the scene and introduced into evidence every AR-15 and bulletproof vest that had been found. Snatching every stray remark that it could find, the government said the ten protesters had all been part of the plot to ambush ICE officers and local police.From the beginning, however, there were significant holes in the heart of the government’s case. How could this all have been a plot to assassinate officers when the protesters had almost cordial conversations with the two ICE officers who had left the building? And why did many protesters leave due to that conversation? Likewise, how could this event have been a plot to ambush officers, when all but one of the protesters left their weapons in their cars, and none had even attempted to retrieve those weapons? And how could all ten be guilty of inciting a riot when the only persons whom they could “incite” were two ICE officers and a local police officer? And how could any protester other than Song be guilty of attempted murder of the two ICE officers or the local police officer when they had not even been near Song when he shot his rifle? As to Song himself, there were other questions, but to all of them the prosecution had only one answer.

These defendants, it said, were all anarchists. Even though none of the literature or the chats had ever mentioned the name “North Texas Anti-Fascist Cell”—and even though there was no evidence that a group by that name even existed—the prosecutors insisted that every protester was a member of that group. In any event, all of them  (or at least most of them) wore black, used an encrypted messaging service (Signal), and used various names on that service. And if that was not enough to show that they planned serious breaches of the law, all (or maybe most) of them were members of the Emma Goldman Book Club.

To fill in any blanks left by that presentation, the prosecution called as an “expert” an individual who worked for a security center which the Southern Poverty Law Center had called an anti-Muslim hate group. The judge allowed the “expert” to read inflammatory passages from Goldman, similar passages from various anarchist zines found in the defendants’ cars or homes, and from stickers with headlines like “Make America Not Exist Again” and “Fight ICE with class war.” The judge also allowed the expert to testify to what other “anarchists” had done in other anti-ICE protests elsewhere in the county and to read to the jury the definition of anarchism and terrorism from NSPM-7, which the President himself had signed.

If all that was not enough, the prosecution sprinkled in references that some of the protesters were gay and others were transgender, and that was why some of the defendants used “aliases.”

While the judge let all that in, he rejected key claims on behalf of Song. As stated, Song claimed that he had shot in a different direction and that the officer must have been hit by a ricochet. But when it was revealed in testimony that an officer had found ballistic evidence that suggested that a shot had ricocheted off a nearby pavement, the judge refused to dismiss the case against Song even though the prosecution had not revealed that crucial fact to the defense until the middle of the trial.

Despite those rulings, as a matter of logic, the government had presented an exceptionally weak case against Song but even more so against the other nine people. But the problem was that the prosecution’s multi-faceted political diatribe—which amplified what the media, the police, the governor, and the president had long been saying—overrode logic. The jury found everyone who had been at the protest guilty of inciting a riot, providing material support to terrorism, and conspiracy to use an explosive device during a crime. It also found Song guilty of attempted murder of the local officer, although it acquitted him of the charge that he had attempted to murder the two ICE officers, and significantly, acquitted the other nine defendants of the charge that they had aided or abetted Song in shooting at the officer.

The problem was that the prosecution’s multi-faceted political diatribe—which amplified what the media, the police, the Governor, and the President had long been saying—overrode logic.

At the prosecution’s request, the court sentenced Song to 100 years in prison, the other persons who had been present to 50 years, and a person who had not been present but who had removed a box of zines from a home to 30 years. Following the sentencing, the U.S. Attorney issued a public statement praising Trump’s NSPM and bragging that his office had convicted a total of “15 Prairieland terrorists” who were sentenced to a total of 556 years in prison.

The Prairieland trials were held in Fort Worth, Texas, but they should have been held in Salem, Massachusetts, a  city historically associated with convicting people because of who they supposedly were and what they supposedly believed.

The Prairieland trial was a poster child for NSPM-7 and showed what the Trump regime would do to destroy opposition to its program of mass deportations and to maintain Trump’s power and money. Freeing the Prairieland defendants must be a key task of our movement.

Part two of this article will take up Trump’s reversals in Southern California and the Midwest.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; modified by Tempest.

The post Trump’s legal conspiracy (part one) appeared first on Tempest.

CALGARY — New independent analysis from the Pembina Institute explores the impact of Meta’s new hyperscale data centre on Alberta’s electricity market, and concludes that this project could add between $270 and $460 dollars a year to Albertans’...

New analysis from the Pembina Institute estimates that between 2027 and 2031 an average Albertan household is at risk of paying an additional $267 to $462 per year for electricity once the new Meta data centre begins operations. While our analysis...

On July 16, 2026, the Pembina Institute assembled Alberta-based practitioners, each representing perspectives within the energy system, for a roundtable discussion with the Honourable Julie Dabrusin, Minister of Environment, Climate Change and Nature...

My husband, friends, and I sat huddled at a faux-marble-topped table in the lobby of our Utah hotel, looking down at a Google Maps route pulled up on my iPhone. We pinched and scrolled the screen as the breakfast buffet crowd hummed around us. 

We were less than a week into a Great American Road trip — one that would take us 9,000 miles from coast to coast and border to border. Today’s agenda was to relocate from Moab, the gateway city for Arches and Canyonlands national parks, to our hotel near Bryce Canyon. But there was a problem:

Utah was on fire. 

To the west of us, the Cottonwood Fire had burned through 94,000 acres of forest and mountain towns, making it the largest conflagration in the United States. To the east, the Jones Fire had just erupted near the ghost town Cisco, its smoke plume looming on the flat horizon, visible from our hotel room. In total, more than a dozen wildfires were burning across the state, closing roads and turning the skies an ominous orange. We had to find a safe way through.

“If we take Route 89, it takes us straight into the middle of the Cottonwood Fire,” said my childhood friend Jessie, who had joined us with her husband for the Utah leg of our trip.

“There’s Route 72 through Loa, but that isn’t much farther away,” my husband said.

We switched apps from Google Maps to Watch Duty, a real-time wildfire tracker, waiting for it to load our precise location. My kids shifted their attention from their stacks of chocolate chip pancakes to the screen, which was covered in fire symbols. My 12-year-old son looked at me, worried.

“The edge of the Cottonwood Fire is creeping toward Route 72, too,” I noted. We had to make a decision and get going. 

More than a dozen wildfires broke out in Utah in late June, including the Jones Fire (right), visible from the horizon near the town of Moab. Katherine Bagley

We landed on a route that stuck to smaller state highways, even though it would add significant time to our driving. Anything to avoid the rapidly shifting edges of fire.

“You guys go get your bags and check out,” Jessie said. “I’ll go to the pharmacy and grab us some N-95 masks.”

Crisscrossing the United States by car has attained an almost rite-of-passage status in American society over the decades, its allure solidified in everything from On the Road to Thelma & Louise to the #TakeTheScenicRoute Instagram reels of today. It was that craving for wild landscapes and new cultures that had drawn my family out onto the road. My husband had just finished a year of cancer treatments, the kids were on summer break, and I was eligible for a sabbatical from my job as a climate journalist. So despite never having done anything like this before, we packed our hybrid Honda with duffle bags and camping gear and set out with a plan to visit 14 national parks.

I had expected to walk away with a better understanding of our public lands, a renewed sense of awe and adventure, and the opportunity to travel as a family in a way I never got to growing up — and the trip did give us those things in spades. What I hadn’t expected, however, was to also get a stark glimpse into how climate change is rapidly altering our nation. 

Our kids spent the majority of the trip looking out the windows while listening to the full-cast Harry Potter audio books. Katherine Bagley

As a climate journalist, and scientist by training, I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised. For 20 years, I have documented the ever-growing impacts of a warming planet — and summer coincides with the annual period during which these impacts are on full display. A drumbeat of floods, fires, drought, and scorching heat put nearly every U.S. state in a vise from May to October. The season has become so synonymous with extreme weather that the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists launched a campaign in 2022 to dub it “danger season.”  

But even knowing that, the scale of devastation underway outside our car windows was alarming. As the miles ticked by, disaster after disaster strung together in an alarming pattern of chaos. Freshly charred landscapes and orange skies in Utah. Bathtub rings on drought-stricken reservoirs in Arizona. Stands of dead trees killed by bark beetles in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Toxic dust blowing off the Great Salt Lake. Emergency alerts for flooding and evacuations in Glacier National Park. Extreme heat warnings in Grand Teton.

It felt like a near-constant assault, one disaster stacked on top of another. Travel a few miles, a few hours, and we’d encounter another mark climate change had made — or was actively making — on the American landscape.

It’s too early to say whether climate change was a factor in every brush fire, heat wave, storm, or flood we encountered. But there is compelling evidence that it’s making many forms of extreme weather more severe or frequent. From 1980 to 1989, the number of billion-dollar weather disasters in the United States averaged just 3.3 per year. In the decade between 2015 and 2024, that number had more than quintupled, averaging 19 billion-dollar disasters per year. Twenty-three billion-dollar disasters hit American communities in 2025, according to the research group Climate Central. By the time we hit the road in June 2026, 12 events from this year had already met that threshold.

As we left Moab toward Bryce Canyon, heavy-duty particulate masks stashed in the glove box, we got an alert from the National Park Service. It was closing a portion of Canyonlands National Park, where less than 24 hours prior we had peered out over the park’s plummeting red sandstone cliffs into the hollowed landscape where the Colorado and Green rivers converge. Intense wind gusts had blown the hats from our heads and sand into our eyes. 

Overnight, those gusts gave the Babylon Fire power to grow from 300 acres to 16,000 acres. The landscape we had just admired was under siege.

Route 128 in southern Utah winds its way through towering red sandstone cliffs, following the Colorado River. A wildfire broke out near the byway just a day after we passed through. Katherine Bagley

Over the next week on the road, my husband and I became experts at spotting the characteristic plumes of distant wildfires, locating the blazes on the Watch Duty app, and adjusting our driving route. In my travel journal, I jotted down notes: An ominous plume of smoke from the Pocket Fire seen on our way to the Grand Canyon. Feelings of gratitude after days where we encountered clear skies. We kept moving, even as I learned of flood evacuations in campgrounds further down our itinerary. 

“Will our trip be derailed?” I wrote.

After stopping in Las Vegas for July Fourth, we headed farther west, through Bakersfield, California, en route to the Sierra Nevada mountains. We passed the scars of prescribed burns on ranchland, wind turbines, rows and rows of fruit trees, and a seemingly endless stream of oil pumpjacks, their arms turning rhythmically up and down, up and down.

Pumpjacks and drilling pads cover the landscape at the Kern River Oil Field in Bakersfield, California, on July 28, 2015.
Mark Ralston / AFP via Getty Images

“What are they doing to the ground?” my 9-year-old daughter asked from the backseat.

“Those help to pull oil from underneath our feet to power things like cars and lights,” I replied, staring out at the edges of the Kern River Oil Field.

My kids already had a basic sense of climate change and its causes before we left on this trip. On our way west, we had stopped at a wind turbine-themed rest stop in Iowa celebrating the state’s commitment to renewable energy. We awed at the presence of electric vehicle chargers at the “world’s largest truck stop,” Iowa 80. And we cheered with every solar farm we saw. They were signs of progress, regardless of politics or climate beliefs or geography.

Our driving breaks in Iowa were marked by signs of climate action, from a wind energy-themed rest area to electric vehicle charging at the “world’s largest truck stop.” Katherine Bagley 

That was the lens my kids had on climate change: It was bad, but there were ways to fix it. Then came the fires, and the smoke, and the flooding, and the heat warnings, and the drought. And now, here in Bakersfield, they were seeing for the first time what extracting fossil fuels looks like in practice, what it does to a landscape.

“I can’t believe they’re still working,” my son said quietly. “This place is littered with them.”

We rode the next few hours without speaking to each other, listening to Harry Potter audio books and staring out the windows, hoping to see another wind farm.

My family spent a year planning our five-week trip, from reserving campsites inside the national parks to mapping our route and planning hikes. Katherine Bagley

We stopped overnight in Three Rivers, California, before heading into Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks. The road rose from the valley floor, switchbacking and climbing 5,000 feet in just 16 miles. The higher we went, the taller the trees got, towering above us. We opened our sunroof and windows, letting the cool mountain air rush over our outstretched arms. After weeks in the desert, the forest felt like a homecoming for us New Englanders.

We parked at the General Sherman tree, the world’s largest by volume, and set out on foot through what is known as the Giant Forest. Trunks stretched upward for what seemed an impossibly long time, disappearing into rings of thick branches. But despite the scale, the forest felt cozy. Dappled sunlight filtered through the scalelike needles, casting a shadowy, warm glow. As we walked along the Congress Trail, weaving between thousand-year-old sequoias, my kids hugged every tree they could. The red, spongy bark tickled their skin as they stretched their arms and legs around the trunks.

My husband and kids hugged every tree they could in Sequoia National Park, including this giant along the Congress Trail. Katherine Bagley

Along the trail, we came to a cross section of a felled sequoia. More than 2,200 years of growth rings radiated from its center, each a marker of the history the tree had lived through. The rings showed evidence of at least 80 fires strong enough to permanently mark the tree’s bark over its lifetime — averaging one fire every 28 years. 

Even when they leave marks, fires don’t always spell disaster for these giants: Low-intensity blazes can clear the forest of underbrush, scorching the bottom of a tree but leaving its branches untouched, ultimately rejuvenating the forest’s nutrients. But these stands of ancient sequoias have experienced an unprecedented number of wildfires recently, including six large fires in six years. Scattered throughout the parks were large patches of burned-out trees, their blackened trunks like used matchsticks, stripped of all greenery.

According to the National Park Service, “More than 85 percent of all giant sequoia grove acreage across the Sierra Nevada has burned in wildfires between 2015 and 2021, compared to only one quarter in the preceding century.” The fires were so intense that they killed thousands of “large sequoias,” those measuring 4 feet or more in diameter. The KNP Complex and Windy fires in 2021 killed upward of 2,380 large sequoias alone. 

Blazes in the Sierra Nevadas are often the result of lightning strikes, untamped camp fires, or power line sparks, among other causes, but their intensity and scale are fueled by the dry conditions and pest infestations brought on by climate change.

Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks experienced six large wildfires in six years between 2015 and 2021, killing thousands of large sequoias. Katherine Bagley

As we drove down out of the sequoias, pointing out each new giant, we saw logging trucks and excavators parked on the side of the road. Dead branches sat in piles ready for controlled burns, part of a partnership between scientists, park managers, and environmental groups to reduce the severity of the next wildfire to rip through the region. 

When it does, not if.

After visiting the sequoias and Yosemite, my family and I turned back east. Our days whiplashed between grandeur and crisis. 

We passed the Great Salt Lake at sunset, reds and pinks mirrored in its vast, still waters. But as we drove, we could also see stretches of dry, cracked shoreline — the lake has lost an estimated 73 percent of its water and 60 percent of its surface area due to agricultural diversions and worsening drought. A decade ago, I visited Antelope Island with friends to see its iconic free-ranging bison, but the lake’s shrinking shores mean the landmass is no longer an island, but a peninsula.

In Salt Lake City, we visited the Natural History Museum of Utah. One of the first exhibits was an interactive Sim City-esque game where you have to make planning decisions — install solar panels, build an urban farm, tear down a coal plant — to try and stave off the worst impacts of climate change. My kids played it three times. Little did they know that across the museum’s parking lot stood a hillside charred by the Bonneville Fire just two weeks earlier.

We traveled north into Wyoming, greeted by road signs warning of extreme heat. Jackson Hole, outside of Grand Teton National Park, hit 94 degrees Fahrenheit on July 12, 13 degrees warmer than the average daily high for the month. The town of Worland, in central Wyoming, hit 110 degrees F. We drove to String Lake to cool off in its snow-fed waters and watched as a bald eagle dove to catch fish.  

We took a boat ride on Jackson Lake to see the park’s iconic jagged peaks from a different perspective, and learned that the tour operator was shutting down operations weeks earlier than usual. Low water levels caused by the region’s dismally low snowpack were making it hard to navigate wide swaths of the reservoir. Our guide pulled up a photo on his phone from six years ago. “The peaks were covered, just covered, in snow at this time,” he said. “What we’re seeing right now in July, that’s what we would typically see in late August.”

Up near Yellowstone, we took the kids whitewater rafting in the town of Gardiner. They shouted with delight as we crested the rapids and dunked in the spray. But in moments of quiet on the river, our guide pointed to pipes, wires, and decks sticking out from eroded riverbank, all that remained of the houses swept away by a historic flood in 2022.

Katherine Bagley

Katherine Bagley

Iconic scenes from Yellowstone National Park. Katherine Bagley

Katherine Bagley

Park after park, the kids’ junior ranger books wove climate change and its impacts into their pages. Staff told us about the plight of the pikas, adorable mouselike mammals that are moving farther up mountains in search of cooler climes. We watched videos and read placards about how warming temperatures are making more areas suitable for white pine bark rust and destructive beetles. 

I listened as my kids took their junior ranger pledge in every park we went to. Each oath differed slightly — some adding silly rhymes, others more serious — but they all included some variation of, “I promise to appreciate, respect, and protect all national park places.”

Our kids taking their junior ranger oath in Zion National Park. By the end of our trip, they had achieved ranger status in 14 national parks. Katherine Bagley

After taking their junior ranger oath in Glacier National Park, my kids walked through the exhibits at the St. Mary Visitor Center on the east side of the park, bordering the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. In the center was a 3D rendering of the park. They hit a button and watched as tiny bulbs lit up the mountaintops, signifying the location of the 150 glaciers that existed back in 1850.

As the timeline moved from 1900 to 1950 to 1980 to 2000, the lights disappeared faster and faster. Today, the park is home to only 26 ice bodies. My children pressed the buttons over and over, as if trying to restore the glaciers, remembered only by the carved-out hillsides they left behind.

A national Gallup poll recently found that nearly 4 in 10 Americans say their community was damaged by extreme weather within the past year, but that they “feel powerless to shape their own future.” The impacts of climate change can feel overwhelming, but my family’s road trip made clear this is an issue that affects us all. Climate change is no longer a collection of isolated disasters, separated by headlines or distances. It touches everything, its imprints lasting and deep and inescapable.

After more than a month on the road, it was time to go home.

The evening sky at our lodging outside of Zion National Park. Katherine Bagley

I wondered whether my kids will ever be able to take this same trip with their own families. If so, their experiences will likely be drastically different. Will they be able to explore the arches and sandstone cliffs of Utah? Will they be able to walk through the towering sequoias? Will they be able to see the ice? 

I hoped so. There is so much to cherish, so much beauty, and still so much to fight for. We just need to rally to face a new foe. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The great American road trip is in peril on Aug 26, 2026.

Well damn, we sure feel safer knowing ICE pulled 5-year-old Liam Tadeo and his construction worker dad Victor off Austin's streets on their way to a soccer game before Liam could start kindergarten the next day; also that they were held at a family concentration camp, ICE refused to let Liam's mother take him, and both father and son will "self-deport" to not further sully our pristine white shores. Question: How do these sick fucks sleep at night?

Thanks to the obscene $200 billion-plus gifted to DHS and ICE by their evil overlords, arrests of undocumented or at least unwanted immigrants surged to nearly 50,000 largely innocent people in July, a 15% spike from a month earlier and the regime's highest monthly arrest total to date. So yes, the sadists are still at it, just more quietly than when a psychotic Noem and Bovino were blasting out histrionic videos of daredevil agents dropping from helicopters onto apartment rooftops to grab terrified families - images reportedly, inexplicably "provoking a lot of ordinary people." Wusses, all.

Many recent arrests come during "traffic stops," increasingly with the help of partnering state and local law enforcement lured by "generous financial incentives," especially in Texas and Florida; ICE is also arresting more Haitians whose protections have been stripped away. Among those detained are over 6,200 kids, 10 times more than during Biden's tenure, despite ongoing, fantastical DHS claims they're going after the "worst of the worst" murderers, drug traffickers, sex offenders - and despite ghastly data showing up to 85% of ICE thugs themselves have sex offenses on their records, most against children. New data, like old data, also shows less than a quarter of those arrested have any criminal convictions.

Elsewhere, ICE abuses go on apace. A sailor aboard the troubled USS Lincoln said ICE has taken his father, who had a work permit, into custody. “Having a family member in the military is not a free pass to violate our nation’s laws,” said a DHS statement "in the same support-our-troops spirit Trump is so famous for." In an interview, the mother, father and sister of Alex Pretti family said no officials have come forward in the last seven months to retract or apologize for the "disgusting" claims of "assassin" and "domestic terrorist" they made about Alex - "We still hear those words about our child,” said his mother Susan - nor have any criminal charges been filed against his killers.

Meanwhile, J.D. Vance just came to Maine to spew racist lies, flaunt his "trademark absence of charisma," and claim, "If you bring in millions and millions of illegal aliens and give them houses that ought to go by right to American citizens, it's going to increase the cost of housing for everybody else." He also dismissed ICE's killing of Colombian Johan Durán Guerrero, who had a social security card, two jobs, a wife and a three-year-old daughter. Worried residents, he said, should "have a little bit of perspective" to ensure "that poison stops coming into our country." Troy Jackson called J.D. "a dirtbag": "I mean, he had a life." As to Susan Collins, who declined to regret giving ICE "$70 billion more to pull this shit off": "I’m sick of your ‘concerns.’"

And on Aug. 16, brave ICE thugs stopped five-year-old Liam Tadeo - their second small Liam like the bunny-hat-wearing Liam Ramos in Minnesota - and his father Victor Martinez Nieto on their way to play soccer. Without bothering with the nicety of pretending it was a legit traffic stop, they asked Victor, originally from Mexico, if he had legal status. Candidly, he said no; in 2025, he'd been arrested by ICE, "voluntarily" left, then "criminally" reentered the U.S. to (horrors) be with his wife and son. Heart-rending video soon surfaced of Liam crying beside his father and trying to hold one of his hands, cuffed behind him, as Victor tried to console his tearful son, talking to him as they walked. It was the day before Liam was set to start kindergarten.

They were both taken to the for-profit Dilley concentration camp, which rights groups have repeatedly accused of medical neglect, poor living conditions and abuse. According to Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, their family's attorney, Victor begged ICE to release Liam to his mother Maria, also not a legal citizen, at home, or another member of the family. ICE refused, though DHS proudly, routinely declaims ICE "will place the children with a safe person the parent designates," like how they also contend Dilley is "retrofitted for families, with access to teachers, classrooms, and curriculum booklets...generously funded by the U.S. taxpayer." Instead, they had Victor sign papers in English he didn't fully understand, and booked both father and son.

Lincoln-Goldfinch says Maria is "desperate and distraught, separated from her child and worrying about his well-being." Back at their home, "It feels like when you go to someone’s house after a sudden death, and there’s a wake or a gathering. Everybody is just stunned." Maria released a statement: "Liam was supposed to start kindergarten this week. Instead he is (in) detention. He should be in school, playing soccer, and at home with his family." Saturday, CNN aired emotional video of her talking by phone to her five-year-old. “I love you so much and I miss you so much, my love,” she tearfully told Liam in Spanish. “Don’t despair, my love, okay?” Lacking options, Liam timidly responds, "Okay." One furious, horrified online comment: "Anyone!!??!!"

This week, Austin's KUT News reported Victor has decided to be deported to Mexico along with his son, rather than risk Liam being separated from him and placed in a dystopian regime's custody as an "unaccompanied migrant child.” Said Lincoln-Goldfinch, "His family did what any family would do: Agree." As Maria reportedly struggles to find a way to re-unite with her family - "My son is only five years old" - Americans fume about "sadistic barbarians harming humanity every single day." "How sick can these people be? I used to think merciless psychopathic villains were only found in movies and fiction," said one. Also, "America has concentration camps. I. Hate. It. Here." and, "That poor little boy, That poor family. I am so tired."

Meanwhile, Texas' Dem lawmakers have called for Liam to be released and for Dilley to be shut down. "I just sat with Liam's mother as she found out what it means to have your child held hostage by ICE. It was horrifying," wrote Rep. Greg Casar, who charged Liam's arrest showed Trump uses children “as bait and leverage to fuel his mass deportation machine.” "Liam should be starting kindergarten this week, and instead he's sitting in a trailer prison." Rep. Joaquin Castro said ICE denied his request to visit Liam at Dilley in what he called "shady stuff," and he vowed to return; he also cited human rights violations, privacy concerns, and untenable phone, video call and e-mail strictures: “I’m telling y’all, ICE is getting worse."

Because this is ghoul-filled America in 2026, Liam's aunt Patricia Resendiz has begun a Gofundme to help with legal expenses and her sister Maria's household costs, as Victor was the sole provider. "If we manage to get Liam and his dad to go free, Liam will also need psychological support, as the detention has left him traumatized. These funds will be to mitigate all aspects of child detention," she wrote. "The detention of Liam and my brother-in-law was cruel. They are not criminals - they were simply on their way to a soccer match. Liam is a beautiful, intelligent, and big-hearted little boy. My sister is devastated, as are we. Liam was detained right in front of my son, his cousin. My son told me that ICE agents said to Liam, 'You can't escape.'"

We feel safer already.

By Kadiatu A. Sherriff, 2026 Africa Zero Waste Academy Participant

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When I joined the Africa Zero Waste Academy, I came with an open mind.

 I have been working within the waste sector and thinking about the challenges and possible solutions in Liberia for some time. And I knew there was still a lot to learn. And the Academy became much more than a learning programme for me.

It was wonderful meeting young people from across Africa who had come together for different reasons, but with a shared interest in creating better waste systems. We listened, learned and challenged ideas together.

What made the learning particularly meaningful was its practicality. Even when we discussed theory, stories, experiences, and examples from different African countries brought the ideas to life. Some experiences resonated strongly with what we see in Liberia, while others opened my mind to approaches we could explore or adapt in our own context.

Then came the participant presentations. 

Different people brought different ideas and solutions, and right there, we could see opportunities for collaboration. Sometimes, you realise that someone else is working on a piece of the same puzzle you have been trying to solve.

And, of course, the facilitators brought so much to the experience. Their knowledge, questions, and experiences pushed many of us beyond simply knowing what the problem is to thinking more deeply about why it exists, who is responsible, and what kinds of solutions can create lasting change.

The Personal Shift

One of my biggest personal shifts was learning to question solutions—even some I had previously considered good.

The Academy made me ask myself: Does this solution actually pass the climate test?

Or are we sometimes managing the consequences of a broken system while calling it a solution?

Those questions have stayed with me.

It made me look differently at some of our own methods and the solutions we see around us. A solution should not simply move a problem somewhere else or create another problem in the process. If the end goal is positive change, then we have to be willing to rethink how we get there.

I came home wanting to look at some of our work at Golden Waste Solutions with fresh eyes—not because everything we have done is wrong, but because there is always room to ask better questions and improve.

I also appreciated the lighter side of the in-person experience. The learning was intense, but moments of laughter, connection, and celebration gave us room to breathe. The launch of FISSWWAG was one of those moments. The cultural expressions, the stories, and the atmosphere reminded me that learning doesn’t always have to happen in a serious room with a notebook in hand. Sometimes, you learn just as much by witnessing people come together, celebrate their identity and share their experiences.

And, of course, there was Culture Night. It was beautiful seeing our different cultures come alive. 

But beyond thesessions, culturatural exchanges, and food I found myself appreciating something else: meeting people not only as representatives of their countries, but as individuals. I came to know people beyond the country they represented. That made the experience even more meaningful.

I left Ghana with more than notes, certificates and photographs.

I left with WhatsApp contacts—but not just people to watch on my status. 

I left with young people from different parts of Africa with whom I now share something deeper: a common goal and the understanding that, whenever an opportunity or challenge arises, someone in this network may be the right person to call.

Maybe we will collaborate on a project.

Maybe we will share an idea.

Maybe one of us will simply reach out and say, “I think you should look at this.”

I left with questions, new perspectives, new connections and new possibilities.

And I think the timing could not have been better.

From learning to contribution

Interestingly, shortly after completing the Academy, I had the opportunity to participate in a civil society roundtable convened by the United Nations Office for Sustainable Development (UNOSD), at the request of Liberia’s Environmental Protection Agency, as part of discussions around the country’s waste-management system.

I went into that conversation with fresh perspectives.

The Academy did not make me an expert on Liberia’s waste sector overnight. It gave me a stronger lens through which to contribute: looking beyond collection and disposal, and thinking about prevention, recovery, financing, climate impact, policy, people, and the connections between them.

I found myself better prepared to ask questions, share observations from our experience as a local waste enterprise, and listen to what others were seeing from their own positions.

That experience reinforced something I had begun to understand during the Academy:

Everything we do is connected to a larger system.

Writer’s Bio

Kadiatu A. Sherriff is the Founder and President of Golden Waste Solutions Enterprise Inc based in Liberia, where she works to design and implement ways to reduce waste and create income-generating activities for economically vulnerable communities.

The post I Came to Learn About Zero Waste, I Left Rethinking Our Waste Management System. first appeared on GAIA.

Malam mulai larut ketika sebuah pertanyaan sederhana muncul di tengah obrolan para pemain: “Kenapa game yang tadi terasa biasa saja, tiba-tiba ramai dibicarakan karena memberikan kemenangan besar?” Pertanyaan seperti itu kerap menjadi awal dari perbincangan panjang mengenai slot gacor dan pola game.

Di komunitas pemain, istilah “gacor” sering digunakan untuk menggambarkan permainan yang dianggap sedang memberikan hasil menarik. Dari sana, muncul berbagai dugaan mengenai pola tertentu, mulai dari perubahan ritme permainan, frekuensi simbol bonus, hingga pengalaman beberapa pemain yang merasa menemukan momentum tertentu.

Namun, apakah pola tersebut benar-benar bisa dijadikan patokan? Di sinilah pembahasannya menjadi lebih menarik.

Ketika Pola Game Mulai Menjadi Perbincangan

Bayangkan seorang pemain yang sedang memperhatikan jalannya permainan. Beberapa putaran pertama berjalan tanpa kejutan. Kemudian muncul simbol bonus, disusul kombinasi kemenangan dalam beberapa putaran berikutnya. Pengalaman seperti ini mudah membuat pemain berpikir bahwa permainan sedang memasuki fase tertentu.

Cerita tersebut kemudian dibagikan kepada teman atau komunitas. Pemain lain mencoba permainan yang sama dan mungkin mendapatkan pengalaman berbeda. Dari sinilah istilah seperti “lagi gacor”, “pola bagus”, atau “momentum panas” semakin sering muncul.

Perlu dipahami bahwa pola game yang dibicarakan pemain biasanya merupakan hasil pengamatan pribadi, bukan jaminan matematis. Setiap permainan berbasis RNG (random number generator) dirancang agar hasil putaran tidak dapat diprediksi secara pasti.

Mengapa Pemain Merasa Menemukan Pola?

Ada alasan psikologis yang membuat manusia cenderung mencari pola. Ketika beberapa kejadian muncul berurutan, otak secara alami berusaha menghubungkannya.

Misalnya, seseorang melihat beberapa kemenangan terjadi setelah sejumlah putaran tertentu. Ia kemudian menganggap urutan tersebut sebagai pola. Padahal, rangkaian hasil sebelumnya tidak otomatis menentukan hasil berikutnya.

Hal ini dikenal sebagai kecenderungan melihat hubungan pada kejadian yang sebenarnya bisa terjadi secara acak. Karena itu, pengalaman satu pemain belum tentu berlaku bagi pemain lain.

Memahami RTP, Volatilitas, dan RNG

Daripada hanya berpatokan pada istilah “gacor”, pembaca sebaiknya memahami beberapa konsep dasar dalam permainan slot.

RTP (Return to Player) merupakan persentase teoretis yang menggambarkan pengembalian kepada pemain dalam jangka panjang berdasarkan mekanisme permainan. Angka tersebut bukan berarti seorang pemain akan menerima persentase yang sama dalam satu sesi.

Sementara itu, volatilitas menggambarkan karakteristik distribusi kemenangan. Permainan dengan volatilitas tinggi umumnya dapat memiliki kemenangan yang lebih jarang tetapi berpotensi lebih besar, sedangkan volatilitas rendah cenderung menawarkan kemenangan yang lebih sering dengan nilai yang relatif lebih kecil.

Kemudian ada RNG, yaitu sistem yang digunakan untuk menghasilkan hasil permainan secara acak sesuai mekanisme yang ditetapkan. Kehadiran RNG menjadi alasan mengapa klaim mengenai urutan putaran yang pasti menghasilkan kemenangan perlu disikapi secara kritis.

Dari Cerita Komunitas Menjadi Informasi

Perbincangan mengenai slot gacor sebenarnya tetap menarik jika ditempatkan pada konteks yang tepat. Pengalaman komunitas dapat menjadi bahan diskusi tentang karakter sebuah game, tampilan fitur, tingkat volatilitas, bonus, maupun mekanisme permainannya.

Yang perlu dihindari adalah menganggap pengalaman tersebut sebagai rumus kemenangan.

Seseorang mungkin merasa mendapatkan hasil bagus setelah mengikuti pola tertentu, sementara pemain lain mencoba langkah serupa dan memperoleh hasil berbeda. Perbedaan tersebut wajar karena hasil setiap putaran tidak dapat dipastikan hanya berdasarkan pengalaman sebelumnya.

Menjadi Pemain yang Lebih Kritis

Pada akhirnya, pembahasan tentang slot gacor dan pola game bukan sekadar mencari “urutan rahasia”. Ada hal yang lebih penting, yaitu memahami cara permainan bekerja dan membedakan antara fakta dengan asumsi.

Sebelum memainkan sebuah game, perhatikan informasi seperti aturan, fitur bonus, RTP jika tersedia, serta volatilitasnya. Tentukan pula batas anggaran dan waktu sejak awal. Jangan mengejar kerugian dengan meningkatkan taruhan karena hasil sebelumnya tidak menjamin hasil berikutnya.

Cerita tentang game yang sedang “panas” memang mudah menarik perhatian. Akan tetapi, di balik setiap cerita kemenangan selalu ada faktor acak dan mekanisme permainan yang perlu dipahami.

Jadi, ketika perbincangan tentang pola game kembali ramai, mungkin pertanyaan terbaik bukan “pola mana yang pasti menang?”, melainkan “seberapa banyak dari pola tersebut yang benar-benar didukung fakta?” Dari pertanyaan sederhana itulah pemain dapat melihat dunia slot dengan sudut pandang yang lebih realistis, kritis, dan bertanggung jawab.