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  31. <title>June EV Sales in China Exceed U.S. Total Vehicle Sales</title>
  32. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/june-ev-sales-in-china-exceed-u-s-total-vehicle-sales/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=june-ev-sales-in-china-exceed-u-s-total-vehicle-sales</link>
  33. <comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/june-ev-sales-in-china-exceed-u-s-total-vehicle-sales/#respond</comments>
  35. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Dean Baker /  Beat the Press ]]></dc:creator>
  36. <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2025 16:44:41 +0000</pubDate>
  37. <category><![CDATA[Business & Economy]]></category>
  38. <category><![CDATA[Column]]></category>
  39. <category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
  40. <category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
  41. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  42. <category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
  43. <category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
  44. <category><![CDATA[china]]></category>
  45. <category><![CDATA[electric vehicles]]></category>
  46. <category><![CDATA[fossil fuels]]></category>
  47. <category><![CDATA[solar energy]]></category>
  48. <category><![CDATA[trump tariffs]]></category>
  49. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309395</guid>
  50.  
  51. <description><![CDATA[<p>As Donald Trump rails against the 'EV mandate,' China has gone all-in on electric vehicle production and clean energy.</p>
  52. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/june-ev-sales-in-china-exceed-u-s-total-vehicle-sales/">June EV Sales in China Exceed U.S. Total Vehicle Sales</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  53. ]]></description>
  54. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Who knew that when</strong> President Donald Trump said he wanted to “make America great again” he meant locking us into antiquated technology from the last century. Apparently, that is the case, as China and the rest of the world rush ahead with electric cars and clean energy and Trump doubles down on traditional cars and fossil fuels.  </p><p>We hit a milestone of sorts in this divergence last month as EV <a href="https://t.co/ZFJSQ2VTzY" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">sales</a> in China for June exceeded total U.S. car <a href="https://t.co/dwMYtWR0M8" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">sales</a> for the month. More than half the cars sold in China are now EVs. They are much <a href="https://apnews.com/article/china-byd-auto-seagull-auto-ev-cae20c92432b74e95c234d93ec1df400#:~:text=The%20car%2C%20launched%20last%20year%20by%20Chinese,much.%20A%20shorter%2Drange%20version%20costs%20under%20%2410%2C000." rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">cheaper</a> than internal combustion cars and also cost less to drive and maintain. Charging is no longer a major issue as many cars have ranges of more than 300 miles and can be <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/18/cars/china-byd-supercharging-system-ev-tesla-intl-hnk#:~:text=Chinese%20EV%20giant%20BYD%20says%20new%20charging,range%20of%20250%20miles%20%7C%20CNN%20Business." rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">recharged</a> in five or six minutes. </p><figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left">
  55. <blockquote>
  56. <p>More than half the cars sold in China are now EVs.</p>
  57. </blockquote>
  58. </figure><p>And it is not just EVs where China has shot ahead of the U.S. in a clean energy transition. In the first four months of this year, China <a href="https://www.pvknowhow.com/news/china-solar-installation-2025-record-installation/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">installed</a> an amount of solar capacity that is almost equal to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">half</a> of the U.S. total capacity at the end of 2024. It’s also shooting ahead in <a href="https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/wind-and-solar-generate-over-a-quarter-of-chinas-electricity-for-the-first-month-on-record/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">wind</a> generation capacity. Renewable energy now accounts for almost two-thirds of China’s electricity generation capacity.</p><p>Clean energy is also cheap energy. The <a href="https://www.pvknowhow.com/solar-report/china/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">cost</a> of solar energy in China is 8 to 9 cents per kilowatt hour and falling rapidly. The average <a href="https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">cost</a> in the United States is 13 cents per kilowatt hour. </p><p>It is unfortunate that the United States is taking a back seat in the development of electric vehicles and clean energy and letting China lead the way. However, on the plus side, if we ever get a president who is not committed to accelerating global warming and the destruction of the planet, the technology will exist for a quick transition to a green economy. We will be able to both save money, and save ourselves and the planet from the pollution emitted by burning fossil fuels. </p>
  59. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/june-ev-sales-in-china-exceed-u-s-total-vehicle-sales/">June EV Sales in China Exceed U.S. Total Vehicle Sales</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  60. ]]></content:encoded>
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  70. <title>The Problem with Iraq War Movies</title>
  71. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-problem-with-iraq-war-movies/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-problem-with-iraq-war-movies</link>
  72. <comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-problem-with-iraq-war-movies/#respond</comments>
  74. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Jake Pitre /  History News Network ]]></dc:creator>
  75. <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2025 16:25:15 +0000</pubDate>
  76. <category><![CDATA[Arts & Culture]]></category>
  77. <category><![CDATA[Film]]></category>
  78. <category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
  79. <category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
  80. <category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
  81. <category><![CDATA[alex garland]]></category>
  82. <category><![CDATA[iraq war]]></category>
  83. <category><![CDATA[propaganda]]></category>
  84. <category><![CDATA[the hurt locker]]></category>
  85. <category><![CDATA[warfare]]></category>
  86. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309382</guid>
  87.  
  88. <description><![CDATA[<p>Celebrated depictions of forever wars prize “truth-telling” without offering insights about the wars themselves.</p>
  89. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-problem-with-iraq-war-movies/">The Problem with Iraq War Movies</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  90. ]]></description>
  91. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  92. <p><strong>Are war films <em>ever</em> true?</strong> The historian Norman Kagan introduced this question in his 1974 book &#8220;The War Film,&#8221; adding, “true to what?” Are they true to the experience of war? Are they true to history, to facts, to contexts? Are they true to their time? In <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/BLAEIA-7" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">a 2012 article</a> in the Bulletin of Science, Technology &amp; Society about the propagandistic nature of Hollywood’s War on Terror films, scholar Tim Blackmore argues that many tell a “partial history” whereby “the attempt to make a film that has no visible politics creates a weightless, value-free historical environment where things just happen because they do, where wars are out of our control, and where obedience to an authority that must know better is the rule.” </p>
  93.  
  94.  
  95.  
  96. <p>Alex Garland’s recent film &#8220;Warfare,&#8221; co-written and co-directed by Iraq war veteran Ray Mendoza, is a quintessential example of the “partial histories” that Hollywood has generated about that war. Its release is cause for a critical evaluation of this corpus and its preference for the aesthetics of historical accuracy over the historical work of interpretation — and its reliance on ignoring the significance of politics in any engagement with the past.</p>
  97.  
  98.  
  99.  
  100. <p class="has-text-align-center"><strong>*&nbsp;&nbsp; *&nbsp;&nbsp; *</strong></p>
  101.  
  102.  
  103.  
  104. <p>&#8220;Warfare&#8221; is based on Mendoza’s experience in Iraq as a Navy SEAL in 2006, and, further, on actual testimonies by soldiers from his platoon. It plays out largely in real time as the platoon commandeers an Iraqi family’s home during the Battle of Ramadi. All of this is intended to give the project a veneer of authenticity and verisimilitude as the audience is immersed in the chaos, violence, pain and even absurdity of the conflict. </p>
  105.  
  106.  
  107.  
  108. <p>One significant side effect of this approach is how easy it becomes to forget about why these soldiers are doing what they’re doing or what it all might mean. The only takeaway by the end, as the platoon makes a bad situation worse and has nothing to show for it, is that this outcome is reflective of the invasion itself. </p>
  109.  
  110.  
  111.  
  112. <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" width="800" height="511" src="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-ggbain-22500-22520v.jpg?width=800&#038;height=511" alt="" class="wp-image-309386" srcset="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-ggbain-22500-22520v.jpg?width=800 800w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-ggbain-22500-22520v.jpg?width=300&amp;height=192 300w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-ggbain-22500-22520v.jpg?width=768&amp;height=491 768w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-ggbain-22500-22520v.jpg?width=282&amp;height=180 282w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-ggbain-22500-22520v.jpg?width=423&amp;height=270 423w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-ggbain-22500-22520v.jpg?width=634&amp;height=405 634w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" data-recalc-dims="1" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Director J. Stuart Blackton directing a scene in the 1915 Vitagraph Studios film &#8220;Battle Cry of Peace.&#8221; [<a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2014702459/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Library of Congress</a>]</figcaption></figure>
  113.  
  114.  
  115.  
  116. <p>Even this belies the true nature of the project. As the film says at the start, &#8220;Warfare&#8221; is about re-enacting <em>memory</em>, not history. The memories of these soldiers, and Mendoza in particular, are re-processed through their own minds over time, then processed again via the eye of the camera and presented to us, playacting like a primary source on what occurred. Coming from a participant who is chiefly interested in having their memory actualized, there is little if any interest in analytical reflection. Sound and fury represented authentically, yet nevertheless signifying nothing. </p>
  117.  
  118.  
  119.  
  120. <p>As historian Jay Winter argues in his 2006 book &#8220;Remembering War,&#8221; we ought to remember German philosopher Walter Benjamin’s comment that “memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre.” Winter adds: </p>
  121.  
  122.  
  123.  
  124. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  125. <p>Understanding the power of film to serve as a mediator of prior and current memories helps us appreciate the dangers of analyzing film as if it were a transparent and unproblematic device for the construction of acceptable narratives about the past.</p>
  126. </blockquote>
  127.  
  128.  
  129.  
  130. <p>E.H. Carr, a British historian and diplomat, described history as “a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past.” </p>
  131.  
  132.  
  133.  
  134. <p>A war film doesn’t need to look like a peer-reviewed historical account to be history, but a memory alone is something else altogether. As Winter puts it, “history is about questions, hypotheses, speculations. The traces of memory help establish their validity, but in and of themselves memories do not create history.” Memory and history inherently overlap, and to privilege one over the other without addressing any of those questions, hypotheses or speculations is little more than an empty exercise in style. History must be interpretive, and interpretation is inherently political. &#8220;Warfare&#8221; and the Iraq War films that preceded it seem to be deliberately non-interpretive, and therefore beyond the reach of history. </p>
  135.  
  136.  
  137.  
  138. <p>American war films have long treasured an aesthetic of veracity — depicting historical battles with actors who have undergone real military training under the supervision of real veterans. This doesn’t mean we must necessarily say, as filmmaker Francois Truffaut (perhaps apocryphally) did, that there can be no such thing as an antiwar film because representation inherently romanticizes. It does, however, mean that relying on aesthetics of accuracy cannot be conflated with proper history. Interpretation is a bad word to war filmmakers in America because it inevitably invites political scrutiny, as it recognizes how history is inherently subjective through its analytical eye. It is easier to settle for an aesthetic “truthiness” over an historical interpretation. This is a bastardized fetishization of “history” as an aesthetic category. Iraq war films are prime offenders, because they’ve had no incentive to interpret the war up to this point. &#8220;Warfare&#8221; is now streaming, and we are watching as the U.S. threatens to find itself in another Iraq. It is no filmmaker’s responsibility to teach the audience history. These are intended to be products of entertainment. But it remains worthwhile to notice how ignoring interpretation reverberates through time as we risk repeating the mistakes of the past.</p>
  139.  
  140.  
  141.  
  142. <p class="has-text-align-center"><strong>*&nbsp;&nbsp; *&nbsp;&nbsp; *</strong></p>
  143.  
  144.  
  145.  
  146. <p>In the years following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Hollywood quickly realized that the safest way to engage with the war was through the plight of veterans dealing with post-traumatic stress, the re-adjustment to civilian life, and the weaknesses of veteran care. In this basic model, a veteran is haunted by flashbacks from the front while having trouble fitting back into civilian life and/or receiving veteran care. These films are usually tightly focused on the protagonist’s personal journey, and the larger context of the war is almost beside the point. If there is a political message in these films, it is that America fails its veterans. Examples include &#8220;Stop-Loss&#8221; (2008), &#8220;The Lucky Ones&#8221; (2008), &#8220;American Sniper&#8221; (2014), &#8220;Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk&#8221; (2016), &#8220;Thank You for Your Service&#8221; (2017), &#8220;Megan Leavey&#8221; (2017) and &#8220;Cherry&#8221; (2021). </p>
  147.  
  148.  
  149.  
  150. <p>One of the earliest — and most egregiously apolitical — examples is &#8220;Home of the Brave&#8221; (2006), which tells the story of four veteran soldiers returning to civilian life, and in which, for instance, one character references a History Channel special on World War II about plaques honoring American soldiers who liberated occupied French towns during that war. He wonders, “what if 10, 15 years from now we go back, do you think they’ll have statues thanking us? Because we saved ’em, we liberated ’em.” There is something tongue-in-cheek about the moment, as its absurdity seems clear even to him as he says it, but the film is certainly, according to Kagan’s guidelines, true to its time. Samuel L. Jackson’s veteran character’s son pushes him on how the invasion was really about oil and not about building a country, and Jackson’s character sputters, “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, you should read a history book.” This is, perhaps paradoxically, an interesting point: depending on the perspective of the imaginary book’s author or publisher, would the war be described there in all its truth, including the son’s point of view? Can any war be fully comprehensible through a historical account? </p>
  151.  
  152.  
  153. <div class="wp-block-image">
  154. <figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="568" height="847" src="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-cph-3g00000-3g02000-3g02800-3g02825v.jpg?width=568&#038;height=847" alt="" class="wp-image-309383" srcset="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-cph-3g00000-3g02000-3g02800-3g02825v.jpg?width=568 568w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-cph-3g00000-3g02000-3g02800-3g02825v.jpg?width=201&amp;height=300 201w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-cph-3g00000-3g02000-3g02800-3g02825v.jpg?width=121&amp;height=180 121w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-cph-3g00000-3g02000-3g02800-3g02825v.jpg?width=181&amp;height=270 181w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-cph-3g00000-3g02000-3g02800-3g02825v.jpg?width=272&amp;height=405 272w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-cph-3g00000-3g02000-3g02800-3g02825v.jpg?width=392&amp;height=585 392w" sizes="(max-width: 568px) 100vw, 568px" data-recalc-dims="1" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">“Official United States War Films” poster, by Harry Stoner, 1917. [<a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/94500776/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Library of Congress</a>]</figcaption></figure></div>
  155.  
  156.  
  157. <p>Hollywood’s other model for representing the Iraq War — exemplified by &#8220;Warfare&#8221; — zooms in on life “in the shit.” In these films, anchored with veteran screenwriters or consultants, the viewer is embedded into a single mission, amplified with “authentic” details, for the duration of the runtime. Iraq is often simplified into “Middle Eastern” signifiers (music, the orange-green color filter overlaid on everything, sand), and the context of the invasion itself is not particularly relevant. Any specificity is generally elided in favor of the chaotic and messy conflict at hand. If there is a political message in these films, it is that the troops were doing their best within a complicated, nuanced and bewildering geopolitical moment during an invasion that may or may not have been a mistake. Other examples of the form include &#8220;The Wall&#8221; (2017), &#8220;Green Zone&#8221; (2010) and &#8220;The Hurt Locker&#8221; (2009). </p>
  158.  
  159.  
  160.  
  161. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Iraq is often simplified into “Middle Eastern” signifiers.</p></blockquote></figure>
  162.  
  163.  
  164.  
  165. <p>The blunt eponymous metaphor of Fernando Coimbra’s &#8220;Sand Castle&#8221; (2017), another version of the “in the shit” approach, imagines Iraq as a sandcastle that is built up only to be torn down again in perpetuity. Written by an Iraq War veteran, the film follows a squad tasked with repairing an Iraqi village’s broken water system, which the U.S. Army itself destroyed. After several instances of attack and sabotage, eventually one of the Iraqi laborers hired to assist suicide-bombs their work, making it all for naught. The squad’s translator is the one who informs the American soldiers of the country’s history, and that “the Sunnis and the Shiites, they will always find a reason to kill each other.” Therefore, the film implies, the American efforts are moot, and the war’s destruction would have occurred with or without their interference — ignoring, of course, that it was the Americans who destroyed the system in the first place. None of the other films listed above offer anything even close to this basic, somewhat warped level of historical grounding.</p>
  166.  
  167.  
  168.  
  169. <p>Of course, film generally privileges, for better or worse, personal experience and biographical detail when engaging with history, but cinematic storytelling can be many things at once. An instructive example is Clint Eastwood’s diptych of &#8220;Flags of Our Fathers&#8221; and &#8220;Letters From Iwo Jima&#8221; (both 2006), the former depicting an American viewpoint on the Battle of Iwo Jima and the latter, a Japanese viewpoint of the same. Coming 60 years after the historical event itself, the films not only offer two sides of the same battle, but also, as critic Jonathan Rosenbaum <a href="https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2023/12/new-perspectives/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">has pointed out</a>, use history to implicitly reflect on what was unfolding in 2006. “One could argue that the struggle in World War II was meaningful and the occupation of Iraq senseless,” Rosenbaum writes, but even this distinction is a “civilian luxury.” The films show how dedication to one’s country is equated with a death drive that runs on symbols and myths, which are fundamentally unreal yet hold meaning. This is a moral and indeed political lesson in history, as it is re-interpreted and given renewed relevance to the contemporary audience. This is the interpretive power of history. As it turned out a little more than a decade later, Eastwood’s own Iraq film, &#8220;American Sniper,&#8221; lacked that very same critical eye.</p>
  170.  
  171.  
  172.  
  173. <p class="has-text-align-center"><strong>*&nbsp;&nbsp; *&nbsp;&nbsp; *</strong></p>
  174.  
  175.  
  176.  
  177. <p>What about making sense of history as it happens? Stacey Peebles, author of the 2024 book &#8220;The War Comes with You: Enduring War in Life, Fiction, and Fantasy,&#8221; <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/PEELIW" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">points out</a> that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were broadcast around the world, sometimes directly from the soldiers themselves, with digital cameras and then smartphones in hand: “The image of combat — real combat, complete with real blood and real casualties — could be seen by others in a way that was direct, unfiltered and undiluted by the influence of institutions or other interested parties.”</p>
  178.  
  179.  
  180.  
  181. <p>A number of Hollywood films have taken up this “digital vérité” style of cinematography — often handheld and shaky&nbsp;— to heighten the authenticity of their stories, recalling similar styles of realism&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/cinema-rubble-movies-made-ruins-postwar-germany" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">“amid the rubble”</a>&nbsp;following World War II. Many audiences tend to associate what the camera shows them with some idea of reality, which further limits any ability to answer the question of whether war films are true. At the same time, viewers also bring an inherent knowledge that the camera can lie, putting us into a contradictory position as subjective decoders of an object that pretends to be objective even as we understand this to be an illusion.&nbsp;</p>
  182.  
  183.  
  184.  
  185. <p>Brian De Palma’s &#8220;Redacted&#8221; (2007) is something of an outlier within this model for daring to show what was deemed inappropriate or incomprehensible while the war was ongoing. The film begins with the text that it “visually documents imagined events before, during and after a 2006 rape and murder in Samarra,” a real-life event. It goes on to combine “amateur” video diary footage taken by a soldier who hopes to turn what he captures into a submission for film school, alongside faux-news footage by a French documentary crew, fake internet surveillance and video chats. </p>
  186.  
  187.  
  188.  
  189. <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="800" height="516" src="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-ds-01300-01311v.jpg?width=800&#038;height=516" alt="" class="wp-image-309385" srcset="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-ds-01300-01311v.jpg?width=800 800w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-ds-01300-01311v.jpg?width=300&amp;height=194 300w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-ds-01300-01311v.jpg?width=768&amp;height=495 768w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-ds-01300-01311v.jpg?width=279&amp;height=180 279w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-ds-01300-01311v.jpg?width=419&amp;height=270 419w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/186046-service-pnp-ds-01300-01311v.jpg?width=628&amp;height=405 628w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" data-recalc-dims="1" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A man and a woman watching film footage of the Vietnam war on a television in their living room in 1968. (Warren K. Leffler via <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2011661230/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Library of Congress)</a></figcaption></figure>
  190.  
  191.  
  192.  
  193. <p>Early in the film, the videographer who intends to go to film school insists, “this camera, it never lies” — parroting the idea framing most Iraq War films’ attempt to portray the conflict. Another soldier retorts, “Dude, that is bullshit. That’s all that camera ever does.” De Palma seems to be inserting himself in the story here, for his career is notorious for its playful, sophisticated and even garish perspective on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jun/07/brian-de-palma-carrie-scarface-retrospective-documentary" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">the power of images to deceive and manipulate</a>; as he said in a 2016 interview, “I always said that film lies 24 times a second. That’s the antithesis of what Jean-Luc Godard said, that it’s truth 24 per second. That’s nonsense! Film lies all of the time.” </p>
  194.  
  195.  
  196.  
  197. <p>The fascinating tension of &#8220;Redacted&#8221; is his intention to “tell the truth” about the war through the artificiality of these various video formats. Digital vérité is a strategy used here to question the images we see, or don’t see, in the media, especially at a time when everything is mediated. Later on, a soldier claims, rather didactically, “you don’t see the My Lai massacre in movies, because the truth of that fascist orgy is just too hellish for even liberal Hollywood to cop to.” De Palma makes his intentions clear, pushing the film’s audience to challenge popular media narratives of the war. The extent to which he was or was not successful remains an open question: in the U.S., the film grossed only $65,388 against a budget of $5 million, and today, &#8220;Redacted&#8221; carries a 45% rating among audiences on Rotten Tomatoes.</p>
  198.  
  199.  
  200.  
  201. <p>De Palma, it seems, was far too early in trying to upend Americans’ memories of the Iraq War and its meaning. The war needs to spend more time becoming history, perhaps, for others to take on the same risk.</p>
  202.  
  203.  
  204.  
  205. <p>Which returns us to the question of whether a war film can ever be true at all. If cinema is, as De Palma argues, lying at 24 times a second, it might turn out to be the ideal medium for questions, hypotheses and speculation about the past, enabling us to achieve greater understanding not through the vacuum of memory but rather the more constructive — and ultimately more political — interpretive power of history. </p>
  206. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-problem-with-iraq-war-movies/">The Problem with Iraq War Movies</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  207. ]]></content:encoded>
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  216. <item>
  217. <title>Farewell To Bill Moyers</title>
  218. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/farewell-to-bill-moyers/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=farewell-to-bill-moyers</link>
  219. <comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/farewell-to-bill-moyers/#respond</comments>
  221. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Julie Hollar /  FAIR ]]></dc:creator>
  222. <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2025 15:46:15 +0000</pubDate>
  223. <category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
  224. <category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
  225. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  226. <category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
  227. <category><![CDATA[bill moyers]]></category>
  228. <category><![CDATA[journalism]]></category>
  229. <category><![CDATA[lyndon b johnson]]></category>
  230. <category><![CDATA[newsday]]></category>
  231. <category><![CDATA[pbs]]></category>
  232. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309376</guid>
  233.  
  234. <description><![CDATA[<p>The venerable journalist used his personal brand of independent reporting to show how public TV could serve viewers.</p>
  235. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/farewell-to-bill-moyers/">Farewell To Bill Moyers</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  236. ]]></description>
  237. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  238. <p class="has-small-font-size">Publisher&#8217;s Note: Bill Moyers previously donated to Truthdig through the Schumann Foundation.</p>
  239.  
  240.  
  241.  
  242. <p><strong>Bill Moyers died last week</strong> at the age of 91. His career began as a close aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-dec-13-la-ca-bill-moyers13-2009dec13-story.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">serving</a> as LBJ’s de facto chief of staff and then his press secretary, but Moyers spent most of his life in journalism. After the Johnson administration, he was briefly publisher of Long Island’s <a href="https://www.newsday.com/entertainment/bill-moyers-dead-o22177" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Newsday</a>, which won two Pulitzers under his tenure before he was forced out <a href="https://fair.org/home/how-new-york-newsday-died-and-why-it-didnt-have-to/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">for being too left</a>.</p>
  243.  
  244.  
  245.  
  246. <p>Most of Moyers’ journalism, however, appeared on public television, an institution he helped launch as a member of the 1967 Carnegie Commission, which&nbsp;<a href="http://fair.org/take-action/action-alerts/tell-pbs-dont-abandon-hard-hitting-journalism/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">called</a>&nbsp;for public TV to be “a forum for controversy and debate” that would&nbsp; “provide a voice for groups in the community that may otherwise be unheard” and “help us see America whole, in all its diversity.”</p>
  247.  
  248.  
  249.  
  250. <p>While public TV as a whole has often&nbsp;<a href="https://fair.org/home/all-the-right-moves/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">failed</a>&nbsp;to live up to those ideas, Moyers exemplified them.</p>
  251.  
  252.  
  253.  
  254. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Consistently critical</h3>
  255.  
  256.  
  257.  
  258. <p>Moyers was a consistently critical voice on PBS. In 1987, his PBS special <a href="https://billmoyers.com/content/secret-government-constitution-crisis/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">&#8220;The Secret Government</a>: The Constitution in Crisis&#8221; offered a searing examination of the Iran/Contra scandal; he followed that up with an even deeper dive into the story three years later for Frontline with &#8220;<a href="https://billmoyers.com/content/high-crimes-misdemeanors-reagan-iran-contra-scandal/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">High Crimes and Misdemeanors</a>.&#8221;</p>
  259.  
  260.  
  261.  
  262. <p>Moyers’ 2007 documentary &#8220;<a href="https://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Buying the War</a>,&#8221; aired four years into the Iraq War, offered a critique of media failures in the run-up to war that was rarely heard in corporate media.</p>
  263.  
  264.  
  265.  
  266. <p>His independence made him a thorn in PBS‘s side. <a href="https://fair.org/uncategorized/more-on-cnns-tea-party/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Robert Parry</a> explained:</p>
  267.  
  268.  
  269.  
  270. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  271. <p>When I was working at PBS Frontline in the early 1990s, senior producers would sometimes order up pre-ordained right-wing programs — such as a show denouncing Cuba’s Fidel Castro — to counter Republican attacks on the documentary series for programs the right didn’t like, such as Bill Moyers’ analysis of the Iran/Contra scandal.</p>
  272.  
  273.  
  274.  
  275. <p>In essence, the idea was to inject right-wing bias into some programming as “balance” to other serious journalism, which presented facts that Republicans found objectionable. That way, the producers could point to the right-wing show to prove their “objectivity” and, with luck, deter GOP assaults on&nbsp;PBS&nbsp;funding.</p>
  276. </blockquote>
  277.  
  278.  
  279.  
  280. <p>When Moyers hosted the news program Now (2002-2004), the right complained — and PBS addressed the complaints by cutting the hour-long show to 30 minutes, while adding three right-wing programs: Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered, a show by conservative commentator Michael Medved and the Journal Editorial Report, featuring writers and editors from the arch-conservative <a href="https://fair.org/take-action/action-alerts/pbs-panders-to-right-with-new-programming/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Wall Street Journal editorial page</a>.</p>
  281.  
  282.  
  283.  
  284. <p>Moyers was already heading out the door at&nbsp;Now, passing the torch to co-host David Brancaccio, who largely continued its hard-hitting tradition. Moyers returned to&nbsp;PBS&nbsp;in 2007 with a revival of his 1970s public affairs show,&nbsp;Bill Moyers Journal. When he retired that show in 2010,&nbsp;PBS&nbsp;also&nbsp;<a href="https://fair.org/extra/what-pbs-thinks-you-need-to-know/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">canceled</a>&nbsp;Now. Moyers’ brand of independent journalism has been in short supply on&nbsp;PBS&nbsp;ever since.</p>
  285.  
  286.  
  287.  
  288. <p>Moyers diagnosed the problem in an appearance on <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/8/bill_moyers_on_his_legendary_journalism" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Democracy Now!</a>:</p>
  289.  
  290.  
  291.  
  292. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  293. <p>Sometimes self-censorship occurs because you’re looking over your shoulder and you think, well, if I do this story or that story, it will hurt public broadcasting. Public broadcasting has suffered often for my sins, reporting stories the officials don’t want reported. And today, only … a very small percentage of funding for NPR and PBS comes from the government. But that accounts for a concentration of pressure and self-censorship. And only when we get a trust fund, only when the public figures out how to support us independently of a federal treasury, will we flourish as an independent medium.</p>
  294. </blockquote>
  295.  
  296.  
  297.  
  298. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">‘Real change comes from outside the consensus’</h3>
  299.  
  300.  
  301.  
  302. <p>Moyers shared FAIR’s critique of corporate media. On <a href="https://fair.org/uncategorized/bill-moyers-and-tavis-smiley-on-public-tvs-elite-bias/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Tavis Smiley</a>, he spoke about the elite bias in the media:</p>
  303.  
  304.  
  305.  
  306. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  307. <p>Television, including public television, rarely gives a venue to people who have refused to buy into the ruling ideology of Washington. The ruling ideology of Washington is we have two parties, they do their job, they do their job pretty well. The differences between them limit the terms of the debate. But we know that real change comes from outside the consensus. Real change comes from people making history, challenging history, dissenting, protesting, agitating, organizing.</p>
  308.  
  309.  
  310.  
  311. <p>Those voices that challenge the ruling ideology — two parties, the best of all worlds, do a pretty good job — those voices get constantly pushed back to the areas of the stage you can’t see or hear.</p>
  312. </blockquote>
  313.  
  314.  
  315.  
  316. <p>Jeff Cohen, FAIR’s founder, remembered Moyers’ impact on FAIR:</p>
  317.  
  318.  
  319.  
  320. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  321. <p>He was very supportive of FAIR from Day One, and always offered encouragement to our staff. He was especially supportive of our studies of who gets to speak on PBS and NPR, and who doesn’t. He helped FAIR find funding for quarter-page advertorials on the New York Times op-ed page, which was then crucial and well-read media real estate, on various issues of corporate media bias or censorship. And he helped us find funding as well for a full-page ad in USA Today, exposing the distortions and lies of Rush Limbaugh.</p>
  322. </blockquote>
  323.  
  324.  
  325.  
  326. <p>Already some in corporate media are trying to push Moyers’ dissenting voice to the shadows. The New York Times, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/business/media/bill-moyers-dead.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">in a lengthy obituary</a> devoted mostly to Moyers’ time working with LBJ, found no room to mention Moyers’ Iran/Contra work, or his repeated clashes with and criticisms of PBS. It did, however, find space to quote far-right website FrontPageMag.com, which in 2004 called Moyers a “sweater-wearing pundit who delivered socialist and neo-Marxist propaganda with a soft Texas accent.”</p>
  327. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/farewell-to-bill-moyers/">Farewell To Bill Moyers</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  328. ]]></content:encoded>
  330. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/farewell-to-bill-moyers/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  331. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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  336. </item>
  337. <item>
  338. <title>Calls Grow To Shut Down the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation</title>
  339. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/calls-grow-to-shut-down-the-gaza-humanitarian-foundation/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=calls-grow-to-shut-down-the-gaza-humanitarian-foundation</link>
  340. <comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/calls-grow-to-shut-down-the-gaza-humanitarian-foundation/#comments</comments>
  342. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Stavroula Pabst /  Responsible Statecraft ]]></dc:creator>
  343. <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2025 15:37:22 +0000</pubDate>
  344. <category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
  345. <category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
  346. <category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
  347. <category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
  348. <category><![CDATA[Social Justice]]></category>
  349. <category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
  350. <category><![CDATA[World]]></category>
  351. <category><![CDATA[Wounds of War]]></category>
  352. <category><![CDATA[famine]]></category>
  353. <category><![CDATA[gaza]]></category>
  354. <category><![CDATA[gaza humanitarian foundation]]></category>
  355. <category><![CDATA[israeli defense forces]]></category>
  356. <category><![CDATA[mossad]]></category>
  357. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309372</guid>
  358.  
  359. <description><![CDATA[<p>The GHF’s militarized aid distribution constitutes a radical shift from established humanitarian relief operations, say critics.</p>
  360. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/calls-grow-to-shut-down-the-gaza-humanitarian-foundation/">Calls Grow To Shut Down the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  361. ]]></description>
  362. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  363. <p><strong>Many human rights organizations</strong> <a href="https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2025/06/GHF-Letter-Sign-on_ww.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>say</u></a> it should shut down. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have killed <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/06/27/israel-killed-palestinians-food-aid-gaza/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>hundreds of Palestinians</u></a> at or around its aid centers. And yet, the United States has <a href="https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-june-26-2025/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>committed no less than $30 million</u></a> toward the controversial, Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).</p>
  364.  
  365.  
  366.  
  367. <p>As <a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/12-05-2025-people-in-gaza-starving--sick-and-dying-as-aid-blockade-continues" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>famine-like conditions</u></a> grip Gaza, the GHF says it has given over <a href="https://x.com/GHFUpdates/status/1939299240339021975" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>50 million meals</u></a> to Palestinians at its four aid centers in central and southern Gaza Strip <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/27/gaza-humanitarian-foundation-ghf-aid-operation" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>since late May</u></a>. Those centers are <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/contractors-gaza-aid-center/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"><u>operated</u></a> by armed <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/05/04/israel-gaza-aid-distribution-plan/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>U.S. private contractors</u></a> and <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-27/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-soldiers-ordered-to-shoot-deliberately-at-unarmed-gazans-waiting-for-humanitarian-aid/00000197-ad8e-de01-a39f-ffbe33780000" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>secured</u></a> by IDF forces present at or near them.</p>
  368.  
  369.  
  370.  
  371. <p>Through almost-daily email campaigns and X posts, the foundation contends its work provides critical aid to Palestinians. But those assertions ring hollow when juxtaposed against the disastrous, widely condemned state of its Gaza operations, where IDF soldiers have reportedly been instructed to shoot Palestinians at or around their centers <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/06/1164846" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">almost every day</a>.</p>
  372.  
  373.  
  374.  
  375. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">GHF&#8217;s peculiar media strategy</h3>
  376.  
  377.  
  378.  
  379. <p>The GHF passes itself off as an <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/20/what-is-the-gaza-humanitarian-foundation-and-why-has-it-been-criticised" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>independent</u></a><strong> </strong>humanitarian group. In fact, it was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/24/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-aid-plan.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>conceived</u></a> by Israeli officials at the beginning of the war, with buy-in from Israeli tech investors and venture capitalists, as well as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/24/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-aid-plan.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>staff</u></a><strong> </strong>from<strong> </strong>Israel’s state-aid coordinators, or COGAT (Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories). Israeli opposition lawmakers <a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israeli-intelligence-funds-controversial-gaza-humanitarian-foundation-opposition-lawmakers-claim/3584445" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>allege</u></a> that Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, has funded the GHF. Meanwhile, former CIA officer Paul Reilly <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/israel-gaza-aid/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">was allegedly in on the ground floor of the scheme</a> and <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/team-suburban-dads-secured-key-checkpoint-gazas-death/story?id=120921682" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>founded</u></a> Safe Reach Solutions, one of the two U.S.-based private contracting firms managing the aid hubs. A former U.S. Special Forces soldier <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-contractors-gaza/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"><u>heads</u></a> the other.</p>
  380.  
  381.  
  382.  
  383. <p>For their part, Israeli officials <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn5kk1w00xyo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>say</u></a> the GHF is the only safe way to get direct aid to the Palestinians inside. The World Food Programme has found it <a href="https://www.wfp.org/news/statement-wfp-aid-operations-gaza#:~:text=To%20stave%20off%20starvation%2C%20stabilize,Gaza%20with%20life%2Dsaving%20assistance." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>nearly impossible</u></a> to operate in Gaza due to the security situation, often halting its operations, while <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/tag/israel/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Israel</a> <a href="https://palestine.un.org/en/288442-israel%E2%80%99s-new-laws-banning-unrwa-already-taking-effect#:~:text=Caption:%20The%20war%20in%20Gaza,on%20UN%20premises%20and%20staff.&amp;text=Occupied%20Palestinian%20Territory-,Israeli%20legislation%20banning%20the%20UN%20agency%20for%20Palestine%20refugees%2C%20UNRWA,six%20million%20Palestine%20refugees%20today." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>banned</u></a> the United Nations program UNRWA, which was the predominant source of aid for Palestinians there, in January.</p>
  384.  
  385.  
  386.  
  387. <p>Eager to depict itself as a force for good, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation inundates reporters with near-daily communications boasting of the number of meals provided to Gazans, frequently featuring photos of smiling Palestinians, especially children, receiving aid. Its <a href="https://x.com/GHFUpdates" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>X account</u></a> and <a href="http://ghf.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>new, flashy website</u></a> employ similar messaging and photos.</p>
  388.  
  389.  
  390.  
  391. <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  392. <div class="embed-twitter"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The GHF model is delivering results to the benefit of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Every day is a new opportunity to distribute aid directly to those who need it. <a href="https://t.co/6UlCHDRa4k" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">pic.twitter.com/6UlCHDRa4k</a></p>&mdash; Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (@GHFUpdates) <a href="https://twitter.com/GHFUpdates/status/1939202173226860955?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">June 29, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>
  393. </div></figure>
  394.  
  395.  
  396.  
  397. <p>The GHF has even recruited Shahar Segal, the prominent restaurateur and business partner of celebrity Israeli chef Eyal Shani, <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/culture/2025-06-12/ty-article-magazine/.premium/the-top-restaurateur-whitewashing-israels-crimes-in-gaza-brighter-than-cauliflowers/00000197-6416-df0f-add7-febe847f0000" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>as its spokesperson</u></a>. Segal arguably isn’t the GHF’s only flack: State Department spokespersons Tammy Bruce and Tommy Pigott have <a href="https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-june-26-2025/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>repeatedly gushed</u></a> over GHF aid operations at recent press briefings.</p>
  398.  
  399.  
  400.  
  401. <p>GHF’s other communications efforts are markedly less glamorous. Its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61576929655481" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>Facebook page</u></a>, for example, often posts announcements in Arabic about upcoming aid distributions. Often, the GHF&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0mA8SNdHCVcK5ntvwh21qGeSGmLF8d5cu87wYkiQM5VXr89oQCFwUPQo2jX2DXwBDl&amp;id=61576929655481" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>posts</u></a>&nbsp;that it’s distributing aid in a given location,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0WkLLzH7pK6faGnp1kyot2ACEymFU1bz9koiCECywrYQP2fMC59ZEFQyKkGjrJ2Rl&amp;id=61576929655481" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>only to announce</u></a>&nbsp;minutes later it’s already handed out all the supplies.</p>
  402.  
  403.  
  404.  
  405. <p>The GHF routinely denounces Hamas in its communications. Like the Israeli government, it says Hamas has fabricated the narrative of Palestinians being harmed or killed by the IDF at their aid sites, even though the killings have been widely reported by numerous mainstream outlets, including <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-27/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-soldiers-ordered-to-shoot-deliberately-at-unarmed-gazans-waiting-for-humanitarian-aid/00000197-ad8e-de01-a39f-ffbe33780000" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Haaretz</a>, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-tank-shelling-kills-45-people-awaiting-aid-trucks-gaza-ministry-says-2025-06-17/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>Reuters</u></a> and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/26/israeli-attacks-kill-more-than-30-people-in-gaza-including-3-near-aid-site" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>Al Jazeera</u></a>.</p>
  406.  
  407.  
  408.  
  409. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>At least 583 Palestinians have been reported killed at or near GHF-run aid sites since May 27.</p></blockquote></figure>
  410.  
  411.  
  412.  
  413. <p>“There is a growing pattern of violent events being misreported as occurring near our sites, when they involve UN convoys or areas far outside our operations,” the GHF said in a June 17 email. “We’re also concerned by the role of the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, certain UN officials, and Al Jazeera in promoting these false narratives.”</p>
  414.  
  415.  
  416.  
  417. <p>Repeating a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/cindy-mccain-hamas-israel-aid-b2757707.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>common Israeli claim</u></a>&nbsp;that Hamas diverts humanitarian aid in Gaza to its own ends, Segal&nbsp;<a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5431530/israel-gaza-food-aid-shahar-segal" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>insisted</u></a>&nbsp;that the GHF “is the only right and possible way to deliver food to Gazans without feeding Hamas&#8217; terror machine.” But Cindy McCain, the head of the U.N.’s World Food Program,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9oxVDsbr_s" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>said</u></a>&nbsp;in late May that there was no evidence Hamas was stealing aid.</p>
  418.  
  419.  
  420.  
  421. <p>Despite credible <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/media/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">media</a> reports, GHF <a href="https://x.com/GHFUpdates/status/1938975689111466336" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>insists</u></a> that IDF soldiers have not killed or injured hundreds of Palestinians seeking aid at their sites. As of June 29, at least 583 Palestinians have been reported killed at or near GHF-run aid sites <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/29/israel-kills-nearly-600-palestinians-at-aid-centres-all-you-need-to-know" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>since they started operations</u></a> on <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/29/israel-kills-nearly-600-palestinians-at-aid-centres-all-you-need-to-know" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>May 27</u></a>.</p>
  422.  
  423.  
  424.  
  425. <p>“It is not surprising that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation uses social media to portray itself as assisting Palestinians in Gaza,” Annelle Sheline, research fellow at the Quincy Institute’s Middle East program, told Responsible Statecraft. “It has to try to overcome the overwhelming evidence that its aid distribution sites are in fact primarily responsible for killing Palestinians rather than saving them.”</p>
  426.  
  427.  
  428.  
  429. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Helping Israel dodge accountability</h3>
  430.  
  431.  
  432.  
  433. <p>Concerned that GHF’s unconventional operations jeopardize Palestinian lives, many humanitarian organizations condemn its work.</p>
  434.  
  435.  
  436.  
  437. <p>In an <a href="https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2025/06/GHF-Letter-Sign-on_ww.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>open letter</u></a> released June 23, a group of 15 international human rights organizations, including the International Commission of Journalists, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-ae/news/middleeast/ngos-urge-gaza-humanitarian-foundation-to-close-warning-of-war-crime-complicity/ar-AA1Hj2Gv" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>slammed</u></a> the GHF’s operations, including involving private mercenaries and the IDF.</p>
  438.  
  439.  
  440.  
  441. <p>The GHF’s “new model of privatized, militarized aid distribution constitutes a radical and dangerous shift away from established international humanitarian relief operations,” they wrote.</p>
  442.  
  443.  
  444.  
  445. <p>Alexander Smith, a former USAID contractor who <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/usaid-contractor-resigns-after-claiming-his-work-palestine-was-censored" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>resigned</u></a> after his work on Gaza was censored by the Biden administration, said that the GHF is not behaving like a genuine aid organization. For example, forcing Palestinians to travel to a select few aid centers violated established humanitarian norms. “You don&#8217;t want sick and injured people having to move, and you don&#8217;t want them moving across a war zone,” he said. “You get the aid to them.”</p>
  446.  
  447.  
  448.  
  449. <p>Observers contend GHF operations assist Israel’s political goals for the region. Environmental researcher Yaakov Garb <a href="https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/QB75LB" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>found</u></a> that GHF’s aid structures were designed and located in ways “predominantly responsive to Israeli military strategy and tactics rather than … a broad humanitarian relief intervention.” And the GHF deploys aid sites only in the center and south of Gaza, suggesting the operations aim to <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/20/what-is-the-gaza-humanitarian-foundation-and-why-has-it-been-criticised#:~:text=The%20UN%20said%20the%20GHF,for%20food%20and%20other%20aid." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>force Palestinians</u></a> out of northern Gaza — where Israel has now <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-attacks-kill-least-21-people-gaza-medics-say-2025-06-26/#:~:text=CAIRO%2FTEL%20AVIV%2C%20June%2026,aid%2C%20not%20Hamas%20stealing%20it." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>banned</u></a> aid altogether.</p>
  450.  
  451.  
  452.  
  453. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“They&#8217;re choosing to double down on GHF because it&#8217;s more politically expedient.”</p></blockquote></figure>
  454.  
  455.  
  456.  
  457. <p>&#8220;The placement of those three aid distribution hubs in [Gaza’s] extreme south are obviously meant to draw people to the south, near the Egyptian border &#8230; to draw people away from the north,” Smith said. “Israeli officials, from [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich, have been very frank about their intention to simply take and resettle that land.”</p>
  458.  
  459.  
  460.  
  461. <p>Sheline said that GHF’s operations and communications help Israel skirt accountability for the humanitarian crisis it has created in Gaza, where Israel has killed <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/24/dozens-palestinians-killed-in-latest-israeli-attacks-on-aid-seekers" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>more than 56,000 Palestinians</u></a> since Oct. 7, 2023.</p>
  462.  
  463.  
  464.  
  465. <p>“The IDF only allowed the GHF to begin operating to dispel the impression that Israel is deliberately starving the population of Gaza to death by allowing in almost no food since March 2, and still preventing any medicine, fuel or water from entering the territory,” Sheline said. “The GHF is not intended to help Palestinians, it is intended to dispel negative media coverage.”</p>
  466.  
  467.  
  468.  
  469. <p>When Responsible Statecraft asked the State Department about its decision to directly fund the GHF, it was referred to a June 26 <a href="https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-june-26-2025/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>press briefing</u></a> in which Pigott announced the $30 million donation. When reporters at that briefing repeatedly asked about the IDF killing Palestinians at GHF aid centers, Pigott simply said Hamas was solely responsible for starting the war.</p>
  470.  
  471.  
  472.  
  473. <p>“I think everyone in the State Department … and probably within the <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/tag/trump-administration/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Trump administration</a>, understands that GHF is not an effective way to deliver aid,” Smith said of the State Department’s $30 million contribution toward GHF operations. “They&#8217;re choosing to double down on GHF because it&#8217;s more politically expedient.”</p>
  474.  
  475.  
  476.  
  477. <p>The GHF did not return a request for comment. The IDF says it is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/27/idf-opens-inquiry-into-possible-war-crimes-after-deaths-near-gaza-aid-sites" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>investigating</u></a>&nbsp;the shootings at and around GHF aid hubs as possible war crimes, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israeli-military-reorganizes-operations-around-aid-centers-after-rash-of-shootings-7ed88e79?mod=world_feat1_middle-east_pos1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>plans to reorganize</u></a>&nbsp;its presence around the aid hubs, adding fences, signs and checkpoints around them, and&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/GHFUpdates/status/1939708978222543171" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>marked routes</u></a>&nbsp;to them to minimize “friction with the population.”</p>
  478. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/calls-grow-to-shut-down-the-gaza-humanitarian-foundation/">Calls Grow To Shut Down the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  479. ]]></content:encoded>
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  488. <item>
  489. <title>No Mo’ Cuomos</title>
  490. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/no-mo-cuomos/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=no-mo-cuomos</link>
  491. <comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/no-mo-cuomos/#respond</comments>
  493. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Conor Lynch]]></dc:creator>
  494. <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2025 14:38:06 +0000</pubDate>
  495. <category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
  496. <category><![CDATA[Column]]></category>
  497. <category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
  498. <category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
  499. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  500. <category><![CDATA[TD Column]]></category>
  501. <category><![CDATA[TD Original]]></category>
  502. <category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
  503. <category><![CDATA[andrew cuomo]]></category>
  504. <category><![CDATA[democratic party]]></category>
  505. <category><![CDATA[donald trump]]></category>
  506. <category><![CDATA[kamala harris]]></category>
  507. <category><![CDATA[zohran mamdani]]></category>
  508. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309369</guid>
  509.  
  510. <description><![CDATA[<p>Will the Democrats learn anything from Zohran Mamdani’s upset in New York’s mayoral primary or choose to keep losing?</p>
  511. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/no-mo-cuomos/">No Mo’ Cuomos</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  512. ]]></description>
  513. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  514. <p class="has-drop-cap">Last November, New York City became the center of a national debate over the Democratic Party’s disastrous loss in the 2024 election and the electorate’s supposed <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/11/21/nx-s1-5198616/2024-presidential-election-results-republican-shift" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">shift to the right</a>. Though Democrats <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-the-nation-told-us-in-2024-state-by-state/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">lost significant ground</a> to Republicans in virtually every state, nowhere was the swing more pronounced than in Donald Trump’s former home state, where he cut the Democratic <a href="https://nysfocus.com/2024/11/06/how-new-york-voted-2024-harris-trump-senate" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">margin of victory in half</a> compared to 2020. Trump performed better in the Empire State than any Republican since 1992. And not just in the suburbs. The Republican <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/11/15/2024/democratic-turnout-plummeted-in-2024-but-only-in-safe-states" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">picked up more new votes</a> in the five boroughs than he did in California or New Jersey, fueled in large part by voters from working-class and minority-majority neighborhoods where Democrats have historically dominated.&nbsp;</p>
  515.  
  516.  
  517.  
  518. <p>Those results gave rise to competing explanations for the Democratic rout. To most of the Democratic establishment and the pundit class, Trump’s gains were seen as clear proof that the party’s “left” had gone too far, tarnishing the party brand with “wokeism” and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/09/opinion/democrats-identity-politics.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">scaring off</a> the ordinary American voter. These critics pointed specifically to the supposed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/06/nyregion/trump-nyc-voters.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">rightward drift</a> among working-class Hispanic and Asian voters, as seen in Queens <a href="https://qns.com/2024/11/queens-sees-significant-rightward-shift-as-trump-support-surges-in-2024-election/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">neighborhoods</a> like Jackson Heights, Richmond Hill and Corona. According to these observers, the party had no choice but to meet the voters where they were and embrace more centrist and conservative positions on issues like crime, immigration and culture. </p>
  519.  
  520.  
  521.  
  522. <p>Those on the left put forward a very different analysis and accompanying strategy. Voters in cities like New York, they proffered, did not move to the right so much as reject a Democratic Party that had come to embody the establishment and status quo. The scapegoating of the “left” was belied by the fact that Democratic candidate Kamala Harris had run a <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/11/04/harris-progressive-voters-policy-election-trump" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">conventional</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/09/us/politics/harris-trump-economy.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">business-friendly</a> campaign that more or less followed the preferred script of the party’s neoliberal wing. Harris steered clear of populism and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/business/harris-economic-plan-wall-street.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">sought the approval </a>of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, while avoiding any kind of rhetoric that could be deemed “woke.” She ran an overly cautious campaign that seemed to accept the very assumption that voters had become more conservative, when in fact they had become <a href="https://jacobin.com/2024/12/economic-populism-state-ballot-measures" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">more populist</a>. For many voters, especially in the lower income brackets, Trump wasn’t the conservative or right-wing choice — he was the anti-establishment choice.&nbsp;</p>
  523.  
  524.  
  525.  
  526. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Trump performed better in the Empire State than any Republican since 1992.</p></blockquote></figure>
  527.  
  528.  
  529.  
  530. <p>Which brings us to Zohran Mamdani. Few politicians have grasped this distinction more intuitively than the 33-year-old assemblyman from Queens who shocked the Democratic establishment and the city’s business elite last week when he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/01/nyregion/mamdani-wins-mayor-primary-nyc.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">trounced</a> former New York governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for mayor. Instead of moving to the center, the self-described Democratic Socialist ran an insurgent populist campaign that was largely shaped by the <a href="https://www.instagram.com/zohrankmamdani/reel/DCZHIXpu83p/why-did-so-many-working-class-new-yorkers-vote-for-donald-trump-last-week-and-ev/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">conversations</a> he had with the city’s residents after last year’s election. In a recent <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/zohran-mamdani-on-why-he-beat-andrew-cuomo-democratic-nyc-mayor-nomination.html?utm_campaign=nym&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=s1" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">interview</a> with New York Magazine, Mamdani laid out how his people-centered campaign was informed by interactions with everyday New Yorkers, including those who voted for Trump: “We have tried to listen more and lecture less, and it’s in those very conversations that I had with Democrats who voted for Donald Trump many months ago that I heard what it would take to bring them back to the Democratic Party — that it would be a relentless focus on an economic agenda.”</p>
  531.  
  532.  
  533.  
  534. <p>Mamdani’s “relentless focus” on an economic agenda devised to address the city’s affordability crisis helped catapult him from relative obscurity last November to national prominence today. The assemblyman ran an energetic and grassroots campaign with an army of volunteers that remained laser-focused throughout on lowering costs and improving quality of life for New Yorkers. For the <a href="https://fiveboro.nyc/new-peoples-pulse-survey-elevates-new-yorkers-voices-and-top-issues-in-citywide-elections/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">majority</a> of city residents who struggle to pay the bills, proposals like a rent freeze, universal childcare and free public buses proved very popular.&nbsp;</p>
  535.  
  536.  
  537.  
  538. <p>The Democratic race for New York City mayor served as a kind of testing ground for the rival explanations of the party’s eroding support across key voter groups. While Mamdani represented the populist theory in practice, Cuomo stood as the standard-bearer for the centrist approach. When the latter announced his campaign this year, he echoed neoliberal criticisms of the party’s left, arguing that Democrats had stopped living in the “real world” and embraced extreme rhetoric and policies that alienated most voters. Cuomo also <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/andrew-cuomo-slams-aocs-rally-tour-for-capitalizing-on-voters-trump-fears/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">called out</a> the “extremists” who promoted “anti-corporate” and “anti-capitalist” politics, singling out progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. The lesson of 2024, he said, was “you can’t have this extreme wing of the Democratic Party running the Democratic Party.” </p>
  539.  
  540.  
  541.  
  542. <p>It’s hard to recall the last time the city’s power players rallied behind a candidate the way they did for Cuomo. The former governor was backed by virtually the entire New York City establishment, from the Democratic Party machine to the city’s financial and business elite. His Super PACs were bankrolled by hedge fund billionaires and the real estate lobby, while he picked up endorsements from <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/18/cuomo-former-critics-endorsements-new-york-mayor-00403346" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">dozens</a> of elected New York Democrats and prominent <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/zohran-mamdani-mayor" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">national Democrats</a> like former president Bill Clinton and Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C. In the end, however, this overwhelming support from the city&#8217;s political and financial elite may have inadvertently helped Mamdani’s populist message resonate even more with the city’s frustrated electorate. </p>
  543.  
  544.  
  545.  
  546. <p>Despite overwhelming opposition from the power elite and a concerted smear campaign to paint him as an antisemite due to his principled critique of Israel and its <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-international-concludes-israel-is-committing-genocide-against-palestinians-in-gaza/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">genocidal</a> actions in Gaza, Mamdani defeated Cuomo with ease. After <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/01/nyregion/mamdani-wins-mayor-primary-nyc.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">just one round</a> of the rank-choice voting, the Democratic Socialist won 56% of the vote to Cuomo’s 44%. He also carried many of the same <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/25/nyregion/nyc-mayor-election-results-map-mamdani-cuomo.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">districts</a> that veered sharply toward Trump last November, winning over demographic groups that had ostensibly shifted to the right, including Hispanics, Asians and young men. In the district where he recorded a viral video interviewing Trump voters shortly after last November’s election — where the vote swung 25-points toward Trump — Mamdani <a href="https://gothamist.com/news/how-voters-in-trump-districts-helped-mamdani-win-the-democratic-primary" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">picked up over 80%</a> of the vote. </p>
  547.  
  548.  
  549.  
  550. <p>Mamdani’s populist coalition was broad and diverse, stretching across race and class. While Cuomo’s strongest backing came from low- and high-income voters, Mamdani appealed to working- and middle-class voters in between. New York writer Michael Lange aptly <a href="https://x.com/MichaelLangeNYC/status/1937893704116686856" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">described</a> it as a coalition of the “in-between: working, middle, and upper-middle class renters spanning White, Hispanic and Asian neighborhoods across all five boroughs.” The candidate also galvanized young and disengaged voters who had previously stayed home on election day. According to an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/29/nyregion/zohran-mamdani-voters-strategy.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">analysis</a> by the New York Times, 37,000 people registered to vote in the two weeks leading up to the election, compared to just 3,000 in the 2021 primary. </p>
  551.  
  552.  
  553.  
  554. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Mamdani appealed to working- and middle-class voters.</p></blockquote></figure>
  555.  
  556.  
  557.  
  558. <p>Mamdani’s decisive victory proved that populist messaging resonates with voters that have been moving away from Democrats for years. Yet many top Democrats have responded to the Democratic Socialist’s triumph with alarm rather than hope. Indeed, Mamdani’s win has thrown much of the party’s elite into a state of panic, with insiders <a href="https://apnews.com/article/new-york-mayor-zohran-mamdani-trump-biden-1561ca0aa1821f88b97603f00221b64f" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">fretting</a> that a Democratic Socialist mayor of New York could spell trouble for the party’s brand and put <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/06/26/democrats-zohran-mamdani-meltdown-new-york" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">incumbents</a> in battleground districts at greater risk. Even more alarmed are New York City’s financial elites, who are now <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/nyregion/eric-adams-business-leaders-meeting.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">scrambling to derail</a> Mamdani’s march to Gracie Mansion (Plan B, it appears, is to back the Trumpian incumbent mayor Eric Adams, who currently has a <a href="https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3920" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">20%</a> approval rating).&nbsp;</p>
  559.  
  560.  
  561.  
  562. <p>What truly unnerves the city’s monied elite — and much of the Democratic establishment — isn’t the fear that Mamdani will fail, but that he might succeed and actually improve life for working- and middle-class New Yorkers. In a recent interview, the Democratic nominee said that he is not interested in winning an “ideological argument” but in delivering on “making the city affordable for everyone,” reflecting a pragmatic approach toward governing. As other <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/mamdani-victory-cuomo-socialist-governance/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">commentators</a> have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/25/zohran-mamdani-offered-a-political-revolution-and-won" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">noted</a>, Mamdani’s philosophy of governance is reminiscent of the “sewer socialism” of 20th century Milwaukee and even Sanders’ <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/27/us/politics/bernie-sanders-mayor-burlington-vt.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">successful governing approach</a> as mayor of Burlington, Vermont. The “ideal” model for a Mamdani administration, argues Ross Barkan in The Nation, would be the municipal socialists who governed Milwaukee for much of the 20th century. In that midwestern city, socialist mayors and legislators “delivered durable public goods and managed a clean, effective municipality,” offering a stark contrast to the corrupt machine politics of neighboring Chicago. The “sewer socialists” were “notably non-corrupt in an era when cronyism and graft ran rampant,” notes Barkan. </p>
  563.  
  564.  
  565.  
  566. <p class="is-td-marked">Mamdani, if elected, will have his work cut out for him. Even when the establishment isn’t lined up against you, being mayor of New York City is one of the most difficult and thankless jobs in American politics. Most of his major policies hinge on raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy, which requires state approval and will probably face <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/06/26/us-news/gov-hochul-says-shes-not-ready-to-back-zohran-mamdani-for-nyc-mayor-yet-slamming-his-plan-to-raise-taxes/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">opposition</a> from Gov. Kathy Hochul and other lawmakers in Albany. He will also face stiff opposition from the same financial and business elites who are currently working to thwart his election, plus a hostile media. Ultimately, Mamdani will have to work to maintain the grassroots energy that helped him take down the state’s most powerful political dynasty and communicate directly with the people of New York. To achieve his goals, he’ll need to build and sustain a broad coalition bound not by ideological conformity, but a shared desire to improve the city for all New Yorkers. And for the Democrats to follow his success and regain national power, they’ll need to accept that the path runs not through the center, but away from the neoliberal order that voters everywhere are eager to leave behind.</p>
  567. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/no-mo-cuomos/">No Mo’ Cuomos</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  568. ]]></content:encoded>
  570. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/no-mo-cuomos/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  571. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  574. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">309369</post-id> <enclosure url="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/nomorecuomos.png?width=878&#038;height=585" length="1750738" type="image/png" />
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  576. </item>
  577. <item>
  578. <title>Sound of the Pol(ICE)</title>
  579. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/migration-under-fascism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=migration-under-fascism</link>
  580. <comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/migration-under-fascism/#respond</comments>
  582. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Bart plantenga]]></dc:creator>
  583. <pubDate>Wed, 02 Jul 2025 15:38:07 +0000</pubDate>
  584. <category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
  585. <category><![CDATA[Arts & Culture]]></category>
  586. <category><![CDATA[Dig Scape]]></category>
  587. <category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
  588. <category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
  589. <category><![CDATA[Music]]></category>
  590. <category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
  591. <category><![CDATA[Poetry & Spoken Word]]></category>
  592. <category><![CDATA[Social Justice]]></category>
  593. <category><![CDATA[TD Original]]></category>
  594. <category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
  595. <category><![CDATA[capitalism]]></category>
  596. <category><![CDATA[donald trump]]></category>
  597. <category><![CDATA[fascism]]></category>
  598. <category><![CDATA[ICE raids]]></category>
  599. <category><![CDATA[mass deportation]]></category>
  600. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309313</guid>
  601.  
  602. <description><![CDATA[<p>A sonic exploration of authoritarian indifference toward the lives of immigrants and their families.</p>
  603. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/migration-under-fascism/">Sound of the Pol(ICE)</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  604. ]]></description>
  605. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  606. <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  607.  
  608. </div></figure>
  609.  
  610.  
  611.  
  612. <p><strong>Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,</strong> <br><strong>A thousand windows and a thousand doors:</strong><br><strong>Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.</strong><br><strong>• W.H. Auden</strong></p>
  613.  
  614.  
  615.  
  616. <p class="has-drop-cap">Trump is the beacon light directed at the most nefarious corners of the human soul often manifested in everyday politics but mostly ignored as not strange or egregious enough to warrant outrage or significant systemic change. Until now! Let’s credit TRUMP with changing this paradigm of indifference. His fascism can no longer hide behind empty rhetoric, decorum, ritual. His authoritarian convulsions have revealed how easily checks and balances crumble. His shameless heartlessness is his brand; he knows the powerless are often more impressed by power than by morality. &#8230; But by overplaying his mandate within months he has awakened the masses from their slumber. No more willful hoodwinkery; no more ignoring leftist warnings — it has all come to rotten, sour fruition.</p>
  617.  
  618.  
  619.  
  620. <p>But what does the thrill of being right get you in a world ruled by wrong since at least Reagan? So let us credit Trump for shaking us out of a deep delusional sleep and let us insist that compassion is not weakness.</p>
  621.  
  622.  
  623.  
  624. <p><strong>“No one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.”&nbsp;</strong><br><strong>• Warsan Shire, British-Somali poet</strong></p>
  625.  
  626.  
  627.  
  628. <p class="has-small-font-size"><em>DIG•SCAPE is an audio alternative-phenomenological-impressionistic, multicultural soundscape mashup of loud issues, intuition+research and multisampled insights investigating our current wackadoodle malaise from an askew, engaged and anomalous vantage point.</em></p>
  629.  
  630.  
  631.  
  632. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Playlist</h3>
  633.  
  634.  
  635.  
  636. <p class="has-small-font-size">Trois visages de Liège (b) Voix de la Ville • Henri Pousseur<br>Liberty City • Mark Stewart + Maffia<br>Sound of da police • KRS-One<br>Anti-Migrant Big Dick Energy • Lambrini Girls<br>Hands Up, Don’t Shoot • Muslims<br>Hands Up! • Doctor L<br>Deportees &#8211; Plane Wreck at Los Gatos [Guthrie] • Ralph T Kane<br>Don’t Let it Happen Here • Charles Mingus Octet<br>Immigrants (We Get The Job Done) • K’naan, Residente, Snow Tha Product etc<br>Fite Dem Back • Linton Kwesi Johnson<br>Refugee Dub • Ras Tavaris<br>Follow Me • Moxie Raia &amp; Wyclef &amp; Global Citizen<br>The Fascist • Amina Baraka &amp; the Red Microphone<br>Nazi Like Lie • Majority Report<br>Passports on our Faces • Asian Dub Foundation<br>Hunger &amp; Strife • Creation Rebel vs b/art<br>Satisfied? • J-Live<br>Dust Bowl Refugee • Woody Guthrie<br>Precious Cargo • Hurray for the Riff Raff<br>Marine Radio • Jah Wobble &amp; Brian Eno<br>Most Take Orders &amp; Hope For The Best • Tony Benn<br>Nazi Punks Fuck Off • Dead Kennedys<br>Poor Wayfaring Stranger • Dusty Springfield<br>Refugee Blues (WH Auden) • Noah, a Refugee</p>
  637.  
  638.  
  639.  
  640. <p class="has-small-font-size"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Pousseur" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Henri Pousseur</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Stewart_%252B_Maffia" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Mark Stewart + Maffia</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KRS-One" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">KRS-One</a>, <a href="http://livepage.apple.com/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">The Muslims</a>, <a href="https://doctorl.bandcamp.com/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Doctor L</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Mingus" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Charles Mingus</a>, <a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%2527naan" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">K&#8217;naan</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linton_Kwesi_Johnson" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Linton Kwesi Johnson</a>, <a href="https://rastavaris.bandcamp.com/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Ras Tavaris</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2sCG5IA8M4" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Moxie Raia &amp; Wyclef &amp; Global Citizen</a>, <a href="https://www.freejazzblog.org/2017/07/amina-baraka-red-microphone-esp-disk.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Amina Baraka &amp; the Red Microphone</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Dub_Foundation" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Asian Dub Foundation</a>, <a href="https://on-usound.com/The-Story-of-Creation-Rebel" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Creation Rebel</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-Live" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">J-Live</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_Guthrie" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Woody Guthrie</a>, <a href="http://www.hurrayfortheriffraff.com/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Hurray for the Riff Raff</a>,&nbsp; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinner_(album)" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Jah Wobble &amp; Brian Eno</a>, <a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Benn" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Tony Benn</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Kennedys" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Dead Kennedys</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dusty_Springfield" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Dusty Springfield</a>, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3654877/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Noah / Stephen Bookas</a></p>
  641.  
  642.  
  643.  
  644. <p class="has-small-font-size"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpXoKiDun14" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Trump Slams Dems At PA Rally They ‘Allowed Foreigners</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JGFjyoXJeQ" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Trump says he wants DACA recipients to be able to remain in the U.S.</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-xm_9zjNwI" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Fury as Donald Trump says immigrants poison blood</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJg5PnSukk0" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">A Beautiful Day of Resistance_ Anti-ICE protesters up against Federal Agents</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHEG3abtMxA" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">WATCH: Americans REVOLT Against ICE Thugs</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIvkh2PtXqk" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">DHS RAMS Anti-ICE Protesters With Steel Barricade</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f88e76Y2KZw" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">ICE Raids on Restaurants, Farmworkers, Students</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00BWOAUrsao" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Resistance against US deportations intensifies</a>, <a href="http://livepage.apple.com/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Put a bullet in your head&#8217;: man filming ICE arrest</a>, <a href="http://livepage.apple.com/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">How America Keeps Its Citizens Uneducated</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADqerQUfnVE" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Refugee Blues &#8211; A Documentary Poem</a>,<strong> </strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZQcVPtkMdc" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">L.A. Under Siege_ Trump Sends in National Guard as Protests Continue</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10CKLQJDvqQ" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Trump_ Ignorant + Arrogant = Idiot! Trumps Inability To Show Humility</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKgPzDctPM8" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Fascist tendencies in Trump_ A comparison to Hitlers rise</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PemY4P1Yv8" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Trump stands by military threats, calling political opponents ‘the enemy within</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JGFjyoXJeQ" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Trump says he wants DACA recipients to be able to remain in U.S</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-xm_9zjNwI" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Fury as Donald Trump says immigrants poison blood of US</a>, <a href="http://livepage.apple.com/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">IHIP News_ Trumps CORRUPTION EXPOSED as He Puts Lives in DANGER!!</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3NupdiLTJ8" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Riots Eruption Heard On Police Radio Calls</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO139CJeNhg" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Trump&#8217;s ICE Raids Turns LA Into WAR ZONE, Protesters and Journalists BRUTALIZED</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pje2OtIdn_Y" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Protesters Against ICE Take Over Freeway, Clash With Law Enforcement</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZo8EfFf_4g" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Trump Warns Foreign ‘Enemies’: ‘Don’t play around with us’</a>, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/video/watch/idRW238503042024RP1/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Animals _ Trump ups rhetoric on illegal immigration _ REUTERS</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-U_HOYz0Wk" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Donald Trump vows to defeat radical left in 4 July speech</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcTMV4KHnuo&amp;pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Donald Trump calls migrants animals during US-Mexico border speech</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-IrbAO_xZU" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Trump deploying California National Guard over governors objections to LA to quell protests</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AkZdb-7b3Q" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Dozens detained during ICE raids in L.A., protestors take over streets</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMm0bfl8qOA" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Widespread ICE raids_ Protesters clash with federal agents in Los Angeles</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_NPYbCyEKc" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Hegseth Enables Trumps Abuse US Military Power With Invasion Lies</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GgVKEhtWKU" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Unhinged Trump Threatens Violence Against Americans Who Protest His Military Parade</a></p>
  645.  
  646.  
  647.  
  648. <p class="has-small-font-size"><strong>It’s incredible that people put up with it &#8230; but &#8230; they’re poor, they’re demoralized, they’re frightened and, therefore, they think perhaps the safest thing to do is take orders and hope for the best.</strong><br><strong>• Tony Benn</strong></p>
  649. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/migration-under-fascism/">Sound of the Pol(ICE)</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  650. ]]></content:encoded>
  652. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/migration-under-fascism/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  653. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  656. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">309313</post-id> <enclosure url="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/dig12-fascism-grafik-scaled.jpg?width=885&#038;height=585" length="736821" type="image/jpeg" />
  657. <media:thumbnail url="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/dig12-fascism-grafik-scaled.jpg?width=885&#038;height=585" />
  658. </item>
  659. <item>
  660. <title>The Spirit of Dred Scott</title>
  661. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-spirit-of-dred-scott/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-spirit-of-dred-scott</link>
  662. <comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-spirit-of-dred-scott/#respond</comments>
  664. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Erin Aubry Kaplan]]></dc:creator>
  665. <pubDate>Wed, 02 Jul 2025 15:20:55 +0000</pubDate>
  666. <category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
  667. <category><![CDATA[Column]]></category>
  668. <category><![CDATA[Courts & Law]]></category>
  669. <category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
  670. <category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
  671. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  672. <category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
  673. <category><![CDATA[TD Column]]></category>
  674. <category><![CDATA[TD Original]]></category>
  675. <category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
  676. <category><![CDATA[14th amendment]]></category>
  677. <category><![CDATA[dred scott]]></category>
  678. <category><![CDATA[fugitive slave act]]></category>
  679. <category><![CDATA[ICE raids]]></category>
  680. <category><![CDATA[kristi noem]]></category>
  681. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309303</guid>
  682.  
  683. <description><![CDATA[<p>The spirit of the worst Supreme Court decision in history lives on in immigration threats, raids and deportations.</p>
  684. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-spirit-of-dred-scott/">The Spirit of Dred Scott</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  685. ]]></description>
  686. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  687. <p class="has-drop-cap">Recently, I was driving with the radio on, listening idly to a commercial, when I realized that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was speaking. In a twisted version of a public service announcement, with ominous crime-drama music in the background, Noem issued a <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/medialibrary/assets/video/58918" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">stern warning</a> to immigrants who are here illegally: “Leave now. If you don’t, we will find you and we will deport you. You will never return.”&nbsp;</p>
  688.  
  689.  
  690.  
  691. <p>Noem’s warning exempted those with documents, but it’s clear from recent raids and her increasingly hysterical rhetoric that all immigrants are suspect, not because of questions about their residency but because of who and what they are. They all pose an existential threat to the nation, and the only way for our nation to survive is by purging the population of those President Donald Trump and his MAGA cronies don’t see as belonging here. </p>
  692.  
  693.  
  694.  
  695. <p>That was the afternoon that it hit me: the whole heated anti-immigrant campaign that’s boiling over now mirrors exactly what happened in the U.S. leading up to the Civil War.</p>
  696.  
  697.  
  698.  
  699. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>The concern of existential threat is now overwhelmingly focused on Latino immigrants.</p></blockquote></figure>
  700.  
  701.  
  702.  
  703. <p>This moment echoes the turmoil of the 1850s, when America was nearing the end of a long struggle to decide the future of slavery in the South and its expanding frontier. Among the many laws that fueled the debate was the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which said Black slaves who had escaped to freedom had to be returned to bondage, nullifying the freedom offered by Northern states and territories and imperiling free Black people who had never been in bondage. (See the 1853 memoir “Twelve Years a Slave,” about a Black resident of New York who was kidnapped and taken South.) Beneath the slavery debate was a deeper anxiety about the existential threat that Black people, whatever their status, posed to white America. It’s the very same concern, now overwhelmingly focused on Latino immigrants, that is driving the current wave of ICE raids.</p>
  704.  
  705.  
  706.  
  707. <p>These fears about the survival of our nation are reviving the spirit of a legal landmark that went well beyond the Fugitive Slave Act: the Dred Scott decision of 1857, the Supreme Court ruling that is widely considered the worst in American history. It declared that Black people are ineligible for citizenship, and therefore had no constitutional rights that white people are bound to respect. In his ruling, Chief Justice Roger Taney said that the Constitution was obviously written for white people (lofty principles of equality for all notwithstanding), and was thus never meant to apply to those of color. This was a shaky legal argument, but it nonetheless established white supremacy, and Black inferiority, as a basic principle of American life — a kind of self-evident natural law about the way things ought to be.</p>
  708.  
  709.  
  710.  
  711. <p class="has-drop-cap">Dred Scott was later nullified by the 14<sup>th</sup> Amendment, which passed in 1868 and granted newly emancipated Black people citizenship and due process. But the notion that white people are superior and free to treat non-whites as non-humans — as well as non-Americans who don’t belong here — has persisted through every generation since then. Rounding up others on a whim, from lynchings to the Japanese internments of the Second World War to Operation Wetback, has been a recurring theme of American history.</p>
  712.  
  713.  
  714.  
  715. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Anti-immigrant sentiment is built on the anti-Black tradition.</p></blockquote></figure>
  716.  
  717.  
  718.  
  719. <p>Now this theme is playing out with a kind of cumulative vengeance. Trump 2.0 has adopted the policies and practices of white supremacy in a way we haven’t seen since the rule of the Confederacy. The raids and the military deployment in Los Angeles may be glaringly unconstitutional, but they follow the Dred Scott dictate that anything done to contain populations deemed <em>less-than</em> by white people is warranted. Put another way, Latino immigrants have no rights that ICE is bound to respect. This was made abundantly clear last month when Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., the son of working-class Mexican immigrants, was face-planted and handcuffed by FBI agents for daring to ask a question at a press conference in Los Angeles held by Noem. The debacle happened on Padilla’s turf, but the MAGA message was that no immigrant in America has <em>legitimate turf</em>, including a U.S. senator. There are no safe havens.</p>
  720.  
  721.  
  722.  
  723. <p>Anti-immigrant sentiment is built on the anti-Black tradition. Anti-Blackness is what made possible all sorts of laws and social customs that have openly defied justice, operating as a kind of shadow America hiding in plain sight. But there are differences between the two: Despite the Trump administration’s flagrant disregard of the law and due process, immigrants <em>do</em> have constitutional rights, unlike the slaves of the 1850s who were considered mere property. The current crisis centers on the violation of these rights, not about the future of an institution that collectively oppressed an entire people based on their race.</p>
  724.  
  725.  
  726.  
  727. <p>Still, there’s no mistaking the same thread of racial animus. The raids confirm what we’ve known for years, that the word “immigrants” is flimsy code for brown people from Latin America and the Caribbean, despite MAGA arguments that this is not about race or color but ensuring national security and restoring “greatness.” And it goes deeper: anyone who aids and abets, or even sympathizes with, immigrants is becoming a target. For example, a Senate subcommittee headed by Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is now accusing several L.A. immigrant advocacy organizations of helping to orchestrate anti-ICE protests and thwarting the work of federal agents. Not coincidentally, the Fugitive Slave Act legalized fining people who harbored or helped Black people seeking sanctuary or freedom. </p>
  728.  
  729.  
  730.  
  731. <p>It’s worth noting that the anti-immigrant sentiment wasn’t always directed at non-whites. In the 1850s, the Native American Party (nothing to do with Indigenous people) — informally known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Know Nothings</a> — fiercely opposed the immigration of Catholics from Ireland, Italy and Germany on the grounds that “Romanists” threatened the status of American-born Protestants. The Know Nothings enjoyed a surge of popularity, even getting a candidate elected to the presidency, Millard Fillmore (though he later disassociated himself from the party and went on to champion the Fugitive Slave Act). The question of slavery ultimately split the Know Nothings, and it dissolved shortly before the Civil War. As a political and cultural force, though, white Protestant nativism made a successful debut through this short-lived political movement.</p>
  732.  
  733.  
  734.  
  735. <p class="has-drop-cap is-td-marked">Dred Scott’s sweeping sanction of slavery and anti-Blackness was intended to settle the matter of slavery and Black rights for good. Instead, the national debate intensified, the narrow ground of compromise vanished completely, and the U.S. went to war with itself. Trump’s ICE raids and military occupations are meant to forcibly settle the question of whether immigrants are not just legal, but have inherent rights that formerly enslaved Black people fought to establish, including due process and a right to the broader American promise of equality and opportunity for all. As with slavery, there is no middle ground on a controversy that speaks to our fundamental national character, as the growing protests and pushback on the raids and other forms of federal aggression are making clear. Fear of another civil war has been in the air for a long time. But the truth is we’re already in it.</p>
  736. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-spirit-of-dred-scott/">The Spirit of Dred Scott</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  737. ]]></content:encoded>
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  745. </item>
  746. <item>
  747. <title>The Fossil Fuel-Backed &#8216;Philosopher&#8217; Shaping the Megabill Clean Energy Cuts</title>
  748. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-fossil-fuel-backed-philosopher-shaping-the-megabill-clean-energy-cuts/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-fossil-fuel-backed-philosopher-shaping-the-megabill-clean-energy-cuts</link>
  749. <comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-fossil-fuel-backed-philosopher-shaping-the-megabill-clean-energy-cuts/#respond</comments>
  751. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Sharon Kelly /  DeSmog ]]></dc:creator>
  752. <pubDate>Wed, 02 Jul 2025 15:01:32 +0000</pubDate>
  753. <category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
  754. <category><![CDATA[Business & Economy]]></category>
  755. <category><![CDATA[Courts & Law]]></category>
  756. <category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
  757. <category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
  758. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  759. <category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
  760. <category><![CDATA[alex epstein]]></category>
  761. <category><![CDATA[big beautiful bill]]></category>
  762. <category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
  763. <category><![CDATA[fossil fuels]]></category>
  764. <category><![CDATA[thom tillis]]></category>
  765. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309308</guid>
  766.  
  767. <description><![CDATA[<p>Alex Epstein, the author of ‘The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,’ is perpetuating ‘a new kind of climate denialism.’</p>
  768. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-fossil-fuel-backed-philosopher-shaping-the-megabill-clean-energy-cuts/">The Fossil Fuel-Backed &#8216;Philosopher&#8217; Shaping the Megabill Clean Energy Cuts</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  769. ]]></description>
  770. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  771. <p><strong>After Sen. Thom Tillis</strong>, R-N.C., denounced the law once <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/07/01/us/trump-bill-news/1c52ad7b-96a5-54f0-865a-8b9e3c5447c4?smid=url-share" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>known</u></a> as the “Big Beautiful Bill,” largely over its proposed Medicaid cuts, which he said would threaten insurance coverage for many North Carolinians, he called out the bill’s problematic approach to energy — and one climate crisis denier <a href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/fossil-fuel-booster-was-enormous-help-in-megabill-talks/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>credited</u></a> with helping to craft those provisions, in particular.</p>
  772.  
  773.  
  774.  
  775. <p>“It’s another classic example where think tanks and people that haven’t worked a day in business are setting policy in the White House without a clue about what they are potentially doing to our grid,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhSkd5ZDtnk" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>Tillis said</u><u>&nbsp;Sunday night, just hours after</u></a>&nbsp;announcing he would not seek re-election in 2026. “I had an Alex Weinstein, who is a self-described philosopher and expert in this area in my office, talking with three people, practitioners that actually work in it.”</p>
  776.  
  777.  
  778.  
  779. <p>Alex Epstein, author of the pro-fossil fuel books &#8220;The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels&#8221; and &#8220;Fossil Future,&#8221; seems to have recognized himself in that description (despite the senator’s apparent confusion about his name). The following day, Epstein <a href="https://alexepstein.substack.com/p/what-i-really-told-thom-tillis-about" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>published</u></a> a Substack presenting his version of events, writing that he had <a href="https://archive.is/gbd0j" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>recorded his own comments</u></a> during a “secret meeting” with the senator.* </p>
  780.  
  781.  
  782.  
  783. <p>The remarkable meltdown in relations between Epstein and the Tillis comes as the megabill, currently headed back to the House following a 51-50 Senate vote, has been deeply unpopular, polls show. The <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/americans-weigh-big-beautiful-bill-polls" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>most recent results</u></a> from Fox News, for example, put opposition to the bill at 59 percent, versus support at 38 percent. The bill throws the weight of the federal budget behind Immigration and Customs Enforcement and tax cuts, which it funds by slashing Medicaid, food stamps and clean energy programs.</p>
  784.  
  785.  
  786.  
  787. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Tillis warned of potential disruptions to grid reliability.</p></blockquote></figure>
  788.  
  789.  
  790.  
  791. <p>Any shift away from clean energy in the United States will have major consequences for the climate, but accelerating human-caused climate change is hardly the only reason for concern.</p>
  792.  
  793.  
  794.  
  795. <p>“If enacted, the BBB [Big Beautiful Bill] stands to be the biggest job-killing bill in the history of this country,” Sean McGarvey, president of the North America’s Building Trades Unions, which represents over 3 million construction workers, <a href="https://nabtu.org/press_releases/nabtu-statement-on-the-u-s-senate-republican-proposed-one-big-beautiful-bill/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>said</u></a> on Saturday. “Simply put, it is the equivalent of terminating more than 1,000 Keystone XL pipeline projects.”</p>
  796.  
  797.  
  798.  
  799. <p>Tillis warned of potential disruptions to grid reliability as new natural gas turbines face a half-decade order backlog. Other critics in Congress <a href="https://x.com/USRepKCastor/status/1939767219170271642" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>nicknamed</u></a> the draft the “Big Blackout Bill” because of similar concerns.</p>
  800.  
  801.  
  802.  
  803. <p>“I have to vote against a bill from my own party that I have never parted from before because we’re rushing to an arbitrary deadline with people who have never worked a day in this industry,” Tillis said on the Senate floor, “maybe philosophized, have written a few white papers on it, but haven’t gotten their hands dirty.”</p>
  804.  
  805.  
  806.  
  807. <p>Tillis’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Epstein’s claim to have recorded their conversation.</p>
  808.  
  809.  
  810.  
  811. <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-who-is-alex-epstein">Who is Alex Epstein?</h3>
  812.  
  813.  
  814.  
  815. <p>In 2011, Epstein, who has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and describes himself as a <a href="https://budget.house.gov/imo/media/doc/alex_epstein_witness_testimony.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>“philosopher and energy expert,”</u></a> founded a for-profit think tank called the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/center-industrial-progress/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"><u>Center for Industrial Progress</u></a>, a fossil fuel advocacy group. ExxonMobil, Chevron, Phillips 66, Valero, Enbridge and TransCanada (now TC Energy) are among the “many large energy companies” he has delivered presentations to, according to a <a href="https://jpt.spe.org/three-myths-about-oil-and-gas-industrys-future-and-how-counter-them" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>2019 bio</u></a> accompanying a piece in the Journal of Petroleum Technology.</p>
  816.  
  817.  
  818.  
  819. <p>While the Center for Industrial Progress generally doesn’t disclose its funders, the Prometheus Foundation, which calls itself “an independent, nonprofit enterprise whose mission is to promote Ayn Rand and advance her philosophy,” filed a 990 tax form showing a $25,000 donation to Epstein’s group in 2020. In 2018, Epstein <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180917192411/http:/industrialprogress.com/courageous-coal-leader-calls-out-tech-giants-for-their-100-renewable-lies/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>also disclosed</u></a> the Kentucky Coal Association’s president Tyler White and a now-defunct website called “The Coal Truth” as clients.</p>
  820.  
  821.  
  822.  
  823. <p>“I proudly work with and accept contributions from fossil fuel companies/executives and other companies/executives that support energy freedom policies. By contract, no company or person has any editorial influence over me and/or my projects,” Epstein&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2022/04/07/alex-epstein-fossil-fuels-martin-luther-king-jr/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"><u>told DeSmog</u></a>&nbsp;in 2022.</p>
  824.  
  825.  
  826.  
  827. <p>In response to questions from DeSmog, Epstein wrote: “You already have&nbsp;my public post on Tillis, which is the main thing. Re: funding issues, it seems like you are trying to assemble a misleading set of associations involving trivial&nbsp;sources of funding that&nbsp;have (like all the others) zero control of what I or my team say.” He pointed instead to his Substack post announcing the Energy Future Fund, calling his own approach “the most conducive to intellectual independence that exists in the energy/environment/climate world.”</p>
  828.  
  829.  
  830.  
  831. <p>Epstein’s hostility to climate action was on clear display in 2021, for example, when <a href="https://x.com/AlexEpstein/status/1458495785218154506" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>he called</u></a> <a href="https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/cop26" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>international climate talks</u></a> “not a progressive scientific conference but an anti-human, primitive-religious attempt to commit mass genocide.” Epstein maintains his own ways of discussing fossil fuels are “pro-human” and focused on the benefits of fossil fuels, particularly for poor nations, rather than just the negatives. As DeSmog has reported, Epstein’s past writings have claimed the “superiority” of Western culture over some of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/04/06/alex-epstein-climate-skeptic/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>non-Western cultures he now boosts fossil fuels to</u></a>, and blamed Martin Luther King Jr. for an increase in “Black crime.”</p>
  832.  
  833.  
  834.  
  835. <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="610" src="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AlexEpstein_PlanetTech-2017_credit_StephenMcCarthy_CollisionSportsfile_CCBY.jpg-1024x610.jpg?width=1024&#038;height=610" alt="" class="wp-image-309310" srcset="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AlexEpstein_PlanetTech-2017_credit_StephenMcCarthy_CollisionSportsfile_CCBY.jpg.avif?width=1024&amp;height=610 1024w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AlexEpstein_PlanetTech-2017_credit_StephenMcCarthy_CollisionSportsfile_CCBY.jpg.avif?width=300&amp;height=179 300w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AlexEpstein_PlanetTech-2017_credit_StephenMcCarthy_CollisionSportsfile_CCBY.jpg.avif?width=768&amp;height=457 768w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AlexEpstein_PlanetTech-2017_credit_StephenMcCarthy_CollisionSportsfile_CCBY.jpg.avif?width=302&amp;height=180 302w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AlexEpstein_PlanetTech-2017_credit_StephenMcCarthy_CollisionSportsfile_CCBY.jpg.avif?width=454&amp;height=270 454w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AlexEpstein_PlanetTech-2017_credit_StephenMcCarthy_CollisionSportsfile_CCBY.jpg.avif?width=680&amp;height=405 680w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AlexEpstein_PlanetTech-2017_credit_StephenMcCarthy_CollisionSportsfile_CCBY.jpg.avif?width=983&amp;height=585 983w, https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AlexEpstein_PlanetTech-2017_credit_StephenMcCarthy_CollisionSportsfile_CCBY.jpg.avif 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-recalc-dims="1" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress, left, sports an “I [heart] fossil fuels” shirt during Collision 2017. Journalist Sasha Issenberg is at center, and Bill Ritter Jr. of the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University at right. (<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/collisionconf/33569581154" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Stephen McCarthy/Collision/Sportsfile,</a><a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">CC BY 2.0</a>)</figcaption></figure>
  836.  
  837.  
  838.  
  839. <p>“Their approach has been described by critics as a new kind of climate denialism. One that doesn’t dispute that global warming is real but rather frames it as a lesser problem — often with the use of cherry-picked data and a misrepresentation of scientific findings,” E&amp;E News <a href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/meet-the-4-influencers-shaping-chris-wrights-worldview/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>reported</u></a> in a May profile of Epstein and other influential climate crisis deniers.</p>
  840.  
  841.  
  842.  
  843. <p>In February, Epstein launched a new outfit, the Energy Freedom Fund, a lobbying and advocacy organization — donors not disclosed. Epstein laid out the organization’s “unconventional” structure in a <a href="https://alexepstein.substack.com/p/freedom-needs-a-lobbyist" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>Substack post</u></a>, writing that he intended to serve as its president on a volunteer basis, that donors would have “no control over what positions we take or how we allocate resources,” and that he would make all those decisions, though he was “not myself a lobbyist.”</p>
  844.  
  845.  
  846.  
  847. <p>In the months since, Epstein’s been widely <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/the-oil-tycoon-and-the-philosopher-threatening-big-oils-carbon-capture-plans-ec40763e?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAhTP7wyPYTXpGzLffwe-PYnwM36dXY-bzGkNASK0imlfNoL9guEf9K_&amp;gaa_ts=68642f60&amp;gaa_sig=EhncxxGIYKna0QTuBn-bxHbMAy-IbTgd0ez-mJkGimr92Ef8JpXkzqpYAdea0pLDVOYjbPYo4daQJ7CpWOdAKA%3D%3D" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>credited</u></a> (<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-senate-just-put-clean-energy-for-ai-in-the-crosshairs/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>or faulted</u></a>, depending on <a href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/the-latest-megabill-details-on-energy-and-environment/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>whom you ask</u></a>) with shaping some of the Big Beautiful Bill’s energy provisions. In mid-June, he briefed Senate Republicans at the Capitol, E&amp;E News <a href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/fossil-fuel-booster-meets-with-republicans-on-megabill/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>reported</u></a>, adding that Epstein had been lobbying for Congressional Republicans to scrap Inflation Reduction Act credits for solar and wind energy.</p>
  848.  
  849.  
  850.  
  851. <p>In late May, for example, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/6Toge2OkJUQzT1HTzmD2CX" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Rep. Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., appeared on Epstein’s podcast</u></a>, where the lawmakers thanked him for his help with crafting the House version of the bill.</p>
  852.  
  853.  
  854.  
  855. <p>During that podcast, Roy dismissed concerns the law would spur massive job losses in the clean energy sector. <strong>“</strong>I’ve heard people on K Street. ‘Chip, you’re gonna hurt jobs, future jobs, you&#8217;re gonna hurt jobs if you hurt the already existing projects,’ he said. “What about the fact that you don’t want to have jobs being subsidized to produce something that makes your country weaker?”</p>
  856.  
  857.  
  858.  
  859. <p><strong>“</strong>Fentanyl jobs,” Epstein <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/climate/trump-bill-clean-energy-tax-credits.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>said</u></a>, as Roy seemed to compare some energy jobs to selling “illicit drugs.”</p>
  860.  
  861.  
  862.  
  863. <p>Epstein pushed particularly hard against a wide range of energy tax credits, like the ones that have helped millions of Americans install rooftop solar. “I am concerned about his approach to this,” Sen. John Curtis, R-UT) told E&amp;E News in late June. “It’s more of a dagger in the heart.”</p>
  864.  
  865.  
  866.  
  867. <p>Epstein has been faulted for offering up questionable information to public officials in the past. In the wake of the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2021/02/26/texas-catastrophe-natural-gas-fail-freeze-offs/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"><u>deadly 2021 Texas freeze</u></a>, for example, NBC News reported that <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/texas-officials-circulated-climate-skeptic-s-talking-points-power-failures-n1262700" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>talking points</u></a> from Epstein “made their way to the Texas governor’s office and to the state’s oil and gas regulator, known as the Railroad Commission of Texas. One commissioner amplified the talking points on Twitter, while another commissioner’s aide forwarded them to top Texas oil and gas lobbyists.”</p>
  868.  
  869.  
  870.  
  871. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“Their approach has been described by critics as a new kind of climate denialism.&#8221;</p></blockquote></figure>
  872.  
  873.  
  874.  
  875. <p>Epstein’s talking points, NBC News noted, blamed wind and solar for the blackouts; in fact, federal energy regulators <a href="https://www.ferc.gov/news-events/news/final-report-february-2021-freeze-underscores-winterization-recommendations" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>later concluded</u></a>, “natural gas-fired units represented 58% of all generating units experiencing unplanned outages, derates or failures to start” (solar, meanwhile, was behind just 2% of those problems).</p>
  876.  
  877.  
  878.  
  879. <p>Nonetheless, Epstein has gained audience with some of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet members. Earlier this year, he met with <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2024/11/13/trump-epa-pick-lee-zeldin-backed-by-texas-fracking-billionaire-tim-dunn/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"><u>Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin</u></a> for 30 minutes, Politico <a href="https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2025/04/28/fossil-fuel-booster-met-with-epas-zeldin-00313132" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>reported</u></a>, and he was invited to dine with <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2025/01/27/trump-interior-nominee-doug-burgum-hosted-vip-dinner-for-oil-gas-and-coal-execs-last-year-emails-show/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"><u>Doug Burgum</u></a>, now Interior Secretary, last year at the then-North Dakota governor’s residence, public records obtained by the watchdog Fieldnotes show. Former fracking services CEO Chris Wright also appeared on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yubV5eqL8U&amp;themeRefresh=1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>Epstein’s podcast Power Hour</u></a> in 2021 and has been cited as influential in shaping the now-Energy Secretary’s views on climate change.</p>
  880.  
  881.  
  882.  
  883. <p>Of course, any time that powerful policymakers spend listening to philosophers and “self-described” experts, as Tillis put it, comes at the cost of listening to those actively participating in the energy transition, which is moving rapidly worldwide.</p>
  884.  
  885.  
  886.  
  887. <p>“The thing about renewable energy, as everyone knows, is that it’s intermittent. We don’t control when the wind blows and we know when the sun is shining, but we have no control over it,” Joseph Vellone, CEO of ChargeScape, a tech company that has signed up thousands of EV owners to use their car’s batteries to keep the power grid reliable, said at the Reuters Global Energy Transition conference last week. “And so what we’re doing at ChargeScape is we are soaking up as much of that intermittent renewable electricity as possible, storing them in EV batteries.”</p>
  888.  
  889.  
  890.  
  891. <p>With enough electric vehicles, you can eliminate the need to build natural gas “peaker” power plants, which have historically been used to keep the grid dependable when demand is high relative to supply, Vellone said.&nbsp;In other words, it’s a lot cheaper and easier to pay someone who owns an EV to help balance out the grid than it is to build a new natural gas power plant,&nbsp;especially at a time when natural gas turbines are under a&nbsp;<a href="https://rbnenergy.com/i-will-wait-backlog-for-natural-gas-turbines-expands-on-surging-demand-supply-constraints" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>severe backlog</u></a>.</p>
  892.  
  893.  
  894.  
  895. <p>But that’s the sort of thing Trump’s megabill could make harder,&nbsp;<a href="https://cleanpower.org/news/american-clean-power-statement-senate-final-passage-of-budget-bill/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>energy trade groups</u></a>&nbsp;say.</p>
  896.  
  897.  
  898.  
  899. <p>“Despite limited improvements, this legislation undermines the very foundation of America’s manufacturing comeback and global energy leadership,” Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association said in a statement following the Senate vote.</p>
  900.  
  901.  
  902.  
  903. <p>“It will strip the ability of millions of American families to choose the energy savings, energy resilience and energy freedom that solar and storage provide,” she said. “As the House reconsiders this legislation, every member should ask themselves what kind of future they’re voting for. Our communities, our businesses and our futures are on the line.”</p>
  904.  
  905.  
  906.  
  907. <p class="has-small-font-size"><em>*Recording your own conversations is generally legal in Washington, D.C., and </em>North Carolina<em>, a guide from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press indicates.</em></p>
  908. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-fossil-fuel-backed-philosopher-shaping-the-megabill-clean-energy-cuts/">The Fossil Fuel-Backed &#8216;Philosopher&#8217; Shaping the Megabill Clean Energy Cuts</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  909. ]]></content:encoded>
  911. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-fossil-fuel-backed-philosopher-shaping-the-megabill-clean-energy-cuts/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  912. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  915. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">309308</post-id> <enclosure url="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AP25169719444548-scaled.jpg?width=878&#038;height=585" length="458081" type="image/jpeg" />
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  917. </item>
  918. <item>
  919. <title>HHS Eliminates CDC Staff Who Oversee Birth Control Safety</title>
  920. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/hhs-eliminates-cdc-staff-who-oversee-birth-control-safety/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hhs-eliminates-cdc-staff-who-oversee-birth-control-safety</link>
  921. <comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/hhs-eliminates-cdc-staff-who-oversee-birth-control-safety/#respond</comments>
  923. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Rachana Pradhan /  KFF Health News ]]></dc:creator>
  924. <pubDate>Tue, 01 Jul 2025 15:51:05 +0000</pubDate>
  925. <category><![CDATA[Courts & Law]]></category>
  926. <category><![CDATA[Health & Wellness]]></category>
  927. <category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
  928. <category><![CDATA[Science]]></category>
  929. <category><![CDATA[Women]]></category>
  930. <category><![CDATA[birth control]]></category>
  931. <category><![CDATA[cdc]]></category>
  932. <category><![CDATA[health and human services]]></category>
  933. <category><![CDATA[reproductive health]]></category>
  934. <category><![CDATA[robert f. kennedy jr]]></category>
  935. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309288</guid>
  936.  
  937. <description><![CDATA[<p>Trump's team dismissed the CDC team that set national standards for prescribing contraception to women with underlying medical conditions.</p>
  938. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/hhs-eliminates-cdc-staff-who-oversee-birth-control-safety/">HHS Eliminates CDC Staff Who Oversee Birth Control Safety</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  939. ]]></description>
  940. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  941. <p><strong>For Brianna Henderson</strong>, birth control isn’t just about preventing pregnancy.</p>
  942.  
  943.  
  944.  
  945. <p>The Texas mother of two was diagnosed with a rare and potentially fatal heart condition after having her second child. In addition to avoiding another pregnancy that could be life-threatening, Henderson has to make sure the contraception she uses doesn’t jeopardize her health.</p>
  946.  
  947.  
  948.  
  949. <p>For more than a decade, a small team of people at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention worked to do just that, issuing national guidelines for clinicians on how to prescribe contraception safely for millions of women with underlying medical conditions — including heart disease, lupus, sickle cell disease and obesity. But the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, fired those workers as part of the Trump administration’s rapid downsizing of the federal workforce.</p>
  950.  
  951.  
  952.  
  953. <p>It also decimated the CDC’s larger Division of Reproductive Health, where the team was housed — a move that clinicians, advocacy groups and fired workers say will endanger the health of women and their babies.</p>
  954.  
  955.  
  956.  
  957. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“We really were the only source of safety monitoring in this country.&#8221;</p></blockquote></figure>
  958.  
  959.  
  960.  
  961. <p>Clinicians said in interviews that counseling patients about birth control and prescribing it is relatively straightforward. But for women with conditions that put them at higher risk of serious health complications, special care is needed.</p>
  962.  
  963.  
  964.  
  965. <p>“We really were the only source of safety monitoring in this country,” said one fired CDC staffer who worked on the guidelines, known as the U.S. Medical Eligibility Criteria for Contraceptive Use, or MEC. “There’s no one who can actually do this work.” KFF Health News agreed not to name this worker and others who were not authorized to speak to the press and feared retaliation.</p>
  966.  
  967.  
  968.  
  969. <p>The stakes are high for people like Henderson. About six weeks after having her second baby, she said, her heart “was racing.”</p>
  970.  
  971.  
  972.  
  973. <p>“I feel like I’m underwater,” Henderson said. “I felt like I couldn’t breathe.” She eventually went to the hospital, where she was told she was “in full-blown heart failure,” she said.</p>
  974.  
  975.  
  976.  
  977. <p>Henderson was diagnosed with peripartum cardiomyopathy, an uncommon type of heart failure that can happen toward the end of pregnancy or shortly after giving birth. Risk factors for the condition include being at least 30 years old, being of African descent, high blood pressure and obesity.</p>
  978.  
  979.  
  980.  
  981. <p>The CDC&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/contraception/media/pdfs/2024/07/us-mec-summary-chart-color-508.pdf" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">contraception guidelines</a>&nbsp;say that combined hormonal contraception, which contains both estrogen and progestin to prevent pregnancy, can pose an “unacceptable health risk” for most women with peripartum cardiomyopathy, also known as PPCM. For some women with the diagnosis, a birth control injection commonly known by the brand name Depo-Provera also carries risks that outweigh its benefits, the guidelines show. Progestin-only pills or a birth control implant, inserted into an arm, are the safest.</p>
  982.  
  983.  
  984.  
  985. <p>Henderson said her cardiologist had to greenlight which contraception she could use. She uses a progestin-only birth control implant that’s more than 99% effective at preventing pregnancy.</p>
  986.  
  987.  
  988.  
  989. <p>“I didn’t know that certain things can cause blood clots,” Henderson said, “or make your heart failure worse.” Heart failure is a leading cause of maternal mortality and morbidity in the United States, with PPCM accounting for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482185/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">up to 70% of heart failure cases</a>&nbsp;during pregnancy.</p>
  990.  
  991.  
  992.  
  993. <p>Sweeping HHS layoffs in late March and early April gutted the CDC’s reproductive health division, upending several programs designed to protect women and infants, three fired workers said.</p>
  994.  
  995.  
  996.  
  997. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>About two-thirds of the division’s roughly 165 employees and contractors were cut.</p></blockquote></figure>
  998.  
  999.  
  1000.  
  1001. <p>About two-thirds of the division’s roughly 165 employees and contractors were cut, through firings, retirements or reassignments to other parts of the agency, one worker said.</p>
  1002.  
  1003.  
  1004.  
  1005. <p>Among those fired were CDC staffers who carried out the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, a survey established nearly 40 years ago to improve maternal and infant health outcomes by asking detailed questions of women who recently gave birth. The survey was used “to help inform and help reduce the contributing factors that cause maternal mortality and morbidity,” a fired worker said, by allowing government workers to examine the medical care people received before and during pregnancy, if any, and other risk factors that may lead to poor maternal and child health.</p>
  1006.  
  1007.  
  1008.  
  1009. <p>The firings also removed CDC workers who collected and analyzed data on in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments.</p>
  1010.  
  1011.  
  1012.  
  1013. <p>“They left nothing behind,” one worker said.</p>
  1014.  
  1015.  
  1016.  
  1017. <p>U.S. contraception guidelines were first published in 2010, after the CDC adapted guidance developed by the World Health Organization. The latest version was published last August. It includes information about the safety of different types of contraception for more than 60 medical conditions. Clinicians said it is the premier source of evidence about the safety of birth control.</p>
  1018.  
  1019.  
  1020.  
  1021. <p>“It gave us so much information which was not available to clinicians at their fingertips,” said Michael Policar, a physician and professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California-San Francisco School of Medicine.</p>
  1022.  
  1023.  
  1024.  
  1025. <p>“If you’ve got a person with, let’s say, long-standing Type 2 diabetes, someone who has a connective-tissue disease like lupus, someone who’s got hypertension or maybe has been treated for a precursor to breast cancer — something like that? In those circumstances,” Policar said, “before the MEC, it was really hard to know how to manage those people.”</p>
  1026.  
  1027.  
  1028.  
  1029. <p>The CDC updates the guidelines comprehensively roughly every five years. On a weekly basis, however, government workers would monitor evidence about patients’ use of contraception and the safety of various methods, something they were doing when HHS abruptly fired them this spring, two fired workers said. That work isn’t happening now, one of them said.</p>
  1030.  
  1031.  
  1032.  
  1033. <p>Sometimes the agency would issue interim changes outside the larger updates if new evidence warranted it. Now, if something new or urgent comes up, “there’s not going to be any way to update the guidelines,” one fired worker said.</p>
  1034.  
  1035.  
  1036.  
  1037. <p>In 2020, for example, the CDC&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6914a3.htm?s_cid=mm6914a3_w" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">revised its contraception recommendations</a>&nbsp;for women at high risk of HIV infection after new evidence showed that various methods were safer than previously thought.</p>
  1038.  
  1039.  
  1040.  
  1041. <p>HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard declined to say why CDC personnel working on the contraception guidelines and other reproductive health issues were fired, or answer other questions raised by KFF Health News’ reporting.</p>
  1042.  
  1043.  
  1044.  
  1045. <p>Most women of reproductive age in the United States use contraception. CDC data from 2019, the most recent available, shows that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db388-H.pdf" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">more than 47 million women</a>&nbsp;ages 15 to 49 relied on birth control. About 1 in 10 used long-acting methods such as intrauterine devices and implants; 1 in 7 used oral contraception.</p>
  1046.  
  1047.  
  1048.  
  1049. <p>The latest guidelines included updated safety recommendations for women who have sickle cell disease, lupus or PPCM, and those who are breastfeeding, among others. Clinicians are now being told that combined hormonal contraception poses an unacceptable health risk for women with sickle cell disease, because it might increase the risk of blood clots.</p>
  1050.  
  1051.  
  1052.  
  1053. <p>“It can really come down to life or death,” said Teonna Woolford, CEO of the Sickle Cell Reproductive Health Education Directive, a nonprofit that advocates for improved reproductive health care for people with the disease.</p>
  1054.  
  1055.  
  1056.  
  1057. <p>“We really saw the CDC guidelines as a win, as a victory — they’re actually going to pay attention,” she said.</p>
  1058.  
  1059.  
  1060.  
  1061. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“It gave us so much information which was not available to clinicians at their fingertips.&#8221;</p></blockquote></figure>
  1062.  
  1063.  
  1064.  
  1065. <p>The 2024 guidelines also for the first time included birth control recommendations for women with chronic kidney disease. Research has shown that such women are at higher risk of serious pregnancy complications, including preeclampsia and preterm delivery. Their medical condition also increases their risk of blood clots, which is why it’s important for them not to use combined hormonal contraception, fired CDC workers and clinicians said.</p>
  1066.  
  1067.  
  1068.  
  1069. <p>The CDC information “is the final say in safety,” said Patty Cason, a family nurse practitioner and president of Envision Sexual and Reproductive Health. Having only static information about the safety of various types of birth control is “very scary,” she said, because new evidence could come out and entirely new methods of contraception are being developed.</p>
  1070.  
  1071.  
  1072.  
  1073. <p>Henderson said it took her heart two years to recover. She created the nonprofit organization Let’s Talk PPCM to educate women about the type of heart failure she was diagnosed with, including what forms of birth control are safe.</p>
  1074.  
  1075.  
  1076.  
  1077. <p>“We don’t want blood clots, worsening heart failures,” Henderson said. “They already feel like they can’t trust their doctors, and we don’t need extra.”</p>
  1078. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/hhs-eliminates-cdc-staff-who-oversee-birth-control-safety/">HHS Eliminates CDC Staff Who Oversee Birth Control Safety</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  1079. ]]></content:encoded>
  1081. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/hhs-eliminates-cdc-staff-who-oversee-birth-control-safety/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  1082. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  1085. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">309288</post-id> <enclosure url="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AdobeStock_464202708-scaled.jpeg?width=973&#038;height=585" length="260702" type="image/jpeg" />
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  1087. </item>
  1088. <item>
  1089. <title>ICE Is Raiding Farms Again</title>
  1090. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/ice-is-raiding-farms-again/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ice-is-raiding-farms-again</link>
  1091. <comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/ice-is-raiding-farms-again/#respond</comments>
  1093. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Seth Millstein /  Sentient]]></dc:creator>
  1094. <pubDate>Tue, 01 Jul 2025 15:41:35 +0000</pubDate>
  1095. <category><![CDATA[Business & Economy]]></category>
  1096. <category><![CDATA[Courts & Law]]></category>
  1097. <category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
  1098. <category><![CDATA[Labor]]></category>
  1099. <category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
  1100. <category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
  1101. <category><![CDATA[department of agriculture]]></category>
  1102. <category><![CDATA[farm workers]]></category>
  1103. <category><![CDATA[immigration and customs enforcement]]></category>
  1104. <category><![CDATA[kristi noem]]></category>
  1105. <category><![CDATA[migrant labor]]></category>
  1106. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309284</guid>
  1107.  
  1108. <description><![CDATA[<p>Trump’s inconsistent enforcement of immigration policy is wreaking havoc on the nation's agriculture industry.</p>
  1109. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/ice-is-raiding-farms-again/">ICE Is Raiding Farms Again</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  1110. ]]></description>
  1111. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  1112. <p><strong>The Trump administration</strong> has reversed its position on <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/06/19/nx-s1-5436941/some-in-california-farm-community-fear-disruptions-due-to-immigration-enforcement" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">immigration enforcement in the farm sector</a> — again. Less than a week after announcing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, would halt its raids on agricultural facilities, the Department of Homeland Security announced that actually, <a href="https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article309274225.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">the raids will continue as planned</a>. The abrupt back-and-forth is likely to have ripple effects in the agricultural sector, including the meat and dairy industries. Some of the costs may land at the feet of American consumers.<br><br>In the U.S., immigration policy, and its enforcement, has serious consequences for the food and agriculture sectors. As of 2022, <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">two-thirds of all hired crop farmworkers in the United States</a> were foreign-born, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the majority of them were not authorized to work in the United States. Immigrants also make up <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/15/magazine/milk-industry-undocumented-immigrants.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">51 percent of all dairy workers</a>, according to a 2015 study, and <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/us-meat-milk-prices-should-spike-if-donald-trump-carries-out-mass-deportation-schemes/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">42 percent of all meatpacking employees</a>, according to the American Immigration Council.</p>
  1113.  
  1114.  
  1115.  
  1116. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>The abrupt back-and-forth is likely to have ripple effects in the agricultural sector.</p></blockquote></figure>
  1117.  
  1118.  
  1119.  
  1120. <p>ICE, a division of DHS, has been arresting and detaining immigrants at an accelerated rate since the second Trump administration assumed power. The <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/03/13/ice-arrests-first-50-days-trump-administration" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">agency reported 32,809 enforcement arrests</a> in the first 50 days of the presidency, and according to TRAC, an organization that collects and collates data about the federal government, the administration detained at least 185,394 immigrants and deported over 162,000 during the first four full months of President Donald Trump’s second term.<br><br>“If you restrict migrant labor, then what ends up happening is you have to offer that job to ‘legal’ U.S. citizens,” Andrew Muhammed, professor of agricultural resource economics at the University of Tennessee, tells Sentient. “But you have to actually pay U.S. citizens a wage that’s likely far higher.” While this might appeal to some U.S. workers — those willing to take up the <a href="https://sentientmedia.org/slaughterhouse-work-exploited-labor/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">grueling and dangerous jobs</a> in the sector — it would also probably make food more expensive.</p>
  1121.  
  1122.  
  1123.  
  1124. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Why farms rely on immigrant labor</h3>
  1125.  
  1126.  
  1127.  
  1128. <p>The agriculture industry depends on immigrant labor to function. Migrant workers are often given the <a href="https://sentientmedia.org/meatpacking-workers-injury-risk-usda/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">most unpleasant and dangerous jobs</a> (like slaughterhouse and meatpacking work) in the sector, and enforcement of basic labor protections is notoriously lax in agriculture. Immigrants are often paid less than U.S. citizens, and undocumented immigrants in particular are common <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/wage-theft-hits-immigrants-hard" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">targets of wage theft</a>, sub-minimum wage and other predatory wage practices that, in effect, allow employers to pay them less than they would pay American workers.<br><br>When workers are arrested or deported, employers might choose to replace them with more-expensive American workers to minimize their future exposure to ICE raids. The tactic of appealing to U.S. workers is already being trialed at a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/meatpacking-american-workers-immigration-d6bdd47a?st=nQsw9d&amp;reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">new meatpacking plant in North Platte, Nebraska</a>. Ultimately, immigration raids on agricultural facilities can make it more expensive to be a food producer — which could result in higher food prices.</p>
  1129.  
  1130.  
  1131.  
  1132. <p>Trump pledged to lower food costs during his campaign, but they’ve gone up since he took office, which could be one factor in the flip-flopping on farm raids we’re currently seeing.</p>
  1133.  
  1134.  
  1135.  
  1136. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">What’s going on with the recent ICE raids?</h3>
  1137.  
  1138.  
  1139.  
  1140. <p>On June 6, the administration launched a series of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/us/trump-immigration-raids-workplaces.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">ICE raids at workplaces in Los Angeles</a>. This led to mass protests and clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement in the heavily Democratic, left-leaning city and brought <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/22/opinion/los-angeles-protests-raids-ice.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">significant media attention to the administration’s immigration policies</a>, including similar ICE raids at workplaces in other parts of the country.<br><br>On June 10, ICE agents <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/omaha-immigration-workplace-raid-aftermath-rcna212931" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">raided a meatpacking plant in Omaha, Nebraska</a>. They arrested 76 employees suspected of being in the country illegally, according to the Department of Homeland Security, in what was ultimately the largest worksite immigration raid in the state since the beginning of the year.</p>
  1141.  
  1142.  
  1143.  
  1144. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>The administration hasn’t given any reasons for the swift policy flip-flop.</p></blockquote></figure>
  1145.  
  1146.  
  1147.  
  1148. <p><br>Two days later, however, Trump adopted an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/us/politics/trump-farmers-hotels-immigration.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">uncharacteristically sympathetic tone while discussing undocumented immigrants</a> in the restaurant, hotel and agricultural sectors, saying that “our farmers are being hurt badly” by his immigration crackdown and that “we can’t do that to our farmers.”<br><br>That same day, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/us/politics/trump-ice-raids-farms-hotels.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">ICE instructed its agents</a> to “hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.”<br><br>But the reprieve didn’t last long: Just four days later, DHS reversed course and instructed ICE agents to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/06/16/trump-farms-hotels-immigration-raids/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">resume immigration raids on agricultural facilities</a>, restaurants and hotels.<br><br>The administration hasn’t given any reasons for the swift policy flip-flop. But various reports claimed that there were internal divisions in the White House regarding the policy change. According to the New York Times, Secretary of Agriculture <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/14/us/politics/trump-immigration-raids-workers.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Brooke Rollins advocated for the pause</a> after fielding complaints from distressed farmers, infuriating Deputy Chief of Staff <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/15/trump-immigration-stephen-miller-influence" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Stephen Miller, an anti-immigration hardliner </a>.</p>
  1149.  
  1150.  
  1151.  
  1152. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Food prices, imports and economic uncertainty</h3>
  1153.  
  1154.  
  1155.  
  1156. <p>From an economic perspective, there are two ways of looking at ICE’s raids on agricultural facilities. The raids themselves will probably have an impact, but so will the government’s inconsistency regarding the raids.<br><br>When employees at a business are arrested, detained and/or deported, that business <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/06/11/nx-s1-5428350/immigration-crackdowns-pose-problems-to-businesses-reliant-on-those-in-u-s-illegally" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">takes an economic hit</a>, as the sudden reduction in workers diminishes the business’s production capacity and forces it to invest in new employees. Those costs are typically passed on to the consumer, according to Muhammed.<br><br>“More likely than not, you’ll get … higher prices [at the grocery store] due to less output, and higher prices due to higher wages [for American workers].”<br><br>Of course, the administration could attempt to mitigate this by, for instance, increasing federal subsidies to agricultural producers. That’s exactly what <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/14/donald-trump-coronavirus-farmer-bailouts-359932" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Trump did during his first term</a> in response to the economic fallout from his administration’s tariffs, and similar payouts could help offset any new burdens producers face due to ICE raids. In April, the White House said that it’s <a href="https://insidetrade.com/daily-news/white-house-weighs-farm-subsidies-repeat-first-term-trump-policy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">considering increasing farm subsidies</a> to counteract the impacts of his second-term tariffs.<br><br>The raids may also compel the food industry to outsource its production to other countries in order to minimize their risk. In other words, they might result in imports comprising a larger share of Americans’ food than before.</p>
  1157.  
  1158.  
  1159.  
  1160. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>It’s unclear where ICE raids in agriculture go from here.</p></blockquote></figure>
  1161.  
  1162.  
  1163.  
  1164. <p><br>“Anytime you make domestic production more expensive, or you reduce domestic output, the demand has to be satisfied through imports,” Muhammed says.<br><br>In addition to these dynamics, the Trump administration’s multiple flip-flops regarding the raids are also likely to have an impact on the industry, Muhammed says, as they create an environment of uncertainty for business owners and investors.<br><br>There are a number of ways this uncertainty might play out, but in general, agricultural producers will probably take a wait-and-see approach before investing in or expanding their operations.<br><br>“You could imagine a meat processing plant that’s been erected with the hopes of [employing] a certain number of workers now having to face a world where they may only get half the workers they expect,” Muhammed says. “That very uncertainty makes that company say, ‘Either we’re going to shut this plant down or reduce capacity, but we’re certainly not going to invest in the next plant.’”<br><br>It’s unclear where ICE raids in agriculture go from here, or whether the administration will stick to its current policy. But the ongoing saga highlights the degree to which American food production depends not only on immigrants, but on consistent application of federal immigration policy.</p>
  1165. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/ice-is-raiding-farms-again/">ICE Is Raiding Farms Again</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  1166. ]]></content:encoded>
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  1169. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  1172. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">309284</post-id> <enclosure url="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AP25070563103369-scaled.jpg?width=878&#038;height=585" length="523423" type="image/jpeg" />
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  1174. </item>
  1175. <item>
  1176. <title>The Worst Bill in History</title>
  1177. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-worst-bill-in-history/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-worst-bill-in-history</link>
  1178. <comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-worst-bill-in-history/#respond</comments>
  1180. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Reich /  Substack ]]></dc:creator>
  1181. <pubDate>Tue, 01 Jul 2025 15:25:26 +0000</pubDate>
  1182. <category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
  1183. <category><![CDATA[Business & Economy]]></category>
  1184. <category><![CDATA[Column]]></category>
  1185. <category><![CDATA[Courts & Law]]></category>
  1186. <category><![CDATA[Economic Justice]]></category>
  1187. <category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
  1188. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  1189. <category><![CDATA[Social Justice]]></category>
  1190. <category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
  1191. <category><![CDATA[big beautiful bill]]></category>
  1192. <category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>
  1193. <category><![CDATA[medicaid]]></category>
  1194. <category><![CDATA[trickle down economics]]></category>
  1195. <category><![CDATA[trump tax cuts]]></category>
  1196. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309281</guid>
  1197.  
  1198. <description><![CDATA[<p>Trump’s budget-busting, Medicaid-shattering, shafting-the-poor-and-working-class, making-the-rich-even-richer bill is a historic travesty.</p>
  1199. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-worst-bill-in-history/">The Worst Bill in History</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  1200. ]]></description>
  1201. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  1202. <p><strong>One of my objectives</strong> in this daily letter is to equip you with the facts you need. As the Senate approaches a vote on President Donald Trump’s giant “big beautiful” tax and budget bill, I want to be as clear as possible about it.</p>
  1203.  
  1204.  
  1205.  
  1206. <p>First, it will cost a budget-busting $3.3 trillion.&nbsp;According to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61534" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">new estimates by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office</a>, the Senate bill would add at least $3.3 trillion to the already out-of-control national debt over a decade. That’s nearly $1 trillion more than the House-passed version.</p>
  1207.  
  1208.  
  1209.  
  1210. <p>Second, it will cause 11.8 million Americans to lose their health coverage. The Senate version would result in even deeper cuts in federal support for health insurance, and more Americans losing coverage, than the House version. Federal spending on Medicaid, Medicare and Obamacare would be reduced by more than $1.1 trillion over that period — with more than $1 trillion of those cuts coming from Medicaid alone.</p>
  1211.  
  1212.  
  1213.  
  1214. <p>All told, this will leave 11.8 million more Americans uninsured by 2034.</p>
  1215.  
  1216.  
  1217.  
  1218. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>The bill will cause 11.8 million Americans to lose their health coverage.</p></blockquote></figure>
  1219.  
  1220.  
  1221.  
  1222. <p>Third, it will cut food stamps and other nutrition assistance for lower-income Americans.&nbsp;According to the CBO, the legislation will not only cut Medicaid by about 18 percent, it will cut Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) by roughly 20 percent. These cuts will constitute the most dramatic reductions in safety net spending in modern U.S. history.</p>
  1223.  
  1224.  
  1225.  
  1226. <p>Fourth, it will overwhelmingly benefit the rich and big corporations.&nbsp;The CBO projects that those in the bottom tenth of the income distribution will end up poorer, while the top tenth will be substantially richer.</p>
  1227.  
  1228.  
  1229.  
  1230. <p>The bill also makes permanent the business tax cuts from the 2017 legislation, further benefiting the largest corporations.</p>
  1231.  
  1232.  
  1233.  
  1234. <p>Finally, it will not help the economy. Trickle-down economics has proven to be a cruel hoax. Over the past 50 years, Congress has passed four major bills that cut taxes: the 1981 Reagan tax cuts; the 2001 and 2003 George W. Bush tax cuts; and the 2017 Trump tax cuts. Each time, the same three arguments were made in favor of the tax cuts: (1) They would pay for themselves. (2) They would supercharge economic growth. (3) They would benefit everyone.</p>
  1235.  
  1236.  
  1237.  
  1238. <p>All have been proven wrong. Here’s what in fact happened:</p>
  1239.  
  1240.  
  1241.  
  1242. <p>(1) Did the tax cuts pay for themselves?</p>
  1243.  
  1244.  
  1245.  
  1246. <p>No. Rather than paying for themselves, the Reagan, Bush and Trump tax cuts each significantly increased the federal deficit. In total, those tax cuts have added over <a href="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5cd036eb776bf651fcf12ee9/684af03759ff2bae5bbedf67_Tax%20Cuts%20Retrospective.pdf" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">$10.4 trillion to the federal deficit since 1981</a> compared to the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline projections.</p>
  1247.  
  1248.  
  1249.  
  1250. <p>(2) Did the tax cuts supercharge economic growth, create millions of jobs and raise wages?</p>
  1251.  
  1252.  
  1253.  
  1254. <p>Absolutely not. Rather than growing, the economy shrank after passage of the Reagan tax cuts. And unemployment surged to over 10 percent. Following the enactment of the Bush and Trump tax cuts, the economy did grow a bit, but at rates much lower than their supporters predicted.</p>
  1255.  
  1256.  
  1257.  
  1258. <p>(3) Did the tax cuts benefit everyone?</p>
  1259.  
  1260.  
  1261.  
  1262. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Trickle-down economics has proven to be a cruel hoax.</p></blockquote></figure>
  1263.  
  1264.  
  1265.  
  1266. <p>Heavens, no. Rather than benefiting everyone, the savings from the Reagan, Bush and Trump tax cuts flowed mainly to the richest Americans. The average tax cut for households in the top 1% under the Reagan tax cut ($47,147) was <em><a href="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5cd036eb776bf651fcf12ee9/684af03759ff2bae5bbedf67_Tax%20Cuts%20Retrospective.pdf" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">68 times larger</a> </em>than the average tax cut for middle-class households ($695). The Bush tax cut for households in the top 1% was <em>16 times larger</em> than the average tax cut for the middle class. The 2017 Trump tax cut for households in the top 1% was <em>36 times larger</em> than for middle-class households.</p>
  1267.  
  1268.  
  1269.  
  1270. <p>Summary: If the bill now being considered by the Senate is enacted, 11.8 million Americans will lose their health insurance, millions will fall into poverty, and the national debt will increase by $3.3 trillion, all to provide a major tax cut mainly to the rich and big corporations. There is no justification for this.</p>
  1271.  
  1272.  
  1273.  
  1274. <p>Never before in the history of this nation has such a large redistribution of income been directed upward, for no reason at all. It comes at a time of near-record inequalities of income and wealth.</p>
  1275.  
  1276.  
  1277.  
  1278. <p>What you can do: Call your senators and tell them to vote “no” on this calamitous tax and budget bill. Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121.</p>
  1279.  
  1280.  
  1281.  
  1282. <p>Beyond this, help ensure that senators who vote in favor of this monstrosity are booted out of the Senate as soon as they’re up for reelection.</p>
  1283. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-worst-bill-in-history/">The Worst Bill in History</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  1284. ]]></content:encoded>
  1286. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-worst-bill-in-history/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  1287. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  1290. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">309281</post-id> <enclosure url="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AP25181437062954-scaled.jpg?width=878&#038;height=585" length="1101744" type="image/jpeg" />
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  1292. </item>
  1293. <item>
  1294. <title>Suing Like the Future Depends on It</title>
  1295. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/suing-like-the-future-depends-on-it/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=suing-like-the-future-depends-on-it</link>
  1296. <comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/suing-like-the-future-depends-on-it/#respond</comments>
  1298. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Dana Drugmand]]></dc:creator>
  1299. <pubDate>Mon, 30 Jun 2025 16:11:53 +0000</pubDate>
  1300. <category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
  1301. <category><![CDATA[Courts & Law]]></category>
  1302. <category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
  1303. <category><![CDATA[Health & Wellness]]></category>
  1304. <category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
  1305. <category><![CDATA[Science]]></category>
  1306. <category><![CDATA[TD Original]]></category>
  1307. <category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
  1308. <category><![CDATA[clean air act]]></category>
  1309. <category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
  1310. <category><![CDATA[donald trump]]></category>
  1311. <category><![CDATA[Lighthiser v. Trump]]></category>
  1312. <category><![CDATA[Our Children’s Trust]]></category>
  1313. <category><![CDATA[paris climate agreement]]></category>
  1314. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309250</guid>
  1315.  
  1316. <description><![CDATA[<p>Trump wants to “unleash” fossil fuels to fight an "energy emergency." This youth-led lawsuit seeks to stop him.</p>
  1317. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/suing-like-the-future-depends-on-it/">Suing Like the Future Depends on It</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  1318. ]]></description>
  1319. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  1320. <p class="has-drop-cap">On his <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/trump-attacks-climate-action-environmental-protections-first-day-back-power" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">first day</a> back in office in January, President Donald Trump signed several executive orders that prioritize and promote fossil fuels while reversing course on climate action and clean energy. In addition to orders withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, encouraging more oil drilling in Alaska and blocking wind energy projects, Trump issued a pair of directives titled “<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/unleashing-american-energy/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Unleashing American Energy</a>” and “<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/declaring-a-national-energy-emergency/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Declaring a National Energy Emergency</a>” that are expressly aimed at boosting fossil fuels — despite expert consensus that coal, oil and gas must be phased out to avert the most catastrophic climate change harms.&nbsp;</p>
  1321.  
  1322.  
  1323.  
  1324. <p>“On my first day in office I terminated the Green New Scam, I declared a national energy emergency and I withdrew from the unfair … Paris Climate Accord,” Trump boasted in April when he signed an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/reinvigorating-americas-beautiful-clean-coal-industry-and-amending-executive-order-14241/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">order</a> designed to “reinvigorate” the waning coal industry. The order ends the leasing moratorium for coal on federal land and accelerates permitting and funding for new coal projects. </p>
  1325.  
  1326.  
  1327.  
  1328. <p>Now, the president and his administration are facing a <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/655a2d016eb74e41dc292ed5/t/68388d17caf2bd397773cca7/1748536601188/1+-+Complaint.pdf" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">lawsuit</a> from young Americans challenging these three executive orders that “unleash” fossil fuels during a time of climate crisis. On May 29, lawyers from the nonprofit law firm Our Children’s Trust filed suit in federal district court in Montana on behalf of 22 youth climate activists ranging in age from 7 to 25 who allege that Trump’s pro-fossil fuel orders infringe on their rights to life and liberty under the U.S. Constitution.&nbsp;</p>
  1329.  
  1330.  
  1331.  
  1332. <p>“Trump’s fossil fuel orders are a death sentence for my generation,” 19-year-old lead plaintiff Eva Lighthiser said.&nbsp;</p>
  1333.  
  1334.  
  1335.  
  1336. <p>The lawsuit <a href="https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/lighthiser-v-trump" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"><em>Lighthiser v. Trump</em></a> contends that the Trump administration’s executive actions accelerating fossil fuel development and attacking clean energy, environmental protections and climate science will significantly worsen the climate emergency that disproportionately impacts children and future generations and threatens their health, safety and quality of life. </p>
  1337.  
  1338.  
  1339.  
  1340. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“Trump’s fossil fuel orders are a death sentence for my generation.&#8221;</p></blockquote></figure>
  1341.  
  1342.  
  1343.  
  1344. <p>“We argue that those actions violate the youths’ Fifth Amendment rights to life and liberty that are secured under the United States Constitution,” said Andrea Rodgers, deputy director of U.S. strategy at Our Children’s Trust and an attorney representing the youth plaintiffs.&nbsp;</p>
  1345.  
  1346.  
  1347.  
  1348. <p>Defendants include Trump as well as many members of his Cabinet and the agencies they run, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy and the Department of Commerce, which houses the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Through actions taken to implement Trump’s orders, the defendant agencies are mounting a “wholesale attack on clean renewable energy and climate science,” Our Children’s Trust <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/655a2d016eb74e41dc292ed5/t/6838662f9a05115d2e9c63e1/1748526639532/2025.05.29.FederalEOPressRelease.pdf" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">says</a>. </p>
  1349.  
  1350.  
  1351.  
  1352. <p>The lawsuit also claims the Trump administration is attempting to unlawfully override federal laws intended to protect public health and the environment, such as the Clean Air Act and a statute requiring the federal government to periodically produce scientific reports on climate change called National Climate Assessments. The administration has <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5243464-trump-administration-cuts-climate-assessment-contracts/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">terminated contracts</a> and <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/national-climate-assessment-report-scientists-fired/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">fired the scientists</a> working on the next report, effectively preventing it from going forward.&nbsp;</p>
  1353.  
  1354.  
  1355.  
  1356. <p>“The president is knowingly putting young people’s lives in danger to serve fossil fuel interests while silencing scientists and defying laws passed by Congress,” said Julia Olson, founder and co-executive director of Our Children’s Trust. </p>
  1357.  
  1358.  
  1359.  
  1360. <p>“My health, my future and my right to speak the truth are all on the line,” Lighthiser argued. She said Trump is “waging war on us with fossil fuels as his weapon, and we’re fighting back with the Constitution.”&nbsp;</p>
  1361.  
  1362.  
  1363.  
  1364. <p>The youth plaintiffs are asking the court to declare that Trump’s executive orders are unconstitutional and to block all actions taken to implement them.&nbsp;</p>
  1365.  
  1366.  
  1367.  
  1368. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">&#8216;Limited traction in the federal courts&#8217;</h3>
  1369.  
  1370.  
  1371.  
  1372. <p>Many of these young activists have experience suing their government over climate change. More than half of the 22 plaintiffs have been involved in other climate cases that Our Children’s Trust has filed over the years at the state and federal levels. </p>
  1373.  
  1374.  
  1375.  
  1376. <p>In 2015, the organization supported a group of 21 young people in bringing a landmark lawsuit against the U.S. government challenging the perpetuation of a fossil fuel-based energy system that contributes to dangerous climate change. The lawsuit, <a href="https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/juliana-v-us" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"><em>Juliana v. U.S.</em></a>, argued that the government was affirmatively endangering the nation’s youth through policies and actions that worsen the climate crisis, and that this conduct violated youths’ fundamental rights under the Constitution. It initially sought an order for the government to develop and implement a climate recovery plan to rapidly phase out fossil fuels and slash greenhouse gas emissions. But after a federal appeals court decided in 2020 that it was beyond the power of the judiciary to grant such sweeping relief, the youth plaintiffs revised their complaint to request solely a court declaration that the government’s conduct was unconstitutional. </p>
  1377.  
  1378.  
  1379.  
  1380. <p>Although the trial court judge had determined the case should advance, the appeals court <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/01/appeals-youth-climate-suit-dismissed-00155463" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">once again blocked it</a>, and in March the <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27032025/supreme-court-declines-to-hear-juliana-v-united-states-fossil-fuel-policies/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">U.S. Supreme Court declined</a> plaintiffs’ request to review that decision. After nearly 10 years of intense procedural wrangling and unprecedented obstruction from government defendants that spanned three presidential administrations — including Trump’s first term — the <em>Juliana </em>case had finally come to an end. </p>
  1381.  
  1382.  
  1383.  
  1384. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>&#8220;Here we’re focused on protecting young people’s rights that are already explicitly recognized in the Constitution.”</p></blockquote></figure>
  1385.  
  1386.  
  1387.  
  1388. <p>Several of the plaintiffs from <em>Juliana</em> have now joined the new case against the Trump administration. Rodgers said the new lawsuit is more narrowly framed, which could make it easier for courts to handle. “The <em>Juliana</em> case really focused on the overall energy system, whereas the present case challenges these specific executive orders and specific, discrete actions under those orders,” she explained. </p>
  1389.  
  1390.  
  1391.  
  1392. <p>The new case also brings some different legal claims, Rodgers said. “This case is really a right to life case. <em>Juliana</em> was centered on the unenumerated liberty right to a life-sustaining climate system, but here we’re focused on protecting young people’s rights that are already explicitly recognized in the Constitution.” </p>
  1393.  
  1394.  
  1395.  
  1396. <p>Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, said the new case targeting Trump might not run into the same headwinds that <em>Juliana</em> did. </p>
  1397.  
  1398.  
  1399.  
  1400. <p>“This case does not face quite as steep a hill as <em>Juliana</em>, which asked the court to require the federal government to adopt and implement a plan to transform the nation&#8217;s energy system,” Gerrard said. “The relief sought here is less sweeping, though still ambitious. However, these constitutional theories have had limited traction in the federal courts so far.”</p>
  1401.  
  1402.  
  1403.  
  1404. <p>A federal court in California, for example, has rejected another lawsuit that Our Children’s Trust filed on behalf of 18 youth plaintiffs in December 2023 against the EPA. That case, <a href="https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/genesis-v-epa" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"><em>Genesis v. EPA</em></a>, alleges that the agency intentionally discriminates against children through a practice called discounting that is used in regulatory cost-benefit analyses, thereby violating youth plaintiffs’ constitutional right to equal protection. The youth are appealing the court’s ruling to dismiss the case. </p>
  1405.  
  1406.  
  1407.  
  1408. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Youth climate cases succeed in Hawaii and Montana </h3>
  1409.  
  1410.  
  1411.  
  1412. <p>In the past two years, however, Our Children’s Trust has had breakthrough victories in youth climate cases it has filed at the state level in Hawaii and Montana. The case in Hawaii, which specifically focused on the state’s fossil fuel-dependent transportation system, was scheduled to go to trial last year in June. But just days before trial, Hawaii’s governor and its department of transportation reached a <a href="https://governor.hawaii.gov/newsroom/office-of-the-governor-news-release-historic-agreement-settles-navahine-climate-litigation/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">historic settlement agreement</a> with the youth plaintiffs. The agreement recognized youths’ right to a life-sustaining climate system under the Hawaii constitution and set out a pathway for fully decarbonizing the state’s transportation sector over the next 20 years. Kalālapa Winter, one of the plaintiffs in that case, is now a plaintiff in the new case brought against the Trump administration. </p>
  1413.  
  1414.  
  1415.  
  1416. <p>In Montana, 16 youth activists put their state government on trial in June 2023 over a policy explicitly prohibiting examination of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change impacts when permitting fossil fuel projects or other development. It was the first-ever climate change trial in a lawsuit brought by young people in the United States. In the weeks following the trial, the judge <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/14/us/montana-youth-climate-ruling.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">ruled in favor</a> of the youth plaintiffs in <a href="https://heldvmontana.ourchildrenstrust.org/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"><em>Held v. Montana</em></a>, finding that the state’s policy violated their rights under the Montana constitution, including the right to a clean and healthful environment. In December last year, the Montana Supreme Court <a href="https://www.climateinthecourts.com/montana-supreme-court-upholds-historic-youth-climate-lawsuit-win/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">upheld</a> the judgment on appeal. </p>
  1417.  
  1418.  
  1419.  
  1420. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“The voice of youth in the climate litigation sphere is incredibly powerful.&#8221;</p></blockquote></figure>
  1421.  
  1422.  
  1423.  
  1424. <p>Ten of the youth plaintiffs from that landmark lawsuit in Montana, including Lighthiser, are coming together again as plaintiffs in the case taking on the Trump administration. </p>
  1425.  
  1426.  
  1427.  
  1428. <p>Lighthiser said joining the new case felt “like the logical next step,” one that she hopes will compel the federal government to take her generation’s concerns about climate change seriously. “Being part of <em>Held</em>, we really had our voices heard,” she said. “I think winning would mean the person in the highest seat of power in the world would have to listen to the voices of young people.” </p>
  1429.  
  1430.  
  1431.  
  1432. <p>“The voice of youth in the climate litigation sphere is incredibly powerful,” Cara Horowitz, executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the UCLA School of Law, told Truthdig. “Litigation like this is an important tool for highlighting some of the folks who are most at risk from climate change, who are of course our children.”&nbsp;</p>
  1433.  
  1434.  
  1435.  
  1436. <p>For 18-year-old Ripley (who requested her last name not be used), getting involved in this new lawsuit seemed necessary given the Trump administration’s blatant actions to actively make the climate crisis even worse. “It feels like I’m screaming into a void,” she said. “This is something that I felt like I had to do.”&nbsp;</p>
  1437.  
  1438.  
  1439.  
  1440. <p>The recent high school graduate said she felt incredibly inspired watching youth from her home state of Montana take their state government to court, and win. “I realized the extent to which I can create change,” she said. “And it gives me hope that we can win this case as well, 100%.”&nbsp;</p>
  1441.  
  1442.  
  1443.  
  1444. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">What happens next </h3>
  1445.  
  1446.  
  1447.  
  1448. <p>On June 13, attorneys for the youth plaintiffs <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/655a2d016eb74e41dc292ed5/t/684d1f106b1450012720801f/1749884689980/Doc+25+Brief+ISO+PI+Motion+2025.06.13.pdf" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">filed</a> a request for a preliminary injunction — essentially, a court order that would immediately pause implementation of Trump’s pro fossil fuel executive orders. The request is substantiated with expert declarations explaining how the administration’s actions are already harming children and arguing that there is no reason for the government to be boosting fossil fuels, since renewable energy can deliver more affordable and safe energy.&nbsp;</p>
  1449.  
  1450.  
  1451.  
  1452. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Government defendants have until July 11 to respond to the plaintiffs’ filing.</p></blockquote></figure>
  1453.  
  1454.  
  1455.  
  1456. <p>“The United States no longer needs fossil fuels for its energy purposes and has not for some time. Given the longevity and expense of expanding fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure, the executive orders will lock in continuing fossil fuel use for decades to come,” <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/655a2d016eb74e41dc292ed5/t/684d69f50a39827e6b0d69ff/1749903861471/2025.06.09.PIFiledPR.FINAL.pdf" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">said</a> Mark Z. Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. Jacobson and several other experts who filed declarations also testified on behalf of youth plaintiffs during the <em>Held v. Montana </em>trial. </p>
  1457.  
  1458.  
  1459.  
  1460. <p>z, said the request for an immediate halt to Trump’s orders, which undermine solar and wind energy while eliminating pollution controls, is justified. “Plaintiffs’ request for immediate judicial intervention reflects the founding generation’s design for checking poor presidential choices like these,” he said. “These policies are causing irreparable harm for no good reason.” </p>
  1461.  
  1462.  
  1463.  
  1464. <p>Government defendants have until July 11 to respond to the plaintiffs’ filing. Attorneys for the youth say they plan to promptly reply and then request that the court schedule an evidentiary hearing as soon as possible.&nbsp;</p>
  1465.  
  1466.  
  1467.  
  1468. <p class="is-td-marked">“We believe these actions the defendants are taking need to be stopped immediately,” Rodgers said. “There’s no time to waste.”</p>
  1469. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/suing-like-the-future-depends-on-it/">Suing Like the Future Depends on It</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  1470. ]]></content:encoded>
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  1478. </item>
  1479. <item>
  1480. <title>‘Most Worrisome …’</title>
  1481. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/most-worrisome/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=most-worrisome</link>
  1482. <comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/most-worrisome/#respond</comments>
  1484. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Ari Paul /  FAIR ]]></dc:creator>
  1485. <pubDate>Mon, 30 Jun 2025 16:02:36 +0000</pubDate>
  1486. <category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
  1487. <category><![CDATA[Column]]></category>
  1488. <category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
  1489. <category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
  1490. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  1491. <category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
  1492. <category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
  1493. <category><![CDATA[mayor]]></category>
  1494. <category><![CDATA[media bias]]></category>
  1495. <category><![CDATA[new york city]]></category>
  1496. <category><![CDATA[new york times]]></category>
  1497. <category><![CDATA[zohran mamdani]]></category>
  1498. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309244</guid>
  1499.  
  1500. <description><![CDATA[<p>How the media did their best to scare voters away from Zohran Mamdani in the primary for New York City mayor.</p>
  1501. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/most-worrisome/">‘Most Worrisome …’</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  1502. ]]></description>
  1503. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  1504. <p><strong>They tried.</strong> Oh, did the media try.</p>
  1505.  
  1506.  
  1507.  
  1508. <p>The <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/24/mamdani-leads-cuomo-nyc-mayor-race-00422363" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">declared victory</a> for Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor highlights many things. The power of his campaign, the popularity of his ideas, the importance of grassroots get-out-the-vote mobilization, and the tepid reception for <a href="https://fair.org/home/nyt-covers-up-for-cuomo/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Andrew Cuomo</a>, who resigned as the state’s governor due to a myriad of <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/178498/andrew-cuomo-settlement-more-women-sexual-harassment" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">sexual harassment allegations</a>, all contributed to the surprising — to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/26/democrats-mamdani-win-factions-reaction-00425096" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">corporate media</a>, anyway — result.</p>
  1509.  
  1510.  
  1511.  
  1512. <p><a href="https://fair.org/home/how-to-subtly-undermine-a-promising-left-wing-candidate/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">FAIR’s Raina Lipsitz</a> responded to a <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/zohran-mamdani-nyc-mayor-polls-campaign-momentum.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">New York profile</a> that attempted to undermine Mamdani’s record. In the home stretch of the primary race in the latter half of June, the pressure against Mamdani increased, featuring thoughtless dismissals of his ideas, selective memory and factual inaccuracy in the service of lowering Mamdani’s electoral chances.</p>
  1513.  
  1514.  
  1515.  
  1516. <p>That Mamdani emerged from this mess victorious exposes the out-of-touchness of establishment media outlets that twisted like pretzels to scare voters away from the 33-year-old phenomenon. (Readers should know that I ranked Mamdani first in the primary and contributed to his campaign. I’m not unbiased when it comes to who I want to see as mayor, but the analysis of the media that follows, I believe, will withstand scrutiny.)</p>
  1517.  
  1518.  
  1519.  
  1520. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">‘Uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges’</h3>
  1521.  
  1522.  
  1523.  
  1524. <p>The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/opinion/new-york-mayor-election-advice.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">editorial board</a> argued that “Mr. Mamdani is running on an agenda uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges.” They explained:</p>
  1525.  
  1526.  
  1527.  
  1528. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  1529. <p>He is a democratic socialist who too often ignores the unavoidable trade-offs of governance. He favors rent freezes that could restrict housing supply and make it harder for younger New Yorkers and new arrivals to afford housing. He wants the government to operate grocery stores, as if customer service and retail sales were strengths of the public sector. He minimizes the importance of policing.</p>
  1530. </blockquote>
  1531.  
  1532.  
  1533.  
  1534. <p>At least one poll shows that a rent freeze is <a href="https://www.cityandstateny.com/policy/2025/04/poll-3-4-new-yorkers-want-rent-freeze/404556/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">overwhelmingly popular</a>, and they’re far from unheard of: Rent freezes were a <a href="https://citylimits.org/second-year-of-the-de-blasio-rent-freeze-a-graphic-history/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">key policy</a> <a href="https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2017/03/de-blasio-touts-rent-freeze-he-instructed-board-to-embrace-110423" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">victory under</a> <a href="https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nyc-board-votes-to-freeze-rent-for-one-year-leases-on-rent-stabilized-apartments/2470006/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Mayor Bill de Blasio</a>, a mayor whose candidacy the board had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/05/opinion/editorials/mayoral-endorsement-bill-deblasio.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">enthusiastically</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/opinion/mayor-deblasio-endorsement-second-term.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">supported</a>.</p>
  1535.  
  1536.  
  1537.  
  1538. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>At least one poll shows that a rent freeze is overwhelmingly popular.</p></blockquote></figure>
  1539.  
  1540.  
  1541.  
  1542. <p>The landlord class, which has <a href="https://jacobin.com/2025/06/mamdani-cuomo-nyc-real-estate" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">organized against </a>Mamdani’s campaign, no doubt agrees with the Times‘ argument that if we don’t let rents go up, housing will be unaffordable — though 12 years of <a href="https://rentguidelinesboard.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/2023-Apartment-Chart.pdf" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">steady increases</a> on regulated rentals under the tenure of Mayor Michael Bloomberg didn’t seem to make it easier to get an apartment here.</p>
  1543.  
  1544.  
  1545.  
  1546. <p>And is the grocery store pitch such a crazy idea? The rising cost of food, despite the Times’ framing, is a <a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/05/01/food-prices-ny-rise-inflation/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">very real problem </a>for New Yorkers. The city operates public housing, homeless shelters and  hospitals — and a public education system that delivers daily meals to more than 900,000 <a href="https://www.schools.nyc.gov/about-us/reports/doe-data-at-a-glance" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">students</a>.</p>
  1547.  
  1548.  
  1549.  
  1550. <p>The Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/12/nyregion/grocery-stores-city-owned.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">positively explored</a> the idea of city-owned stores in its news pages, citing how cities including Chicago and Atlanta were exploring similar missions. But when Mamdani proposes it, the editors present it as a sign of kookiness.</p>
  1551.  
  1552.  
  1553.  
  1554. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">‘The disorder of the past decade’</h3>
  1555.  
  1556.  
  1557.  
  1558. <p>The paper continued:</p>
  1559.  
  1560.  
  1561.  
  1562. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  1563. <p>Most worrisome, he shows little concern about the disorder of the past decade, even though its costs have fallen hardest on the city’s working-class and poor residents. Mr. Mamdani, who has called Mr. de Blasio the best New York mayor of his lifetime, offers an agenda that remains alluring among elite progressives but has proved damaging to city life.</p>
  1564. </blockquote>
  1565.  
  1566.  
  1567.  
  1568. <p>What disorder is the board talking about? We can guess they mean crime, but the homicide rate in New York City for the past 10 years is the lowest it’s been since the 1950s. It’s true that Mamdani believes in police reform. The Times editorial board used <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/opinion/nypd-reform-nyc.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">to champion</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/opinion/nypd-chokeholds-city-council.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">that cause</a>, even endorsing a reform-minded <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/opinion/tiffany-caban-times-endorsement.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">democratic socialist defense attorney</a> in Queens five years ago.</p>
  1569.  
  1570.  
  1571.  
  1572. <p>Alex Vitale, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project, suggested that — ”given that crime rates are at or near historic low” — the Times‘ “disorder” is likely “the presence of homeless mentally ill people on the subway and other public spaces.” But, he argues:</p>
  1573.  
  1574.  
  1575.  
  1576. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  1577. <p>Ironically, Mamdani and to some extent [Comptroller Brad] Lander are the candidates who have actual plans to address the kind of disorder that pearl-clutching&nbsp;Times&nbsp;readers are worried about. They understand that the solution to this decades old problem is not endlessly using police to cycle people through jails and hospitals, but instead to develop actual supportive housing and other essential social services.</p>
  1578.  
  1579.  
  1580.  
  1581. <p>The&nbsp;Times&nbsp;has capitulated to neoliberal austerity, which accepts that cities have no choice but to cut services and turn the real estate market over to billionaires, and then use policing to manage the chaos that ensues.</p>
  1582. </blockquote>
  1583.  
  1584.  
  1585.  
  1586. <p>As for the idea that Mamdani is somehow just a candidate for “elite progressives” but not the “working-class and poor,” the Times’ own interactive <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/24/us/elections/results-new-york-city-mayor-primary.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">map</a> shows a more nuanced story. While it’s true that Cuomo did well in, for example, the impoverished South Bronx, in Manhattan he won the monied districts like Tribeca and the Upper East Side and Upper West Side, while Mamdani carried <a href="https://www.visualizingeconomics.com/blog/2007/09/22/new-york-city-poverty-map" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">lower-income neighborhoods</a> like Harlem, Washington Heights and the Lower East Side. Mamdani’s funding came mostly from small contributions — he had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/06/nyregion/nyc-mayor-funding-neighborhood-donations.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">seven times as many donors</a> as Cuomo — whereas Cuomo was heavily funded by <a href="https://www.thecity.nyc/2025/06/26/cuomo-fix-city-independent-expenditures-mayor/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">billionaires and the real-estate industry</a>.</p>
  1587.  
  1588.  
  1589.  
  1590. <h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>‘A quality of magical realism’</strong></h3>
  1591.  
  1592.  
  1593.  
  1594. <p>The Atlantic published two anti-Mamdani articles, warning that Mamdani is too inexperienced to earn the people’s vote and that his ambitious proposals can’t be achieved. (A third went after his support for the phrase <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/zohran-mamdani-globalize-intifada/683300/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">“globalize the intifada</a>.&#8221;) Former Times writer Michael Powell, like the Times editorial board, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/zohran-mamdani-mayoral-candidate-nyc/683215/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">scoffed at the grocery store idea</a>, saying, “How would he pay for his most ambitious plans? Tax the rich and major corporations.” That echoed his colleague <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/new-york-mayoral-race-cuomo-mamdani/683146/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Annie Lowery</a>:</p>
  1595.  
  1596.  
  1597.  
  1598. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  1599. <p>He is a leftist in the Bernie Sanders mold, with a raft of great-sounding policies. Free buses! Free childcare! Cheap groceries! Frozen rents! But a lot of these are impractical at best. Free buses would deprive the MTA of needed revenue. Free childcare would require a mammoth tax hike that Albany would need to approve, which it has shown no interest in doing.</p>
  1600. </blockquote>
  1601.  
  1602.  
  1603.  
  1604. <p>Similarly, Powell pompously asserts that “Mamdani’s candidacy also has a quality of magic realism, a campaign exuberantly disconnected from actual government budgets and organizational charts.”</p>
  1605.  
  1606.  
  1607.  
  1608. <p>Progressives are often annoyed by the retort “how are you going to pay for it?” because this question only gets deployed against the expansion of healthcare, education and social services, and not jails, policing and subsidies for business. But it also exposes the superficialities of reporters’ knowledge of city affairs.</p>
  1609.  
  1610.  
  1611.  
  1612. <p>Many years ago, when I was a reporter at the Chief-Leader, a fellow reporter asked then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg why his budget proposal rested so much on the outcome of the city’s negotiations with its unions. His answer was simple: That’s what government is — it’s services for people, staffed by people. Any administration, in short, has to grapple with how to pay for its priorities, whether those priorities are left-wing or right-wing, and that often involves cutting bloat, consolidating functions and increasing revenue.</p>
  1613.  
  1614.  
  1615.  
  1616. <p>Mamdani’s spending plan offends the Atlantic, not because it costs money — the magazine has argued <em>against </em><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/instead-of-defund-the-police-solve-all-murders/619672/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">efforts to cut</a> <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/underfunding-police-violent-crime/673314/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">police budgets</a> — but because Atlantic writers and editors don’t like his budget priorities, which validate the New Deal concept of government services for the 99 Percent.</p>
  1617.  
  1618.  
  1619.  
  1620. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">‘Undeniably young’</h3>
  1621.  
  1622.  
  1623.  
  1624. <p>New Yorker coverage has been fairer to Mamdani than the Atlantic was, but <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/what-zohran-mamdani-got-right-about-running-for-mayor" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Eric Lach’s interview</a> with the candidate honed in on a swipe favored by the assembly member’s critics, including the New York article FAIR already responded to: his youth. Lach said:</p>
  1625.  
  1626.  
  1627.  
  1628. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  1629. <p>Mamdani has been stymied for several reasons that were apparent before primary day. For one thing, he is undeniably young, and he never found a way to reassure voters that he was truly up for the job of managing the city’s agencies, its $100 billion budget, and its 300,000-person workforce.</p>
  1630. </blockquote>
  1631.  
  1632.  
  1633.  
  1634. <p>Democratic socialist upstarts have often been tagged as unruly whippersnappers who need to stop bothering party elders with competitive primaries. But in a moment where one of the <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-gerontocracy-age-leadership-aoc-gerry-connolly-2002763" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">biggest problems </a><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/democratic-party-connolly-gerontocracy/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">of the Democratic Party</a> <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/us-needs-polite-way-usher-politicians-out/683230/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">is its gerontocracy</a>, perhaps Mamdani’s ineligibility for AARP membership is a strength.</p>
  1635.  
  1636.  
  1637.  
  1638. <p>Lach continued:</p>
  1639.  
  1640.  
  1641.  
  1642. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  1643. <p>The new program of public spending he has proposed is predicated on increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations, taxes that would have to be approved in Albany. If the big shots in Albany — never a good bet for anything, politically — refuse him, what would become of Mayor Mamdani? No one can say.</p>
  1644. </blockquote>
  1645.  
  1646.  
  1647.  
  1648. <p>Warning that Mamdani’s agenda might cause friction with Albany suggests it might be Lach, not Mamdani, who is too new to the subject matter. The tension between state and city government is age-old and consistent with every administration.</p>
  1649.  
  1650.  
  1651.  
  1652. <p>Once again, Mamdani gets extra scrutiny because of the substance of his agenda. Would Cuomo deal better with the state government he was forced to resign from, with a governor who is the deputy who replaced him? That’s a rhetorical question.</p>
  1653.  
  1654.  
  1655.  
  1656. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Right-wing rage</h3>
  1657.  
  1658.  
  1659.  
  1660. <p>It is not surprising that Rupert Murdoch’s editorial boards savaged Mamdani. The <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/06/23/opinion/new-yorkers-face-awful-choices-for-mayor-but-they-must-keep-mamdani-off-their-ballots/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">New York Post</a> called him a  “cheap influencer” and “a babyfaced socialist antisemite who’s never accomplished anything except this so-buzzy campaign.” Likewise, Murdoch’s pro-business <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/new-yorks-choice-cuomo-or-socialism-election-mayor-race-vote-mamdani-ede84c75?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAhxF2fymWtzMrPxMEw4sdcS4tnf6J62BFlpVw5OzV_7w0L4OIJ_b3F-_49tcdc%3D&amp;gaa_ts=685ad16a&amp;gaa_sig=QATpr6kmahcBmlPE_95tjURilYpu_woZD9ERKc1t9aNa82A7Q7VTfmNo8PFRjAb_bDPa3PwbucNuARcMul3caw%3D%3D" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Wall Street Journal</a> claimed that “Manhattanites are warning that Mr. Mamdani’s ruinous utopianism could prompt a flight of talent and capital.”</p>
  1661.  
  1662.  
  1663.  
  1664. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>The good news is that this press assault failed.</p></blockquote></figure>
  1665.  
  1666.  
  1667.  
  1668. <p>But the onslaught from the more centrist outlets is telling: Like the business establishment, they fear progressive economic policies when it comes to housing, education, transit and public safety, despite all overtures to the contrary.</p>
  1669.  
  1670.  
  1671.  
  1672. <p>The good news is that this press assault failed. Perhaps that is because the political advice of the&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;and&nbsp;Atlantic&nbsp;only still sways opinion in a few enclaves of the upper crust. The rage from the&nbsp;Post,&nbsp;Daily News&nbsp;and&nbsp;Journal&nbsp;probably only reached conservative audiences, who wouldn’t have ranked Mamdani anyway. And perhaps it also is testament to the degree that a grassroots messaging campaign can overcome an onslaught from the corporate media.</p>
  1673.  
  1674.  
  1675.  
  1676. <p>The bad news is that this was only the primary: incumbent Mayor Eric Adams will be running in the general election as an independent, and Cuomo has left that option open. Monied interests will likely double down, hoping to spread enough fear of a Mamdani-run New York City to help sink his meteoric rise — and elite media are rarely far behind them.</p>
  1677. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/most-worrisome/">‘Most Worrisome …’</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  1678. ]]></content:encoded>
  1680. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/most-worrisome/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  1681. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  1684. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">309244</post-id> <enclosure url="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AP25177755939479-scaled.jpg?width=877&#038;height=585" length="564560" type="image/jpeg" />
  1685. <media:thumbnail url="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AP25177755939479-scaled.jpg?width=877&#038;height=585" />
  1686. </item>
  1687. <item>
  1688. <title>U.S. Policy on Sudan Disproportionately Hurts Civilians</title>
  1689. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/u-s-policy-on-sudan-disproportionately-hurts-civilians/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=u-s-policy-on-sudan-disproportionately-hurts-civilians</link>
  1690. <comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/u-s-policy-on-sudan-disproportionately-hurts-civilians/#respond</comments>
  1692. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Zeina Mohammed, Ragad Babiker /  Prism ]]></dc:creator>
  1693. <pubDate>Mon, 30 Jun 2025 15:45:44 +0000</pubDate>
  1694. <category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
  1695. <category><![CDATA[Africa]]></category>
  1696. <category><![CDATA[Courts & Law]]></category>
  1697. <category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
  1698. <category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
  1699. <category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
  1700. <category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
  1701. <category><![CDATA[muslim ban]]></category>
  1702. <category><![CDATA[rsf]]></category>
  1703. <category><![CDATA[sudan]]></category>
  1704. <category><![CDATA[united arab emirates]]></category>
  1705. <category><![CDATA[visa overstay]]></category>
  1706. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309240</guid>
  1707.  
  1708. <description><![CDATA[<p>Trump’s travel ban includes Sudanese nationals, and sanctions on the country only exacerbate the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.</p>
  1709. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/u-s-policy-on-sudan-disproportionately-hurts-civilians/">U.S. Policy on Sudan Disproportionately Hurts Civilians</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  1710. ]]></description>
  1711. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  1712. <p><strong>As the war in Sudan</strong> enters its third year, experts, activists and other community members say recent U.S. foreign policy is hurting, not helping, civilians.</p>
  1713.  
  1714.  
  1715.  
  1716. <p>This month, the Trump administration <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/06/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-restricts-the-entry-of-foreign-nationals-to-protect-the-united-states-from-foreign-terrorists-and-other-national-security-and-public-safety-threats/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">banned Sudanese nationals</a>, in addition to 11 other nationalities, from entering the United States, a couple of weeks after the administration <a href="https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2025/05/imposing-measures-on-sudan-for-its-use-of-chemical-weapons/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">imposed sanctions</a> on the country, claiming the Sudanese Armed Forces used chemical weapons in their fight with Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). </p>
  1717.  
  1718.  
  1719.  
  1720. <p>Both moves, experts say, have drastically reduced resources and mobility for civilians at the center of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis more than they hinder the competing armed forces. As of April, nearly 13 million people have been displaced, <a href="https://www.unrefugees.org/emergencies/sudan/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">according to the United Nations Refugee Agency</a>.  </p>
  1721.  
  1722.  
  1723.  
  1724. <p>Fighting between the country’s two main military factions began on April 15, 2023, and has devastated much of the physical and social infrastructure of the East African nation.&nbsp;</p>
  1725.  
  1726.  
  1727.  
  1728. <p>While often framed as a domestic conflict, the U.N. and other international bodies<a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/sudan-rsf-saf-uae-intervention/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">&nbsp;have denounced</a> extensive involvement of several external actors in the gold- and resource-rich country. Chief among the foreign actors is&nbsp;<a href="https://adf-magazine.com/2024/07/u-n-denounces-foreign-actors-for-prolonging-sudans-conflict/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">the United Arab Emirates</a>, which bought&nbsp;<a href="https://www.newarab.com/news/us-approves-14-billion-weapons-sale-uae" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">$1.4 billion worth</a>&nbsp;of military aircraft and equipment from the U.S. State Department in May, to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us-lawmakers-seek-halt-weapons-sales-uae-citing-sudan-2024-11-21/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">outcry of several U.S. lawmakers</a>&nbsp;who accused the UAE of supporting the RSF.&nbsp;</p>
  1729.  
  1730.  
  1731.  
  1732. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>&#8220;A lot of African countries have very low numbers of people overstaying.”</p></blockquote></figure>
  1733.  
  1734.  
  1735.  
  1736. <p>In addition to lacking “a competent or cooperative central authority for issuing passports or civil documents,” Sudan made the list for <a href="https://prismreports.org/2025/06/09/trump-travel-ban/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">President Donald Trump’s travel ban</a> for yielding a high percentage of people who overstay visas in the United States, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/06/restricting-the-entry-of-foreign-nationals-to-protect-the-united-states-from-foreign-terrorists-and-other-national-security-and-public-safety-threats/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">according to a press release from the White House</a>.</p>
  1737.  
  1738.  
  1739.  
  1740. <p>That accusation landed many more African countries onto the ban than the “Muslim ban” in Trump’s first term, said Diana Konaté, the deputy executive director of policy and advocacy at African Communities Together, a national grassroots organization working to improve the lives of African immigrants in the U.S. “But, if you look at the actual numbers, a lot of African countries have very low numbers of people overstaying.”</p>
  1741.  
  1742.  
  1743.  
  1744. <p>She said the use of overstay rate percentages do not present an accurate picture, because countries such as Sudan receive so few visas in comparison to others. In 2023, for example, 191 Sudanese citizens overstayed their F, M and J visas, compared with 445 citizens from France and 855 from South Korea, <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2024-10/24_1011_CBP-Entry-Exit-Overstay-Report-FY23-Data.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">according to data from the Department of Homeland Security</a>.</p>
  1745.  
  1746.  
  1747.  
  1748. <p>“In our view, if this administration is really looking to address overstays, then targeting the countries that it has targeted is really not the way to go,” Konaté said.</p>
  1749.  
  1750.  
  1751.  
  1752. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">“We’re trapped here, and for what?”&nbsp;</h3>
  1753.  
  1754.  
  1755.  
  1756. <p>The ban has left many Sudanese people in limbo, unable to reunite with family members. One of them is S, a Ph.D. student at Cornell University, who has asked to remain anonymous due to safety concerns.</p>
  1757.  
  1758.  
  1759.  
  1760. <p>S’s family was in Sudan when the war broke out and has since been displaced to Malaysia. Since the ban, they have not been able to see family for fear of leaving and not being able to return to the U.S.</p>
  1761.  
  1762.  
  1763.  
  1764. <p>With the&nbsp;<a href="https://prismreports.org/2025/06/16/international-students-visas-travel/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">targeting of international students</a>, S said they and colleagues are under immense stress. “I have a check-in group with my friends here, and every time I leave the apartment, we have to message each other, ‘I’m going grocery shopping or to the gym’ because you don’t know what is going to happen,” they said.</p>
  1765.  
  1766.  
  1767.  
  1768. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“I can’t pursue my research normally, because now I’m being watched left and right.”</p></blockquote></figure>
  1769.  
  1770.  
  1771.  
  1772. <p>Because of the deporting of international students, S was forced to take their defense exam six months earlier than scheduled, with two weeks’ notice, because deportees are automatically disenrolled from programs.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
  1773.  
  1774.  
  1775.  
  1776. <p>&nbsp;“We’re trapped here, and for what? We feel unsafe. We have police officers on campus. We have friends left and right being deported,” they said. “I can’t pursue my research normally, because now I’m being watched left and right.”</p>
  1777.  
  1778.  
  1779.  
  1780. <p>Aseel Salih, a public health expert and health advocate based in the Washington D.C. area, has also not seen her family since the war broke out. “I’m afraid to lose any more family members, [but] I can’t leave,” she said. “I am the hope for my family and others back home.”</p>
  1781.  
  1782.  
  1783.  
  1784. <p>Suad Abdel Aziz, a civil rights attorney and the executive director of anti-imperialist advocacy group <a href="https://decolonizesudan.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Decolonize Sudan</a>, said, “I haven’t seen a lot of people opposing this ban en mass. And I think that is due to some of the ‘Trump effect,’ normalization effect, where it’s so normal at this point — the extreme policies that he is proposing — that people are fatigued.”</p>
  1785.  
  1786.  
  1787.  
  1788. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Sanctions weaken society, not warring factions</h3>
  1789.  
  1790.  
  1791.  
  1792. <p>Aziz said that there’s even less attention on the U.S. sanctions against Sudan.&nbsp;</p>
  1793.  
  1794.  
  1795.  
  1796. <p>“We see sanctions as kind of this nebulous thing that may have effects, but we don’t see it as direct warfare,” she said. “We see drones as direct warfare, but actually, there are&nbsp;<a href="https://inthesetimes.com/article/sanctions-are-an-act-of-war-human-rights-economic-terrorism-humanitarian-crisis-iraq-afghanistan-venezuela-iraq-united-nations" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">stats put together about how sanctions have historically killed more people than drones</a>&nbsp;have ever.”</p>
  1797.  
  1798.  
  1799.  
  1800. <p>The sanctions, announced May 22, restrict U.S. exports to Sudan as well as access to U.S. government lines of credit. Sudanese officials have rejected U.S. claims that the country used chemical weapons, calling them&nbsp;<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/23/us-sanctions-sudan-after-ruling-chemical-weapons-used-during-civil-war" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">“baseless.”</a></p>
  1801.  
  1802.  
  1803.  
  1804. <p>The sanctions come as more than half of the population in Sudan is in dire need of humanitarian aid,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.unocha.org/sudan" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs</a>. Efforts to distribute aid have only been weakened and disrupted, exacerbating the already severe crisis.</p>
  1805.  
  1806.  
  1807.  
  1808. <p>“This is a very cruel tactic to deploy at this time, and it’s also a tactic that is meant to destabilize an already destabilized country,” Aziz said.</p>
  1809.  
  1810.  
  1811.  
  1812. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“Civilians will face the brunt of the hyperinflation of all of the basic goods.&#8221;</p></blockquote></figure>
  1813.  
  1814.  
  1815.  
  1816. <p>She called the impact of sanctions on the banking system “an attack on the sovereignty and stability of a Sudanese state.” Financial infrastructure and urban development are being eroded and destroyed, politically and physically, undermining attempts to improve the situation, especially for those on the ground.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
  1817.  
  1818.  
  1819.  
  1820. <p>“Civilians will face the brunt of the hyperinflation of all of the basic goods, the fuel, the basic food goods; there will be mass shortages of these goods due to that hyperinflation,” Aziz said. “That is coming at a time of severe mass starvation already.”</p>
  1821.  
  1822.  
  1823.  
  1824. <p>S grew up in Sudan, under sanctions their whole life. “It affected every part of life. You would see people dying from very simple things they shouldn’t have died [from, like] lack of medication or lack of needles sometimes,” they said. Domestic production, importing and exporting are all made more difficult under sanctions, which increases brain drain, S said, because people get so frustrated with the difficulty of living under sanctions, they look for ways to leave for other countries.</p>
  1825.  
  1826.  
  1827.  
  1828. <p>“The problem with sanctions is they’re supposed to weaken the ruling party, but they don’t,” S said. “They weaken societies. They weaken civilians.”</p>
  1829.  
  1830.  
  1831.  
  1832. <p>S, like many Sudanese people, said that although they vow to keep championing the Sudanese cause, it’s demoralizing to feel like no one is listening.</p>
  1833.  
  1834.  
  1835.  
  1836. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Holding the UAE to account</h3>
  1837.  
  1838.  
  1839.  
  1840. <p>According to U.N. reports, the RSF has been identified as chiefly responsible for ongoing war crimes and genocide in Darfur for decades, particularly against the Masalit people.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/ethnic-killings-one-sudan-city-left-up-15000-dead-un-report-2024-01-19/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">According to a U.N. report seen by Reuters</a>, 10,000 to 15,000 Masalit civilians were massacred in West Darfur between May and June 2023.&nbsp;</p>
  1841.  
  1842.  
  1843.  
  1844. <p>A 2024 U.N. report found it credible that the UAE was supplying the RSF with weapons under the guise of creating a hospital for Sudanese refugees. UAE officials have said the country <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/may/05/sudan-fails-in-attempt-to-make-uae-accountable-for-acts-of-genocide" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">bears no responsibility</a> for the conflict in Sudan.</p>
  1845.  
  1846.  
  1847.  
  1848. <p>In March, <a href="https://sarajacobs.house.gov/news/press-releases/rep-sara-jacobs-sen-chris-van-hollen-reintroduce-bill-to-prohibit-us-arms-sales-to-uae-until-they-cease-support-of-rsf-in-sudan" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., and Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., </a>reintroduced the Stand Up for Sudan Act, which would prohibit U.S. arms sales to the UAE until it halts its support for the RSF, claiming that reports they had seen confirmed the UAE’s involvement.</p>
  1849.  
  1850.  
  1851.  
  1852. <p>The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to Prism’s request for comment.</p>
  1853.  
  1854.  
  1855.  
  1856. <p>A Sudanese journalist based in the U.S., who asked to remain anonymous, told Prism that despite the reports coming out about the UAE, “it doesn’t seem important enough to affect their relationship between them and the United States, which values strategic alliance in the transactions above lives and the situation in Sudan, unfortunately.”</p>
  1857. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/u-s-policy-on-sudan-disproportionately-hurts-civilians/">U.S. Policy on Sudan Disproportionately Hurts Civilians</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  1858. ]]></content:encoded>
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  1861. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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  1866. </item>
  1867. <item>
  1868. <title>Let’s Make a Deal: Enrichment Everyone Can Agree On</title>
  1869. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/lets-make-a-deal-enrichment-everyone-can-agree-on/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=lets-make-a-deal-enrichment-everyone-can-agree-on</link>
  1870. <comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/lets-make-a-deal-enrichment-everyone-can-agree-on/#respond</comments>
  1872. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Elfadil Ibrahim /  Responsible Statecraft ]]></dc:creator>
  1873. <pubDate>Mon, 30 Jun 2025 15:27:25 +0000</pubDate>
  1874. <category><![CDATA[Business & Economy]]></category>
  1875. <category><![CDATA[Column]]></category>
  1876. <category><![CDATA[Courts & Law]]></category>
  1877. <category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
  1878. <category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
  1879. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  1880. <category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
  1881. <category><![CDATA[iran]]></category>
  1882. <category><![CDATA[iran nuclear deal]]></category>
  1883. <category><![CDATA[jcpoa]]></category>
  1884. <category><![CDATA[saudi arabia]]></category>
  1885. <category><![CDATA[united arab emirates]]></category>
  1886. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309234</guid>
  1887.  
  1888. <description><![CDATA[<p>A regulated consortium for civilian power with Gulf state neighbors is still on the table and is the best alternative to conflict.</p>
  1889. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/lets-make-a-deal-enrichment-everyone-can-agree-on/">Let’s Make a Deal: Enrichment Everyone Can Agree On</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  1890. ]]></description>
  1891. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  1892. <p><strong>The recent confrontation </strong>that pitted Iran against Israel and drew in U.S. B-2 bombers has likely rendered the previous diplomatic playbook for Tehran&#8217;s nuclear program obsolete. The zero-sum debates concerning uranium enrichment that once defined that framework now represent an increasingly unworkable approach.<br><br>Although a regional nuclear consortium had been previously advanced as a theoretical alternative, the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-27/iran-dismisses-trump-s-claim-of-nuclear-talks-resuming-next-week?embedded-checkout=true" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>collapse</u></a> of talks as a result of military action against Iran now positions it as the most compelling path forward for all parties.<br><br>Before the war, Iran was already <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/13/iran-proposes-partnership-with-uae-and-saudi-arabia-to-enrich-uranium" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>suggesting</u></a> a joint uranium enrichment facility with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Iranian soil. For Iran, this framework could achieve its primary goal: the preservation of a domestic nuclear program and, crucially, its demand to maintain <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-nuclear-deal-2672318762/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"><u>some</u></a> enrichment on its own territory. The added benefit is that it embeds Iran within a regional security architecture that provides a buffer against unilateral attack.<br><br>For Gulf actors, it offers unprecedented transparency and a degree of control over their rival-turned-friend’s nuclear activities, a far better outcome than a possible covert Iranian breakout. For a Trump administration focused on deals, it offers a tangible, multilateral framework that can be sold as a blueprint for regional stability.</p>
  1893.  
  1894.  
  1895.  
  1896. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>The consortium could allow enrichment to continue at Iranian facilities but would cap purity at 3.67%.</p></blockquote></figure>
  1897.  
  1898.  
  1899.  
  1900. <p>To understand why this proposal is now the most logical, we must appreciate the depth of the diplomatic collapse.<br><br>Just before Israeli bombs rained down on Tehran <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-iran-nuclear-science-attacks-e298f00ba261debba4499a48c9df8b3d" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>killing</u></a> numerous nuclear scientists and senior military commanders, U.S. and Iranian negotiators were deep in Oman-mediated talks, with President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/06/02/iran-nuclear-deal-proposal-enrich-uranium" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>reportedly</u></a> considering the consortium proposal, accepting time-bound, limited enrichment on Iranian soil, with the understanding that precise details would be ironed out in subsequent negotiations.<br><br>Then, the strikes began. This sequence confirmed Tehran’s deeply held <a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-israel-conflict-latest-news/card/iran-doesn-t-know-how-we-can-trust-u-s-its-foreign-minister-says-NAF7ADTyvn3Juf4vTjIe?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAignfDsaKBIrKSZcmfEMeTx0ugxPMmeomMJwHGW2eZGEnXsHVqafm0y7Rzy0Lk%3D&amp;gaa_ts=685d5c2d&amp;gaa_sig=pfH278Of73n96D0GuRmrmSogwI_NFJzlhD26m7aDymRLBK35hl8X5PYjmWEZUqCOxEEXj7I_TXKE-zJfJxKd4Q%3D%3D" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>suspicion</u></a>: diplomacy is a prelude to ambush, and international agreements are worthless without hard power to back them.</p>
  1901.  
  1902.  
  1903.  
  1904. <p>Iran’s recent legislative <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/26/iran-moves-to-suspend-cooperation-with-un-nuclear-watchdog" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>move</u></a> to suspend cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is a direct response. It is a declaration that in a world governed by &#8220;might is right,&#8221; Iran will pursue its own might in the dark. This is the new, dangerous reality. The old paradigm of constraining Iran through sanctions and inspections in exchange for easing its isolation will be difficult to resuscitate.<br><br>Practically, the consortium could allow enrichment to continue at Iranian facilities but would <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/13/iran-proposes-partnership-with-uae-and-saudi-arabia-to-enrich-uranium" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>cap</u></a> purity at 3.67%, the level established in the 2015 nuclear deal known as the JCPOA. That would reverse the recent trend of enrichment at 60% purity, which is a short technical step from the 90% needed for weapons grade.<br><br>In this framework, the U.S. proposed to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/us/politics/iran-nuclear-deal-proposal.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>help</u></a> construct nuclear power reactors for Iran, with Iran able to maintain enrichment capped at 3.67% pending a final deal on the long-term location and construction of regional enrichment facilities. Sanctions would also be removed, although the question of whether removal would be piecemeal or comprehensive would be the subject of additional negotiation. Gulf partners, namely, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, would have a financial stake as shareholders. Their presence, potentially including on-site engineers, would create an extra layer of transparency and assurance that the enrichment program remains entirely peaceful, reducing reliance on IAEA inspectors.<br><br>Forcing &#8220;<a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/zero-enrichment-iran/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"><u>zero enrichment</u></a>&#8221; is, and always has been, a diplomatic nonstarter for Iran that only led to an impasse at the negotiating table and ultimately to military escalation. The consortium idea bypasses this dead end. It could allow for Iran to keep enriching, thus satisfying its core <a href="https://x.com/khamenei_ir/status/1924759611879350665" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>demand</u></a> and providing a face-saving &#8220;win&#8221; to present to the public, showcasing the preservation of its nuclear program as a successful defense of its sovereignty.</p>
  1905.  
  1906.  
  1907.  
  1908. <p>For the U.S., particularly the Trump administration, the consortium is a perfect fit for its transactional foreign policy. The president can claim he used a demonstration of “peace through strength” to force Iran into a landmark regional deal. It is a “win” that is easily packaged: Trump could claim that he brought the region&#8217;s rivals together and put a lock on Iran&#8217;s potential development of a nuclear weapon.</p>
  1909.  
  1910.  
  1911.  
  1912. <p>For the Arab Gulf states, the consortium model addresses some of their most pressing needs: immediate security and future energy. First, it transforms them from sitting ducks in a future U.S.-Iran-Israel standoff into deal guarantors.<br><br>Second, it provides a powerful engine for their&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/why-does-saudi-arabia-want-civil-nuclear-deal-with-us-2025-05-08/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>own</u></a>&nbsp;nuclear ambitions. To diversify their energy mixes and free up additional barrels for export, Saudi Arabia and the UAE require civilian nuclear power. The consortium elegantly solves this by creating a shared, multinational fuel cycle.</p>
  1913.  
  1914.  
  1915.  
  1916. <p>Creative <a href="https://thebulletin.org/2025/06/a-nuclear-consortium-in-the-persian-gulf-as-a-basis-for-a-new-nuclear-deal-between-the-united-states-and-iran/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>proposals</u></a> suggest a division of labor: Iran, for instance, could maintain its prized technological capacity by manufacturing the centrifuges, while the enrichment itself could occur in a neutral country or on an Iranian <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/us/politics/iran-nuclear-deal-proposal.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>island</u></a> separate from the mainland. That would provide fuel for all members while allowing each side to claim a strategic victory.<br><br>The crucial benefit for Gulf states is securing a stable and transparent fuel supply chain. This sidesteps the immense political and technical challenges of developing an independent enrichment capability from scratch, a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/14/saudi-arabia-announces-plans-to-enrich-and-sell-uranium" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>stated</u></a> goal for Saudi Arabia. For the UAE, with its operational Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant, the consortium offers a more resilient, regionally integrated fuel source, reducing reliance on international markets for uranium procurement and enrichment services.<br><br>Previously, Saudi Arabia, focused on its own ambitious nuclear energy plans with U.S. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-nuclear-talks-trump.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>support</u></a>, saw <a href="https://amwaj.media/en/article/deep-dive-why-saudi-arabia-shies-away-from-nuclear-consortium-with-iran" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>little</u></a> reason to join a consortium where Iran held the upper hand. However, the recent war has likely made it more amenable to such an arrangement. Iran’s willingness to <a href="https://apnews.com/article/al-udeid-air-base-military-qatar-iran-501e9e64e80480ef3aa4ee43c1243235" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>retaliate</u></a>, even symbolically against U.S. bases on the other side of the Gulf, demonstrates its capacity to draw regional players into the conflict. For Riyadh therefore, the risk of being caught in the crossfire of another war could now outweigh the risk of co-optation by Tehran.</p>
  1917.  
  1918.  
  1919.  
  1920. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Saudi Arabia and the UAE would have a financial stake as shareholders.</p></blockquote></figure>
  1921.  
  1922.  
  1923.  
  1924. <p>In a recent phone call, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian <a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/iranian-president-expresses-readiness-to-resolve-disputes-with-us-within-international-framework/3611950" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>signaled</u></a> to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan his readiness to resume negotiations with Washington, but picked his words carefully: Iran seeks a &#8220;fair and reasonable&#8221; agreement that respects its &#8220;rightful entitlements.&#8221; His language appears to affirm that while Iran is open to resuming talks, its core demand for enrichment remains unchanged.</p>
  1925.  
  1926.  
  1927.  
  1928. <p>Crucially, Pezeshkian also welcomed the support of &#8220;friendly and brotherly nations&#8221; in the process, a clear invitation for the very regional involvement a consortium embodies.</p>
  1929.  
  1930.  
  1931.  
  1932. <p>However, for all its potential, the consortium model is fraught with risk. It requires the Trump administration to navigate its own policy&nbsp;<a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/zero-enrichment-iran/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"><u>evolution</u></a>, from an initial willingness to accept enrichment provided there was no weaponization, to the maximalist “zero enrichment” stance it later adopted. Reverting to that earlier pragmatism would mean managing a guaranteed diplomatic crisis with Israel that will demand immense political capital to navigate.<br><br>Pursuing a consortium framework also requires a high level of diplomatic ingenuity, as integrating Saudi Arabia and the UAE will involve complex negotiations to secure their buy-in before tackling the nitty-gritty of the consortium&#8217;s operational structure, from its location to its day-to-day governance.</p>
  1933.  
  1934.  
  1935.  
  1936. <p>Furthermore, the risk of proliferation persists. The story of Abdul Qadeer Khan — the Pakistani scientist who&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/pakistan/nytimes03.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow"><u>stole</u></a>&nbsp;centrifuge designs from the European Urenco consortium to jumpstart Pakistan&#8217;s nuclear weapons program and run a global nuclear black market — is a cautionary tale of how know-how and critical material can escape even supposedly secure multinational environments.</p>
  1937.  
  1938.  
  1939.  
  1940. <p>The choice is no longer between a perfect deal and a flawed one, but between a pragmatic, albeit risky proposal and the catastrophic certainty of war. The consortium, for all its dangers, is perhaps the only workable idea on the table.</p>
  1941. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/lets-make-a-deal-enrichment-everyone-can-agree-on/">Let’s Make a Deal: Enrichment Everyone Can Agree On</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  1942. ]]></content:encoded>
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  1945. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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  1950. </item>
  1951. <item>
  1952. <title>Space Shuttle Sally</title>
  1953. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/space-shuttle-sally/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=space-shuttle-sally</link>
  1954. <comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/space-shuttle-sally/#respond</comments>
  1956. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Bedatri D. Choudhury]]></dc:creator>
  1957. <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2025 17:06:04 +0000</pubDate>
  1958. <category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
  1959. <category><![CDATA[Arts & Culture]]></category>
  1960. <category><![CDATA[Film]]></category>
  1961. <category><![CDATA[Interview]]></category>
  1962. <category><![CDATA[LGBTQIA+]]></category>
  1963. <category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
  1964. <category><![CDATA[Science]]></category>
  1965. <category><![CDATA[TD Interview]]></category>
  1966. <category><![CDATA[TD Original]]></category>
  1967. <category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
  1968. <category><![CDATA[Women]]></category>
  1969. <category><![CDATA[challenger]]></category>
  1970. <category><![CDATA[nasa]]></category>
  1971. <category><![CDATA[sally ride]]></category>
  1972. <category><![CDATA[sexism]]></category>
  1973. <category><![CDATA[Tam O'Shaughnessy]]></category>
  1974. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309210</guid>
  1975.  
  1976. <description><![CDATA[<p>A new documentary explores the life and extensive legacy of the first American woman to travel to outer space.</p>
  1977. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/space-shuttle-sally/">Space Shuttle Sally</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  1978. ]]></description>
  1979. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  1980. <p class="has-small-font-size"><em>‘Sally’ is streaming on Hulu</em>.</p>
  1981.  
  1982.  
  1983.  
  1984. <p class="has-drop-cap">Sally Ride was the first American woman in space. When she was selected to be on the 1983 Challenger mission, NASA scientists developed a makeup kit for her, and asked her if 100 tampons would be enough for her mission. Her battles with sexism became part of her legacy. But it was only after her death in 2012, when her obituary mentioned Tam O&#8217;Shaughnessy, her longtime partner, that Ride became a queer icon. Thirteen years on, filmmaker Cristina Costantini’s “Sally” looks back at Ride’s legacy through O&#8217;Shaughnessy’s eyes. For a story that unfolds through the 1980s and ’90s, its lessons are remarkably timely.</p>
  1985.  
  1986.  
  1987.  
  1988. <p>I caught up with Constantini to chat about Sally Ride, her partner of 27 years and sexism at NASA. Our conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity. </p>
  1989.  
  1990.  
  1991.  
  1992. <p><strong>Truthdig: </strong>What did you know about Sally Ride before making this film?</p>
  1993.  
  1994.  
  1995.  
  1996. <p><strong>Cristina Costantini:</strong> I&#8217;ve been obsessed with Sally my whole life. I have memories of looking her up on Encarta 97. I would print out pictures of her, stories about her or the Challenger explosion. But I really think it was a very simple equation. If a girl can go to space and she looks “sporty” — it was like the same appeal of Sporty Spice, kind of — if a girl can be brave and athletic and do all the things that she’s not supposed to do, maybe I can do big things too. And I think she expanded the definition of what girls can do and what women can do, and that made me excited. I painted a mural of her on the outside of my elementary school wall.</p>
  1997.  
  1998.  
  1999.  
  2000. <p>Every astronaut from the beginning of time — the Mercury astronauts, the Apollo astronauts — they were always pictured with their wives. When I learned with the rest of the world that Sally Ride was survived by a life partner who no one ever had heard of, I thought, &#8220;What an interesting story!&#8221; If NASA was barely ready for women, they definitely weren’t ready for that. What would that have been like? </p>
  2001.  
  2002.  
  2003.  
  2004. <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="764" src="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Sally_035.jpg?width=1024&#038;height=764" alt="" class="wp-image-309212" srcset="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Sally_035-scaled.jpg?width=1024&amp;height=764 1024w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Sally_035-scaled.jpg?width=300&amp;height=224 300w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Sally_035-scaled.jpg?width=768&amp;height=573 768w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Sally_035-scaled.jpg?width=241&amp;height=180 241w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Sally_035-scaled.jpg?width=362&amp;height=270 362w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Sally_035-scaled.jpg?width=543&amp;height=405 543w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Sally_035-scaled.jpg?width=784&amp;height=585 784w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Sally_035-scaled.jpg?width=2000 2000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-recalc-dims="1" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The first six women astronauts at NASA, including Sally RIde, in their jumpsuits. (NASA)</figcaption></figure>
  2005.  
  2006.  
  2007.  
  2008. <p><strong>TD: </strong>It’s releasing at a time when science, women, queer people, diversity, pretty much anything progressive is under attack.&nbsp;</p>
  2009.  
  2010.  
  2011.  
  2012. <p><strong>CC:</strong> When we started making the film, we didn’t know it would be coming out at a time when diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives would be under attack. The same for women and science, NASA. We didn’t know entrepreneurs were trying to get into space, that they were doing these all-women space flights. It’s crazy, but I think the film is really for anyone who has ever had to hide part of themselves to follow their dream. You see people going back into the closet. You see NASA being asked to take down their pride flags or their trans visibility flags, and removing their pronouns from their emails. They’ve walked back promises that the next person on the moon would be a woman. It really comes at a time when I think it matters, and I think Sally is a great reminder that we’ve come a long way, but that we have a long way to go.</p>
  2013.  
  2014.  
  2015.  
  2016. <p><strong>TD: </strong>You don’t show NASA in a very kind light, with its sexism. What was it like working with the agency?</p>
  2017.  
  2018.  
  2019.  
  2020. <p><strong>CC:</strong> We worked with NASA under a different administration, and truthfully, they were great partners. They were very eager to tell the story of a flawed past. NASA reflected the rest of the society at the time. You see it in the press corps, and you see it in the sexist questions that those women were being asked/ Tom Brokaw telling Judy Resnik she was too cute to be an astronaut. We’ve changed a lot as a society and we still have a long way to go, and it feels like we&#8217;re taking steps backward, but I do hope that the absurdity of that time period, at least, will give us some optimism that progress has been made over the past 50 years.</p>
  2021.  
  2022.  
  2023.  
  2024. <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="931" src="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Sally_036.jpg?width=1024&#038;height=931" alt="" class="wp-image-309214" srcset="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Sally_036.jpg?width=1024&amp;height=931 1024w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Sally_036.jpg?width=300&amp;height=273 300w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Sally_036.jpg?width=768&amp;height=698 768w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Sally_036.jpg?width=198&amp;height=180 198w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Sally_036.jpg?width=297&amp;height=270 297w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Sally_036.jpg?width=445&amp;height=405 445w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Sally_036.jpg?width=643&amp;height=585 643w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Sally_036.jpg?width=2000 2000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-recalc-dims="1" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Tam O&#8217;Shaughnessy and Sally Ride in Sydney, Australia, in 2004. (Photo courtesy of Tam O&#8217;Shaughnessy)</figcaption></figure>
  2025.  
  2026.  
  2027.  
  2028. <p><strong>TD: </strong>There’s so much of Sally Ride’s voice in this film. Where is that from?</p>
  2029.  
  2030.  
  2031.  
  2032. <p><strong>CC:</strong> From everywhere you can imagine. We took every single interview of her that she’s ever done in public, and we took private audio journals that she made when she came back from space, and we lined them up in one document. I think it’s 16 hours long. It became a master document that would come into play whenever we would get to a point where we would just be like &#8220;What did Sally think about that?,&#8221; &#8220;How did Sally do this?,&#8221; &#8220;Did she ever say something like this?&#8221; And so on. But, yeah, that’s from a zillion-trillion different sources.</p>
  2033.  
  2034.  
  2035.  
  2036. <p><strong>TD: </strong>What was the archival process like?</p>
  2037.  
  2038.  
  2039.  
  2040. <p><strong>CC:</strong> The film was two different stories. One is the public story of this icon that we know as Sally, and that story was so incredibly well documented, it was a problem. We brought in 5,000 reels from NASA’s archives, and just had a mountain of footage to sort through. It seemed like a blessing and a curse, because somebody had sorted through it and none of it was sound synced. So, we had to sound sync it from a different archive. </p>
  2041.  
  2042.  
  2043.  
  2044. <p><strong>TD: </strong>And the other story is?</p>
  2045.  
  2046.  
  2047.  
  2048. <p><strong>CC:</strong> The private story, the arguably more interesting one, the one that hasn’t been told, that wasn’t archived at all. We had like five pictures of Sally and Tam in total, we were telling a love story without any archive of the two people in love. We had to construct a visual language around those feelings of being in love, of having a secret, of the first time you realize that this is more than a friendship. So that was one of the great challenges, but also one of the great joys of the film, inventing that language.</p>
  2049.  
  2050.  
  2051.  
  2052. <p><strong>TD: </strong>Yes, you use some very artful re-creations by actors. What kind of film did you set out to make?</p>
  2053.  
  2054.  
  2055.  
  2056. <p><strong>CC:</strong> I think Sally’s story has been very well documented, the public side of Sally. I didn’t feel the pressure to do another “Sally accomplished a lot of things” movie. I really wanted to do a movie that explored the untold side of who she really was, and to me, that was Tam, and the fact that they had met when they were young girls and knew each other really well since childhood, helped in that kind of storytelling. It benefits from being able to be a completely chronological story, because Tam was there from Day 1, and I loved their meeting story of her walking on her little tippy toes. And there were all these amazing moments that Tam told us about in her interview that were so visual, and I just kept thinking about … like feeling a hand on your back and being like, well, that’s not what a friend does. Or being in a dark cave-like biology lab, all these things were so visual. And I was like, &#8220;Oh, we don’t have any visuals,&#8221; so we had to make our own. But yeah, I wanted to tell the untold part of who this hero is, because that was more exciting for me.</p>
  2057.  
  2058.  
  2059.  
  2060. <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/SALLY_UHD_001.jpg?width=1024&#038;height=576" alt="" class="wp-image-309215" srcset="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/SALLY_UHD_001-scaled.jpg?width=1024&amp;height=576 1024w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/SALLY_UHD_001-scaled.jpg?width=300&amp;height=169 300w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/SALLY_UHD_001-scaled.jpg?width=768&amp;height=432 768w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/SALLY_UHD_001-scaled.jpg?width=320&amp;height=180 320w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/SALLY_UHD_001-scaled.jpg?width=480&amp;height=270 480w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/SALLY_UHD_001-scaled.jpg?width=720&amp;height=405 720w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/SALLY_UHD_001-scaled.jpg?width=1040&amp;height=585 1040w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/SALLY_UHD_001-scaled.jpg?width=1280&amp;height=720 1280w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/SALLY_UHD_001-scaled.jpg?width=2000 2000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-recalc-dims="1" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">NASA astronaut Sally Ride posing with her space helmet during her time in training as a mission specialist for NASA&#8217;s STS-7 spaceflight. (NASA)</figcaption></figure>
  2061.  
  2062.  
  2063.  
  2064. <p><strong>TD: </strong>If you take away all the bells and whistles, what is the film about, to you?</p>
  2065.  
  2066.  
  2067.  
  2068. <p><strong>CC: </strong>The film is about bravery. I think the film is about people, like Tam, who are brave enough to be who they really are during a time when it’s not popular. And I think Sally is a person who holds power to account when it’s really hard at NASA, for example. There are lots of different kinds of bravery in this film. And I think right now, we all need to be very brave, and we all need to speak the truth. I think a lot of good people have gone quiet during this time and we have to understand that this is a fight and that we’re in a fight for our lives. I hope Sally and Tam will give people a little bit of inspiration and courage to continue the fight.&nbsp;</p>
  2069.  
  2070.  
  2071.  
  2072. <p><strong>TD: </strong>Were you prepared for it to be seen as a controversial film?</p>
  2073.  
  2074.  
  2075.  
  2076. <p><strong>CC: </strong>I didn’t think this was going to be very controversial. It was like a little gay love story. I didn’t think queerness would be under attack or women would be under attack in the way that they are. I mean, we lived through the first Trump presidency, but this feels different to me.&nbsp;</p>
  2077.  
  2078.  
  2079.  
  2080. <p><strong>TD: </strong>You’ve made “Mucho Mucho Amor,” about the Puerto Rican astrologer and psychic Walter Mercado,<em> </em>and “Science Fair,” which is about kids participating in a science fair, and now this. Is there a through line?</p>
  2081.  
  2082.  
  2083.  
  2084. <p class="is-td-marked"><strong>CC:</strong> There’s a weird through line. A lot of it is stories from my childhood, stories that gave me inspiration or hope as a little kid. Ideas like people just deserve to be people and the stories of the trailblazers who were born 50 or 100 years too early, and how they handled their struggles. I was an investigative journalist before, so there’s such a high-low of happy and sad stories. An astrophysicist to an astrologer is a funny step, but I think a lot of them are stories that I hope give people hope. And life is hard, the world is hard, but things have improved, and they will continue to improve. And the arc of justice spins in ways. I like stories that help give people stamina to continue.</p>
  2085. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/space-shuttle-sally/">Space Shuttle Sally</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  2086. ]]></content:encoded>
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  2089. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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  2095. <item>
  2096. <title>A Knock at the Door</title>
  2097. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/a-knock-at-the-door/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-knock-at-the-door</link>
  2098. <comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/a-knock-at-the-door/#respond</comments>
  2100. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Colin Vanderburg /  n+1 ]]></dc:creator>
  2101. <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2025 16:19:45 +0000</pubDate>
  2102. <category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
  2103. <category><![CDATA[Column]]></category>
  2104. <category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
  2105. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  2106. <category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
  2107. <category><![CDATA[andrew cuomo]]></category>
  2108. <category><![CDATA[brad lander]]></category>
  2109. <category><![CDATA[mayor]]></category>
  2110. <category><![CDATA[new york city]]></category>
  2111. <category><![CDATA[zohran mamdani]]></category>
  2112. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309201</guid>
  2113.  
  2114. <description><![CDATA[<p>The campaign of Zohran Mamdani has brought a vision of New York — affordable, equal, communal, just — to the world.</p>
  2115. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/a-knock-at-the-door/">A Knock at the Door</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  2116. ]]></description>
  2117. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  2118. <p><strong>“Hello.”</strong> The voice I heard when I picked up the phone on Election Day was low, leaden and remote, as if spoken from a crypt. “This is Andrew Cuomo.” It was a recorded message urging me to vote. Even as his speech quickened — the city must “move <em>forward</em>,” he said, with rising emphasis — he sounded less inspired than irritated, like a father chiding a teenager for not putting gas in the family car. “Thank you,” it ended, with a click. But he didn’t seem thankful at all. At the ragged end of the primary campaign, this was Cuomo: contentless, dour, hectoring, dull.</p>
  2119.  
  2120.  
  2121.  
  2122. <p>The first widely circulated video from the Zohran Mamdani campaign, posted just days after the 2024 presidential election, was utterly different. Mamdani, then a New York state assemblyman little known outside his own district, walked around two neighborhoods in the Bronx and Queens where many working-class people had either voted for Trump or not voted at all. In a series of street interviews, Mamdani asks them — without presumption or judgment — why. High prices, several say; unaffordable rents; wars in Palestine and Ukraine. Harris had no solution to these problems. “All they do is shame you,” one man says, of the Democrats. Already, Mamdani’s easy rapport with voters is evident; near the end of the three-minute video, he describes his platform to another man and tells him he’s running for mayor. “I’m going to vote for you,” the man responds. “Your energy is &#8230;” he trails off, smiling and pointing skyward. “My energy is getting up to inflation,” Mamdani laughs. </p>
  2123.  
  2124.  
  2125.  
  2126. <p>This was Mamdani: fun, earnest, engaged, listening.</p>
  2127.  
  2128.  
  2129.  
  2130. <p>We learned from an old New Yorker profile of his mother, the director Mira Nair, that one of Mamdani’s childhood nicknames was Nonstop Mamdani. This man did not stop. Far beyond the usual campaign circuit of donor dinners and industry glad-handing — and in contrast to Cuomo, who seemed to appear in public only when he was illegally parking his Dodge Charger in Midtown — Mamdani went everywhere. Parks, subway trains, grocery stores, barbershops, halal carts. He met everyone: Chinese elders in Flushing, West African taxi drivers in Parkchester, Dominican shop owners in Washington Heights. Then, of course, there was the man himself: warm and natural, impossible to dislike, a gifted talker equally at ease on-script or off-the-cuff, and with what a friend of mine called a “generational smile.” Further aided by bright, sign paint-style graphics and a near-constant output of ingenious online videos — some serious, others endearingly silly — Mamdani went from near-anonymity to total saturation in just eight months.<sup data-fn="39c6835e-8955-4b10-ac41-74a6888d19cd" class="fn"><a id="39c6835e-8955-4b10-ac41-74a6888d19cd-link" href="#39c6835e-8955-4b10-ac41-74a6888d19cd" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">1</a></sup></p>
  2131.  
  2132.  
  2133.  
  2134. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Over 50,000 Mamdani volunteers knocked on more than 1.5 million doors across the city.</p></blockquote></figure>
  2135.  
  2136.  
  2137.  
  2138. <p><em>They have the money,</em> we on the left like to say of our enemies, <em>but we have the people</em>. On the money, even the Mamdani campaign’s millions in public matching funds were paltry next to the bottomless war chests supplied by Cuomo’s longtime masters in real estate and finance, much of the moolah from Michael Bloomberg alone. As for the people, no comparison could be made. By the Mamdani team’s numbers, over 50,000 Mamdani volunteers knocked on more than 1.5 million doors across the city — and passed out flyers, made phone calls, put up posters and talked about the campaign to their friends, family and neighbors. If you’re a registered Democrat in New York, chances are good you spoke to a Mamdani volunteer. If you’ve walked down a street in the city in the past six months, you’ve seen the posters: sunbeam yellow, with the dimpled Mamdani gazing out cheerfully toward the future. Like most establishment Democrats, Cuomo had no grassroots ground game worth the name, instead relying on party hacks and paid canvassers to get his non-message out. Of the stream of charming Mamdani videos that appeared in the race’s last days, a favorite of mine showed a paid Cuomo canvasser — big blue T-shirt and all — giddily hugging and doing a little dance with Mamdani on the sidewalk.</p>
  2139.  
  2140.  
  2141.  
  2142. <p>In my seven years of knocking doors for candidates on the left, Mamdani’s platform was far and away the easiest to pitch. Stop raising my rent? Make my bus run on time? Build housing I can afford? Sign me up. The demands were simple and durable, and spoke to New York’s unremitting cost-of-living crisis not with small-bore reforms or wonky technicalities, but with invention and ambition. The political and fiscal barriers to achieving them — which are high — got Mamdani predictably painted as either a leftist naïf or a mere salesman, peddling proposals he could never deliver on. Never mind that much of the platform has its blueprint in the recent past: as an assemblyman, Mamdani himself won a pilot program for free buses in all five boroughs in 2023; a rent freeze for rent-stabilized tenants was in place as recently as 2017; and the city has offered free universal preschool for almost a decade.<sup data-fn="ddaed0c4-3198-4c70-bdea-cb1022ab6d08" class="fn"><a id="ddaed0c4-3198-4c70-bdea-cb1022ab6d08-link" href="#ddaed0c4-3198-4c70-bdea-cb1022ab6d08" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">2</a></sup> Further back, the CUNY system once offered free tuition to tens of thousands of working-class students, until that and other municipal services were gutted under the city’s 1975 fiscal compact with its big bank lenders. Fifty years on, as Ross Barkan has noted, that crisis still divides the city’s political imagination between a vision of a polity abounding in “free or cheap public goods” and one of neoliberal austerity.</p>
  2143.  
  2144.  
  2145.  
  2146. <p>The campaign’s climax, for me, came with Mamdani’s Whitmanic walk down the length of Manhattan on the Friday night before Election Day. Starting from Inwood at the top of the island, he walked for hours and miles, pausing for chats and photos with supporters along the way, gathering a jubilant crowd behind him. All the while, as he would recall in his victory speech days later,</p>
  2147.  
  2148.  
  2149.  
  2150. <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  2151. <p>New York worked. Garbage trucks weaved through empty streets. Fishmongers carried in tomorrow’s wares. And when we finally arrived at the Battery at 2:20 in the morning, the workers who run the Staten Island Ferry were on the job, too. Just as they are every hour of the day, every day of the week.</p>
  2152. </blockquote>
  2153.  
  2154.  
  2155.  
  2156. <p>Rhetorically, this was among the less-remarked gifts of this campaign: to see and speak to working people in both the bonds of universality and with the dignity of specificity. But Mamdani wasn’t just making a gesture; he was choosing a side. While he vowed in the same speech to be “a mayor for every New Yorker,” his campaign has advocated, he said, “with no apology,” on behalf of a particular New York, a city where hours and commutes are long, paychecks stretched and housing precarious. Such commitment shouldn’t count as rare or brave in urban politics, but it does. As a candidate, Mamdani addresses city life with neither the doomsday paranoia of the MAGA right nor the vacuous optimism of so much mainstream Democratic rhetoric.</p>
  2157.  
  2158.  
  2159.  
  2160. <p>And Gaza. What does it mean that, in 2025, a mere call for equal rights for all Israeli citizens stirs more outrage than a plan for publicly owned grocery stores? Against two national parties in thrall to a genocidal regime and reflexively hostile to the very notion of Palestinian humanity, Mamdani spoke with the same force and clarity in defense of Gaza’s people as he did in support of working New Yorkers. Mamdani was always going to be labeled an antisemite by politicians and operators running cover for Zionist slaughter; his actual answers to all the rhetorical traps and ludicrous insinuations, the badgering questions about Israel and intifada, were almost irrelevant. Yet he did answer them, with conviction and without apology. Witness the interview with Stephen Colbert, where Mamdani meets the late night host’s anxious, circuitous interrogation about Jewish “safety” with plainspoken poise. The antisemitism panic has come so unmoored from empirical reality that any contact with that reality is a bracing risk.</p>
  2161.  
  2162.  
  2163.  
  2164. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Mamdani wasn’t just making a gesture; he was choosing a side.</p></blockquote></figure>
  2165.  
  2166.  
  2167.  
  2168. <p>Mamdani surpassed election-night expectations almost everywhere. The map of his first-round votes shows a colorful sprawl reaching deep into southern Brooklyn, eastern Queens, northern Staten Island, and most of Manhattan. To see, say, crowds of working-class Bangladeshi New Yorkers in Kensington lining up to take a photo with a 33-year-old socialist mayoral candidate, to see posters promoting free childcare in Chinese, Spanish, Urdu or Arabic, is to witness a turning point in U.S. politics. And the binding thread of the Mamdani coalition is youth. White, Black, Latino and Asian, in every borough, people under 40 overwhelmingly backed Mamdani in the first round, turning out to vote in unprecedented numbers — a feat that has eluded the post-Obama Democratic gerontocracy. Still, as we savor victory, we should recognize shortcomings. In New York, the democratic-socialist project has yet to make many inroads among older Black voters, public housing residents and outer-borough homeowners.<sup data-fn="327cc7e0-b631-4296-8583-1e8a1fb9d87a" class="fn"><a id="327cc7e0-b631-4296-8583-1e8a1fb9d87a-link" href="#327cc7e0-b631-4296-8583-1e8a1fb9d87a" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">3</a></sup> A base among young and college-educated voters, however impressively expanded in this race, remains a fragile foundation for lasting power.</p>
  2169.  
  2170.  
  2171.  
  2172. <p>Starting in March, I helped lead a canvass every Sunday in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a dizzily gentrifying neighborhood that would ultimately break for Mamdani over Cuomo by 57 points. In the early spring chill, the canvasses started small: five, six, seven of us. Then, as the weather warmed and Mamdani’s poll numbers kept climbing, they got big: 15, 20 of us turned out, with more and more first-time canvassers. In the last weeks, they got even bigger: two dozen, 30, 40 people per shift. Other neighborhoods saw even larger crowds; the biggest canvasses drew hundreds. People who had never knocked doors for a candidate before or thought they never would again. Card-carrying members of the Democratic Socialists of America and people who had never heard of DSA. At the start of each shift, I would ask volunteers to introduce themselves and share one thing that excited them about the campaign. <em>I want a rent freeze. I’m excited for free childcare. I want cheap groceries. I support Palestine. I just want a normal person as mayor.</em> Every week a litany of possibility, a chorus of hope for a working-class city. Then we would pass out folders and flyers, assign turf lists, and get to work.</p>
  2173.  
  2174.  
  2175.  
  2176. <p>Between the volunteer fervor and the sheer escape velocity of his charisma, Mamdani has brought comparisons to Barack Obama in 2008. You can see it: a fresh, inspired candidate of color able to hang with seemingly anyone, who marks a hopeful break with both the Republican barbarism and Democratic blockage of the preceding years — under Bush then and Trump now. Past this, though, the analogy runs thin. Even as a challenger to Hilary Clinton, Obama cozied to Silicon Valley and enjoyed the backing of sections of the party establishment. But this year, the whole weight of New York’s borough-level Democratic Party machines — sleazy vestiges of the ward-heeling clientelism that once defined American city governance — aligned against Mamdani. Even Jim Clyburn, the kingmaking South Carolina congressman who helped plunge the Democratic Party into its Biden death spiral in 2024, waded in to endorse Cuomo. And the tenor of capital’s response was expressed by local supermarket baron John Catsimatidis, who threatened to close his stores and leave town rather than live under a Mamdani regime.</p>
  2177.  
  2178.  
  2179.  
  2180. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>As a model, an example, the campaign holds promise everywhere.</p></blockquote></figure>
  2181.  
  2182.  
  2183.  
  2184. <p>We rightly smile to see billionaires such as Catsimatidis — a thumb-shaped windbag who himself made two failed tries for the mayoralty — running scared of the Democratic nominee. But with the primary all but won, a longer, fiercer fight begins. The redbaiting caricatures, antisemitism slanders and Islamophobic threats will intensify. Most chilling has been the anti-immigrant vitriol. Stephen Miller points to Mamdani as an example of the peril of “unchecked migration”; Vickie Paladino, a northern Queens Republican and the scummiest member of New York’s City Council, called for Mamdani to be deported. But the more material threat will come from genteeler quarters. Whether through a Cuomo revenge run as an independent in the general election, a last-ditch Eric Adams recuperation, or some other vehicle, real estate and finance — sectors long accustomed to pliable New York mayors and governors — will revolt. An injustice to the ruling class in New York is a threat to the ruling class everywhere. “What happens in NYC,” a worried Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary, tweeted from Massachusetts last week, “is consequential for all of us.”</p>
  2185.  
  2186.  
  2187.  
  2188. <p>Of course, Summers’s <em>us</em> is not our <em>us</em>. I think of the people I met on canvasses. The older Polish woman in Greenpoint who took a thick stack of Mamdani flyers to give out to all her friends. The hijabi Indian American mother and daughter who drove in from Long Island to knock doors for Mamdani so that, the mother said, life could be as affordable for others as it was when she was growing up in the Bronx. The mobility-impaired man in Bay Ridge who said he rarely got visitors and invited me into his apartment, where he talked about his frustration with inaccessible transit and the hope Mamdani’s platform held for him.</p>
  2189.  
  2190.  
  2191.  
  2192. <p>The victory is extraordinary, and in some aspects — Cuomo’s scandals, Mamdani’s charm, the late cross-endorsement boost from third-place finisher Brad Lander — unrepeatable outside New York politics. But as a model, an example, the campaign holds promise everywhere. To risk some Gotham grandiosity: the world has always come to New York. This campaign has brought a vision of New York, of the city — affordable, equal, communal, just — to the world. And it starts with a knock at the door.</p>
  2193.  
  2194.  
  2195. <ol class="wp-block-footnotes"><li id="39c6835e-8955-4b10-ac41-74a6888d19cd">The momentum was less sudden or spontaneous than it might appear. Before seeking office, Mamdani spent several years in the electoral trenches as a member of the NYC Democratic Socialists of America, which since its rebirth in 2016 has won campaigns at most levels of city and state government, thanks to a deep and committed base of member-volunteers and to its crack research, strategy, and comms teams (almost all unpaid). As a local political force, NYC-DSA can only be compared to the city’s Socialist Party of a century or more ago — but in the geographic and social reach of its victories and candidates, NYC-DSA has already surpassed its precursor. <a href="#39c6835e-8955-4b10-ac41-74a6888d19cd-link" aria-label="Jump to footnote reference 1" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.1.0/72x72/21a9.png" alt="↩" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" />︎</a></li><li id="ddaed0c4-3198-4c70-bdea-cb1022ab6d08">The latter two of these were accomplished under Bill de Blasio, a gawky, little-loved Park Slope liberal whose two terms in office have come to look in retrospect like a miracle of principle and competence after four years of Eric Adams’s corrupt clown show. <a href="#ddaed0c4-3198-4c70-bdea-cb1022ab6d08-link" aria-label="Jump to footnote reference 2" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.1.0/72x72/21a9.png" alt="↩" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" />︎</a></li><li id="327cc7e0-b631-4296-8583-1e8a1fb9d87a">Mamdani nevertheless carried a far greater part of the Black vote than critics — good-faith or otherwise — would have predicted. “There were three Black people who ran” in the mayor’s race, the former Obama diplomat Patrick Gaspard noted to the Times. “One is the City Council speaker, one is a former assemblyperson who worked for Obama and has his own profile, and a sitting senator in an important district in Brooklyn.” Yet “Zohran got more Black votes than all of the Black candidates combined.” <a href="#327cc7e0-b631-4296-8583-1e8a1fb9d87a-link" aria-label="Jump to footnote reference 3" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.1.0/72x72/21a9.png" alt="↩" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" />︎</a></li></ol>
  2196.  
  2197.  
  2198. <p></p>
  2199. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/a-knock-at-the-door/">A Knock at the Door</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  2200. ]]></content:encoded>
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  2210. <title>12 Days That Brought the War Home to Israelis</title>
  2211. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/12-days-that-brought-the-war-home-to-israelis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=12-days-that-brought-the-war-home-to-israelis</link>
  2212. <comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/12-days-that-brought-the-war-home-to-israelis/#respond</comments>
  2214. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Oren Ziv /  +972 Magazine ]]></dc:creator>
  2215. <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2025 16:05:53 +0000</pubDate>
  2216. <category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
  2217. <category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
  2218. <category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
  2219. <category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
  2220. <category><![CDATA[Wounds of War]]></category>
  2221. <category><![CDATA[benjamin netanyahu]]></category>
  2222. <category><![CDATA[ceasefire]]></category>
  2223. <category><![CDATA[iran]]></category>
  2224. <category><![CDATA[israel]]></category>
  2225. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309191</guid>
  2226.  
  2227. <description><![CDATA[<p>Iran’s missiles caused many Israelis to feel existential fear for the first time. Even if the ceasefire holds, a shattered immunity lingers.</p>
  2228. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/12-days-that-brought-the-war-home-to-israelis/">12 Days That Brought the War Home to Israelis</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  2229. ]]></description>
  2230. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  2231. <p><strong>Over the past 12 days</strong>, I have documented the daily scenes of Iranian missile strikes in Israel, which have occurred mostly at night. To some I arrived just minutes after impact, while the fires were still burning and the wounded were being pulled from the rubble.&nbsp;</p>
  2232.  
  2233.  
  2234.  
  2235. <p>Arriving in the dark is always deceptive — you don’t see much besides the ambulances and fire trucks. Gradually, with the first light of day, the true scale of the disaster site is revealed: how many homes, vehicles and windows were damaged, over what radius and whether people are still buried under the rubble. Hours after the impact, residents return to try to salvage some of their belongings while neighbors and curious onlookers arrive to inspect the damage.</p>
  2236.  
  2237.  
  2238.  
  2239. <p>At the deadly scene in Bat Yam where <a href="https://www.ynetnews.com/article/rjz8k3w4ee" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">nine people were killed</a>, rescue teams worked for days to clear the debris and retrieve all the bodies. The collapsed buildings, gaping crater, ash-covered trees and cars, and people fleeing in pajamas with their children and belongings in their arms eerily resemble the images Israelis have seen coming out of Gaza over the past two years — despite <a href="https://www.972mag.com/israeli-media-pact-of-silence-gaza/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">the media’s self-censorship</a>.</p>
  2240.  
  2241.  
  2242.  
  2243. <p>Unlike the scenes of past shooting attacks or rocket strikes across Israel, where the slogan “Death to Arabs” is often ubiquitous, I haven’t encountered any calls for revenge or chants of “Death to Iranians.” Perhaps it’s the shock, perhaps it’s Israel’s role as initiator of the war, or perhaps it’s a deeper reckoning with the limits of Israeli power. This is, after all, Israel’s first war against a sovereign state since&nbsp;<a href="https://www.972mag.com/topic/yom-kippur-war/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">1973</a>, and the first it initiated against a state since&nbsp;<a href="https://www.972mag.com/topic/1967-war/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">1967</a>.&nbsp;</p>
  2244.  
  2245.  
  2246.  
  2247. <p>A fragile ceasefire has taken hold since the morning of June 24 — though not before an Iranian missile struck a residential building in the southern Israeli city of Be’er Sheva, killing four people. Whether or not the ceasefire holds, Israel&#8217;s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can already take credit for one major achievement: shattering <a href="https://www.972mag.com/israels-greatest-threat-isnt-iran-or-hamas-but-its-own-hubris/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Israelis’ sense of immunity</a>. </p>
  2248.  
  2249.  
  2250.  
  2251. <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A1810.jpeg?width=1024&#038;height=683" alt="" class="wp-image-309195" srcset="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A1810.jpeg?width=1024&amp;height=683 1024w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A1810.jpeg?width=300&amp;height=200 300w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A1810.jpeg?width=768&amp;height=512 768w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A1810.jpeg?width=270&amp;height=180 270w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A1810.jpeg?width=405&amp;height=270 405w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A1810.jpeg?width=607&amp;height=405 607w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A1810.jpeg?width=877&amp;height=585 877w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A1810.jpeg?width=2048 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-recalc-dims="1" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Rescue crews evacuate a woman from her home in North Tel Aviv after an Iranian missile hit her neighborhood on June 22, 2025. (Oren Ziv)</figcaption></figure>
  2252.  
  2253.  
  2254.  
  2255. <p>Indeed, this war — which has taken the lives of at least 28 people in Israel — has made tens if not hundreds of thousands of Israelis, especially in Tel Aviv and its surrounding suburbs, genuinely fearful for their lives. For some of them, it’s the very first time.&nbsp;</p>
  2256.  
  2257.  
  2258.  
  2259. <p>Fear has always accompanied life in Israel — whether from shootings and stabbings, intifadas or “rounds” of fighting with Hamas and Hezbollah. But this time feels different. It’s not just existential anxiety; it’s an immediate, personal fear, especially in the country’s center. People feel death close by, in the sound of missiles exploding and the extent of the devastation that follows strikes that weren’t intercepted.</p>
  2260.  
  2261.  
  2262.  
  2263. <p>What could previously be repressed or managed through some semblance of routine now requires confronting head-on. The killing, destruction of homes and halting of daily life all point to one conclusion: Israel’s policies are making the country unlivable for its own population. </p>
  2264.  
  2265.  
  2266.  
  2267. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Visceral fear</h3>
  2268.  
  2269.  
  2270.  
  2271. <p>Beyond the physical damage, the psychological toll is also crushing. Over the past two years, Israelis have grown accustomed to sirens and bomb shelters. Yet when the Houthis fired missiles and drones at Israel and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.newarab.com/news/houthis-now-issue-alerts-attacks-tel-aviv-airport" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">issued evacuation notices</a>&nbsp;mimicking those of the Israeli army in Gaza, many Israelis mocked them. The rockets of Hamas and Hezbollah, meanwhile, have certainly caused damage in Israel’s south and north, respectively, but they are easier for the army’s missile defense systems to intercept.&nbsp;</p>
  2272.  
  2273.  
  2274.  
  2275. <p>Iran’s missiles are&nbsp;<a href="https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-392-incoming-from-out-of" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">a different beast</a>, and the sober public mood reflects this. The streets of central Tel Aviv have been virtually deserted, in scenes reminiscent of the COVID-19 era — only without the safety of being out in the open air. And while most Jewish-Israelis have bomb shelters in their apartment blocks or access to nearby public shelters (Palestinian citizens, meanwhile, have been left&nbsp;<a href="https://www.972mag.com/tamra-khatib-palestinians-israel-neglect-iran-missiles/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">chronically unprotected</a>), many have instead headed to underground parking lots, knowing that anything above ground could be obliterated by a direct hit.</p>
  2276.  
  2277.  
  2278.  
  2279. <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A3763.jpeg?width=1024&#038;height=683" alt="" class="wp-image-309194" srcset="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A3763.jpeg?width=1024&amp;height=683 1024w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A3763.jpeg?width=300&amp;height=200 300w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A3763.jpeg?width=768&amp;height=512 768w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A3763.jpeg?width=270&amp;height=180 270w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A3763.jpeg?width=405&amp;height=270 405w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A3763.jpeg?width=607&amp;height=405 607w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A3763.jpeg?width=877&amp;height=585 877w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A3763.jpeg?width=2048 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-recalc-dims="1" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Israelis erect tents in the parking lot of the Dizengoff Center shopping mall on June 23, 2025. (Oren Ziv)</figcaption></figure>
  2280.  
  2281.  
  2282.  
  2283. <p>By the middle of last week, the humid parking lot of the Dizengoff Center shopping mall was filling up with tents, mattresses, beach chairs and electric fans. A similar scene took shape in the 16,000-capacity public shelter beneath the central bus station in south Tel Aviv, which was unlocked for the first time since the Gulf War of 1990-1991.</p>
  2284.  
  2285.  
  2286.  
  2287. <p>“I came here because the Iranian missiles are much bigger, louder, scarier and more destructive than those of Hezbollah and the Houthis,” 30-year-old Mali, who was sheltering with her cat on level 4 of the Dizengoff Center, told +972 Magazine. “I decided it’s better to be safe and stay here.”</p>
  2288.  
  2289.  
  2290.  
  2291. <p>Pnina, 46, said she was sheltering in the Dizengoff Center parking lot because the shelter in her building isn’t safe. “Seeing the damage in other places pushed us to come here,” she explained. “Volunteers brought us tents. I go home to work and study during the day, but I sleep here every night.”</p>
  2292.  
  2293.  
  2294.  
  2295. <p>The visceral fear that Israelis are experiencing isn’t happening in a vacuum. In the wake of the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023 — which terrorized thousands of residents of Israel’s south — Israel has pursued a policy of making life hell for anyone deemed an enemy: through the destruction of Gaza, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and airstrikes on Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and now Iran. </p>
  2296.  
  2297.  
  2298.  
  2299. <p>The “Gaza doctrine” has been copy-pasted to Iran, complete with bizarre statements from the IDF spokesperson about “<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-issues-another-evacuation-warning-for-parts-of-tehran/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">evacuating</a>” entire neighborhoods in Tehran, along with justifications for bombing a TV station for “<a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-19/ty-article-opinion/.premium/propaganda-tv-channels-arent-legitimate-targets-for-bombing-including-israeli-ones/00000197-8727-d447-a5bf-bfb72e010000" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">incitement to genocide</a>” and a university for being “<a href="https://13tv.co.il/item/news/politics/security/warday621-904630700/?pid=62&amp;refc=902992443" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards</a>.” And the collateral damage of this drive for “total victory” has been to make life for ordinary Israelis unbearable. </p>
  2300.  
  2301.  
  2302.  
  2303. <p>As in many past cases, those who see the situation most clearly are the ones who have lost everything, who can see the larger disaster through their own personal tragedy. Attorney Raja Khatib, who lost his wife, two daughters and sister-in-law in a <a href="https://www.972mag.com/tamra-khatib-palestinians-israel-neglect-iran-missiles/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">direct missile hit</a> on his home in the northern city of Tamra, told +972 after their funeral: “We finish [fighting] in Gaza and then start in Lebanon; finish in Lebanon and start in Syria; finish in Syria and start in Iran; finish in Iran and start a third or fourth Lebanon War — we don’t even remember what these wars are for anymore.”</p>
  2304.  
  2305.  
  2306.  
  2307. <figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/448A7317-scaled-1.jpg?width=1024&#038;height=683" alt="" class="wp-image-309193" srcset="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/448A7317-scaled-1.jpg?width=1024&amp;height=683 1024w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/448A7317-scaled-1.jpg?width=300&amp;height=200 300w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/448A7317-scaled-1.jpg?width=768&amp;height=512 768w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/448A7317-scaled-1.jpg?width=270&amp;height=180 270w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/448A7317-scaled-1.jpg?width=405&amp;height=270 405w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/448A7317-scaled-1.jpg?width=607&amp;height=405 607w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/448A7317-scaled-1.jpg?width=877&amp;height=585 877w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/448A7317-scaled-1.jpg?width=2000 2000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-recalc-dims="1" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Members of the Khatib family, killed in an Iranian missile attack, are mourned in the Arab city of Tamra, northern Israel, on June 17, 2025. (Oren Ziv)</figcaption></figure>
  2308.  
  2309.  
  2310.  
  2311. <p>Only two days before the disaster, Khatib and his family had returned from a vacation in Italy. “I have a home there on Lake Garda,” he explained. “I see how people live — waking up in the morning with hope, with love for others, thinking how to live well, earn a decent living, plan their vacations. And here, what are we dealing with? Wars and victims. Take it from me: let there be no more victims. Stop this cursed war, by any other means — sit at the table, prevent more casualties.”</p>
  2312.  
  2313.  
  2314.  
  2315. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Freedoms restricted</h3>
  2316.  
  2317.  
  2318.  
  2319. <p>After the Oct. 7 attacks, most of those who left Israel didn’t flee the Hamas attack itself, but the reality created by Israel’s response: a war of revenge, the abandonment of the hostages, and the collapse of the social contract between the government and its citizens. The Israeli government immediately launched an <a href="https://www.972mag.com/topic/freedom-of-expression/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">unprecedented crackdown</a> on the freedom of expression of those opposing the war, especially targeting Palestinian citizens of Israel. Now, the entire public is experiencing some of that suppression.</p>
  2320.  
  2321.  
  2322.  
  2323. <p>The clearest manifestation of this is the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/ban-on-israelis-flying-out-raises-legal-red-flags-with-many-needing-to-leave/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">ban on leaving the country by air</a>&nbsp;and the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.israelhayom.co.il/travel/israelisabroad/article/18194561" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">extreme warnings</a>&nbsp;about the danger of crossing by land into Jordan or Egypt, effectively turning Israel into a ghetto. Another manifestation has been the attack on press freedom in the form of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/rjje5xqxex" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">official directives</a>&nbsp;by the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.972mag.com/israeli-military-censor-media-2024/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Israeli military censor</a>&nbsp;not to publish the locations of missile strikes, leading to residents and relatives having to play guessing games amid a flood of rumors on social media.</p>
  2324.  
  2325.  
  2326.  
  2327. <p>At the same time, incitement against the media has intensified. Right wingers now chase and harass photographers and camera crews at the scene of missile strikes. At the impact site in Be’er Sheva on June 24, several residents gathered around a Channel 13 reporter, accusing him of working for Al Jazeera — a refrain that has become a common slur for any media outlet that isn’t the far-right Channel 14, particularly after Israel&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68961753" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">banned</a>&nbsp;the Qatari network. “You serve the enemy,” a nearby business owner told me as I took photos.</p>
  2328.  
  2329.  
  2330.  
  2331. <p>Last Saturday night, police raided a Haifa hotel used by several television networks and confiscated the cameras of three Arab journalists working for foreign outlets. The officers checked their press credentials and summoned them for questioning. According to a witness, the journalists pointed out that Al Jazeera was still broadcasting live despite the seizure, but police responded, “Say that during the investigation.” The journalists’ equipment has not yet been returned.</p>
  2332.  
  2333.  
  2334.  
  2335. <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A2219.jpeg?width=1024&#038;height=683" alt="" class="wp-image-309196" srcset="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A2219.jpeg?width=1024&amp;height=683 1024w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A2219.jpeg?width=300&amp;height=200 300w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A2219.jpeg?width=768&amp;height=512 768w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A2219.jpeg?width=270&amp;height=180 270w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A2219.jpeg?width=405&amp;height=270 405w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A2219.jpeg?width=607&amp;height=405 607w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A2219.jpeg?width=877&amp;height=585 877w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2G5A2219.jpeg?width=2048 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-recalc-dims="1" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A civilian security squad led by far-right rapper Yoav Eliassi, known by his stage name “The Shadow,” detains a group of foreign journalists at a missile impact site in Tel Aviv on June 22, 2025. (Oren Ziv)</figcaption></figure>
  2336.  
  2337.  
  2338.  
  2339. <p>A day earlier, the military censor issued familiar guidelines. But in its English version, the government press office added a controversial clause requiring foreign journalists to seek prior approval from the censor for what they publish — a demand that goes beyond the censor’s legal authority. </p>
  2340.  
  2341.  
  2342.  
  2343. <p>Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi defended the move, stating that national security outweighs press freedom. However, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara reportedly objected and demanded explanations from the ministers involved. Officials have privately claimed no major policy change, but acknowledged inconsistent enforcement and advised journalists to seek prior approval as a precaution.</p>
  2344.  
  2345.  
  2346.  
  2347. <p>Regardless of legal debates, it’s clear that incitement on the ground is having an effect on freedom of the press. “People think we’re Al Jazeera,” said one Arab journalist, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, who broadcasts in Arabic for an international network. “They say, ‘We’ll behead you.’” He explained that he even considered wearing a sign reading “I’m not Al Jazeera” to avoid harassment. </p>
  2348.  
  2349.  
  2350.  
  2351. <p>“People feel they have a minister and the police behind them, and a weak state they must defend,” he continued. As a result, he added, journalists now try to keep their time reporting in the field as brief as possible.</p>
  2352.  
  2353.  
  2354.  
  2355. <p>After striking Iran, the Israeli government banned all protests, with police systematically crushing even the smallest demonstration over the past week and a half. The long-running <a href="https://www.972mag.com/israeli-hostage-families-ceasefire-netanyahu/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">demonstrations for a hostage deal</a> have been entirely abandoned, with the ban serving to remove the issue from public consciousness. </p>
  2356.  
  2357.  
  2358.  
  2359. <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/448A6093-scaled-1.jpg?width=1024&#038;height=683" alt="" class="wp-image-309197" srcset="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/448A6093-scaled-1.jpg?width=1024&amp;height=683 1024w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/448A6093-scaled-1.jpg?width=300&amp;height=200 300w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/448A6093-scaled-1.jpg?width=768&amp;height=512 768w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/448A6093-scaled-1.jpg?width=270&amp;height=180 270w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/448A6093-scaled-1.jpg?width=405&amp;height=270 405w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/448A6093-scaled-1.jpg?width=607&amp;height=405 607w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/448A6093-scaled-1.jpg?width=877&amp;height=585 877w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/448A6093-scaled-1.jpg?width=2000 2000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-recalc-dims="1" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The Israeli police dispersed a small vigil in Tel Aviv against the war with Iran, detaining four activists before the protest even started on June, 16, 2025. (Oren Ziv)</figcaption></figure>
  2360.  
  2361.  
  2362.  
  2363. <p>Last Sunday, around 20 protesters gathered silently with antiwar signs in Tel Aviv’s Habima Square, spacing themselves far apart to avoid violating the ban on public gatherings. Within a minute, a police unit — equal in number to the protesters — arrived, tore up the signs and made violent arrests. </p>
  2364.  
  2365.  
  2366.  
  2367. <p>The next day in Haifa, <a href="https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2025-06-16/ty-article/00000197-79c6-d717-a1df-ffd618640000" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">police detained</a> several protesters, <a href="https://x.com/JoshBreiner/status/1934646173844852854" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">claiming</a> that their antiwar T-shirts were illegal. Later, police <a href="https://x.com/AmirHaskel/status/1935270629630263311" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">detained</a> two people overnight, including the anti-Netanyahu activist Amir Haskel, who stood on a sidewalk in Tel Aviv holding a sign that read, “53 hostages in Gaza — their time is running out.” The Human Rights Defenders Fund has provided legal support to 12 protesters who were arrested since Israel first struck Iran.</p>
  2368.  
  2369.  
  2370.  
  2371. <p>After 12 days in which many Israelis have feared for their lives, the population is exhausted. People are relieved that the ceasefire, should it hold, will allow them to return to their regular routine — and will mark the end of a war that many supported but also feared Netanyahu would drag out for months or longer, as in Gaza. Some with less faith in the ceasefire are not returning home just yet, preferring to stay outside of the country’s center or close to shelters.&nbsp;</p>
  2372.  
  2373.  
  2374.  
  2375. <p>Even as Netanyahu&nbsp;<a href="https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/06/24/netanyahu-announces-ceasefire-with-iran-we-removed-an-existential-threat/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">declares</a>&nbsp;that Israel has “removed an existential threat” with its attacks in Iran, the “routine” that Israelis are returning to is still one of perpetual war, as their army continues to wreak catastrophe in Gaza. The end of Iran’s missiles may restore Israelis’ feeling of safety, but the sense of immunity they felt two weeks ago will take much longer to return.</p>
  2376. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/12-days-that-brought-the-war-home-to-israelis/">12 Days That Brought the War Home to Israelis</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  2377. ]]></content:encoded>
  2379. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/12-days-that-brought-the-war-home-to-israelis/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  2380. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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  2386. <item>
  2387. <title>The Movement Against Overtourism Is Sweeping Southern Europe</title>
  2388. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-movement-against-overtourism-is-sweeping-southern-europe/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-movement-against-overtourism-is-sweeping-southern-europe</link>
  2389. <comments>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-movement-against-overtourism-is-sweeping-southern-europe/#respond</comments>
  2391. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Olivia Haber Greenwood /  Waging Nonviolence ]]></dc:creator>
  2392. <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2025 15:51:21 +0000</pubDate>
  2393. <category><![CDATA[Activism]]></category>
  2394. <category><![CDATA[Business & Economy]]></category>
  2395. <category><![CDATA[Economic Justice]]></category>
  2396. <category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
  2397. <category><![CDATA[Europe]]></category>
  2398. <category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
  2399. <category><![CDATA[airbnb]]></category>
  2400. <category><![CDATA[housing crisis]]></category>
  2401. <category><![CDATA[overtourism]]></category>
  2402. <category><![CDATA[portugal]]></category>
  2403. <category><![CDATA[spain]]></category>
  2404. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309186</guid>
  2405.  
  2406. <description><![CDATA[<p>A growing coalition in Portugal, Italy and Spain challenges the many harmful effects of mass tourism — and calling for a new economic model.</p>
  2407. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-movement-against-overtourism-is-sweeping-southern-europe/">The Movement Against Overtourism Is Sweeping Southern Europe</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  2408. ]]></description>
  2409. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  2410. <p><strong>On Sunday</strong>, residents gathered in Barcelona under the hot midday sun armed with water guns, smoke bombs and an ardent desire to take back their city from the tourist hordes descending on it this summer. They marched through the luxury shopping district of Passeig de Gràcia to the shadow of Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia cathedral in protest of Barcelona’s “touristification”: the restructuring of urban life in service of the tourism industry. </p>
  2411.  
  2412.  
  2413.  
  2414. <p>Their slogan “Tourism robs us of our food, shelter and future. Tourist degrowth, now!” gets at the heart of the labor, housing and environmental crisis brewing in one of Europe’s most visited cities. The protest was coordinated via the Southern Europe Against Touristification Network, or SET, with others that took place the same day in a dozen cities in Portugal, Spain and Italy. </p>
  2415.  
  2416.  
  2417.  
  2418. <p>The Barcelona march, organized by the Assembly of Neighborhoods for Tourist Degrowth, or ABDT, included Las Kellys (a hotel cleaners worker collective), public transit workers, Gaudí’s Park Güell residents and staff and Zeroport (a coalition opposing airport expansion), among others. Protesters held signs reading “Barcelona is not for sale” and chanted slogans like “wherever you look, they’re all guiris.” Guiris<em> </em>are foreign tourists, usually from Northern Europe or the U.K.</p>
  2419.  
  2420.  
  2421. <span id="block_5b909894ce725e9d7837e80793127b2f" class="td-article-related-box-block block md:inline md:float-right w-[350px] max-w-full border-4 border-black p-6 md:ml-5 !my-12 !md:my-6">
  2422. <span class="text-red block font-proxima-nova absolute -translate-y-11 pt-2 pb-1.5 px-3 bg-white font-semibold uppercase tracking-widest text-lg leading-none">Related</span>
  2423. <span class="flex flex-col gap-2 font-semibold font-news-gothic-std">
  2424. <span class="block">
  2425. <span class="block">
  2426. <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/eat-pray-pollute/" class="!border-0">
  2427. Eat, Pray, Pollute </a>
  2428. </span>
  2429. <span class="block mt-2">
  2430. <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/eat-pray-pollute/"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="405" height="270" src="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/AP24176234456398-scaled.jpg?width=405&amp;height=270" class="attachment-16:9-medium size-16:9-medium wp-post-image" alt="" srcset="https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/AP24176234456398-scaled.jpg?width=2560 2560w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/AP24176234456398-scaled.jpg?width=300&amp;height=200 300w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/AP24176234456398-scaled.jpg?width=1024&amp;height=683 1024w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/AP24176234456398-scaled.jpg?width=768&amp;height=512 768w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/AP24176234456398-scaled.jpg?width=270&amp;height=180 270w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/AP24176234456398-scaled.jpg?width=405&amp;height=270 405w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/AP24176234456398-scaled.jpg?width=607&amp;height=405 607w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/AP24176234456398-scaled.jpg?width=877&amp;height=585 877w, https://truthdig.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/AP24176234456398-scaled.jpg?width=2000 2000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 405px) 100vw, 405px" /></a>
  2431. </span>
  2432. </span>
  2433. </span>
  2434. </span>
  2435.  
  2436.  
  2437.  
  2438. <p>Kicking off the march, ABDT spokesperson Daniel Pardo set out a carton of water guns — a nod to the images from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/10/world/europe/barcelona-tourism-squirt-guns.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">last summer’s protest</a>&nbsp;seen round the world of demonstrators dousing tourists. This year, protesters used them once again on tourists who got within range of the march, including an American in a MAGA hat. But mostly the demonstrators sprayed each other to keep cool.&nbsp;</p>
  2439.  
  2440.  
  2441.  
  2442. <p>Despite these toys, the mood on Sunday was defiant. Protesters stopped at key sites, spraying the facades with water guns, setting off smoke bombs and cordoning them off with caution tape. There was a <a href="https://x.com/alfcongostrina/status/1934208523220721991" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">confrontation</a> at the Generator hostel when staff attempted to remove the tape with scissors. The march was stalled by a police cordon as it approached Sagrada Família, but after negotiations marchers were allowed to conclude a block from the cathedral.</p>
  2443.  
  2444.  
  2445.  
  2446. <p>The anti-tourism movement has grown over the past decade, especially in cities in Southern Europe, which Pardo described as “the rest of the world’s vacation playground.” Barcelona received <a href="https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/turisme/sites/default/files/2025-06/2024_C%C3%A0psula%201%20IAOTB.pdf" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">26.1 million tourists in 2024</a>, more than 15 times its population of 1.7 million. While it may appear only natural that millions would be drawn to the region’s crystal blue coves, Pardo argues that the flow of tourists is the product of global economic forces and political choices. Following the 2008 recession and harsh austerity measures, many Southern European countries (referred to during this time as PIGS: Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) turned to tourism as an economic lifeline, leading to the creation of what he and others call a tourist monoculture.</p>
  2447.  
  2448.  
  2449.  
  2450. <p>However, the prosperity that tourism was supposed to bring never came. There is a growing consensus — graffitied across historic walls all over Europe with the tag “Tourist Go Home” — that overtourism raises rents, wreaks havoc on services and devastates the environment in exchange for precarious employment. Members of the SET Network say mass tourism encompasses the failures of the global economic model, demonstrated by the fact that workers in the tourism industry can’t afford rent in housing markets inflated by tourist accommodations. </p>
  2451.  
  2452.  
  2453.  
  2454. <p>“SET’s message is resonating: all tourist territories are suffering from the same dynamics,” said Margalida Ramis, spokesperson for Balearic Ornithological Group and a coalition of activists and collectives called&nbsp;<a href="https://menysturisme.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Less Tourism, More Life</a>.&nbsp;</p>
  2455.  
  2456.  
  2457.  
  2458. <p>Pardo says he believes the pandemic contributed to the movement’s strength in Barcelona. While all sectors suffered, tourism disappeared entirely in 2020 and the economy tanked. Yet, he said, the pause allowed people to reclaim “spaces and traditions that had been lost for decades,” leading them to take note of the industry’s impacts in a new way. When mass tourism returned post-pandemic “with a vengeance,” the rapid loss of those spaces reignited the movement.</p>
  2459.  
  2460.  
  2461.  
  2462. <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tourism-and-the-housing-crisis">Tourism and the housing crisis</h3>
  2463.  
  2464.  
  2465.  
  2466. <p>Manuel Martin, a member of the SET Network affiliate <a href="https://referendopelahabitacao.pt/en/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Movement for Housing Referendum</a>, in Lisbon, reported that in his neighborhood of Santa Maria Maior, 70% of the housing stock is licensed for short-term accommodation. Without long-term residents, corner stores and affordable cafes have lost out to brunch spots and souvenir shops. </p>
  2467.  
  2468.  
  2469.  
  2470. <p>Martin explains that Lisbon’s sporting and cultural associations, which are “open to people, irrespective of whether they have the ability to consume,” are under threat as landlords prefer to rent to more lucrative clients.&nbsp;<a href="https://sirigaita.org/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Sirigaita</a>, a club used by Movement for Housing Referendum for organizing, is slated for eviction. Its website reads, “time is running out and the life of (yet another) collective space is in the hands of so-called ‘justice.’”</p>
  2471.  
  2472.  
  2473.  
  2474. <p>Ramis said that in Spain’s Balearic Islands, teachers don’t reach the end of term before they’re kicked out of their rentals for tourist season and end up “finishing the semester living in a van.” Professionals refuse positions in education, health care and law enforcement because they can’t afford the cost of living. “Vacancies go unfilled because people can’t afford to pay for housing, or it’s simply impossible to find in the first place. … The crisis has escalated and reached more layers of society who, until now, thought it wouldn’t affect them. Now it is.”&nbsp;</p>
  2475.  
  2476.  
  2477.  
  2478. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“Vacancies go unfilled because people can’t afford to pay for housing.&#8221;</p></blockquote></figure>
  2479.  
  2480.  
  2481.  
  2482. <p>Comparing the housing situation this tourist season to the last one, Maria Cardona of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/canviemelrumb/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Let’s Change Course</a>, a coalition for tourism degrowth and SET affiliate in Ibiza, said, “Nothing has changed — in fact, I’d say it’s gotten worse, because there are now more shantytowns and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/23/realestate/ibiza-spain-homeless.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">settlements</a>.” To fight back, the coalition collaborates with the local tenants union on protests and advocacy. “We’re dealing with the same issues, so it makes sense for us to work together.”</p>
  2483.  
  2484.  
  2485.  
  2486. <p>When it comes to housing, the rise of short-term housing platforms has been central to the anti-touristification movement since its inception. In 2016, the ABDT&nbsp;<a href="https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2016/09/21/inenglish/1474448447_260419.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">booked an illegally operated Airbnb</a>&nbsp;in Barcelona, staged a symbolic occupation, and called in municipal inspectors along with the press. “It made a lot of noise,” Pardo recalled. They took advantage of the press coverage to release an&nbsp;<a href="https://assembleabarris.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/dossier1.pdf" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">exposé</a>&nbsp;showing how one host was illegally renting out entire buildings on Airbnb under multiple listings, demonstrating the inconsistencies behind the tech company’s rhetoric that its purpose was to help locals earn extra income.&nbsp;</p>
  2487.  
  2488.  
  2489.  
  2490. <p>The next year, the city passed the Special Urban Plan for Tourist Accommodation, or PEUAT, which has been the city’s main tool for regulating tourist housing. Though beset with legal setbacks and enforcement challenges,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026427512500215X?via%3Dihub" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">housing researchers estimate</a>&nbsp;that without the PEUAT, the number of legal tourist apartments would be double the current total. In 2024, Barcelona’s mayor, Jaume Collboni, announced plans to eliminate the remaining 10,000 tourist apartments by 2028 to increase the long-term housing stock. And in May, Spain’s Consumer Affairs Ministry ordered Airbnb to&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/airbnb-spain-rental-listing-a91e605f6342db1b169d4f9d1681e9d4" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">remove close to 66,000 listings</a>&nbsp;that it says violate legal requirements. Airbnb has yet to remove any listings and said it will appeal the decision.</p>
  2491.  
  2492.  
  2493.  
  2494. <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-stealing-the-bread-off-our-table">Stealing the bread off our table</h3>
  2495.  
  2496.  
  2497.  
  2498. <p>If you ask Ramis, there’s no end to the number of limits that the political class could enact. Mallorca’s Less Tourism, More Life has put forward proposals to limit the number of tourist beds, flights, passengers, cruises and rental vehicles and to ban short-term tourist rentals. </p>
  2499.  
  2500.  
  2501.  
  2502. <p>But even were they to accept all these limits, it would not be enough, according to Ramis. “A society cannot be structured around a single economic sector, because this makes us both overly dependent on its constant growth and extremely vulnerable if it fails,” she said.</p>
  2503.  
  2504.  
  2505.  
  2506. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“A society cannot be structured around a single economic sector.&#8221;</p></blockquote></figure>
  2507.  
  2508.  
  2509.  
  2510. <p>Supporters of tourism point to the jobs it creates, but activists say the conditions of the work (low pay and seasonal contracts) cause more harm than good. Ramis reported that in Mallorca they have been working for years to bridge the gap between activists and workers and improve their relationship with the unions that have the most influence in the industry. Workers’ Commissions and the General Workers’ Union originally saw the movement as a threat. The unions “attacked us when we presented our demands,” she said.&nbsp;</p>
  2511.  
  2512.  
  2513.  
  2514. <p>Despite the challenges, she said, “we were very clear that when we organized protests against overtourism, without the workers from that sector there, it would be kind of a failure.” They worked to include worker perspectives and overcome the perception that criticizing tourism is a luxury for those who don’t depend on it.</p>
  2515.  
  2516.  
  2517.  
  2518. <p>Last year, for the first time, both unions got involved in supporting the demonstration, and this year they have gone further with more official backing. The General Workers’ Union, which has the most workers in the industry, is renegotiating the hospitality sector’s labor agreement, and Workers’ Commissions launched its own campaign to address touristification and to link it to the enrichment of business owners. “This makes us very happy,” Ramis said. “We have been trying to build this connection for a long time, and now it is happening naturally and organically.”</p>
  2519.  
  2520.  
  2521.  
  2522. <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tourism-s-environmental-impacts">Tourism’s environmental impacts</h3>
  2523.  
  2524.  
  2525.  
  2526. <p>The proposed expansion of El Prat airport, announced just days before Sunday’s protest, comes as a serious blow to the movement in Barcelona. Greenlit by the Catalan and Spanish governments, it aims to lengthen the runway by over 1,600 feet, part of which would extend into the protected La Ricarda wetlands. It also says a lot about the government’s stance on tourism.</p>
  2527.  
  2528.  
  2529.  
  2530. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>The tourism sector is responsible for 8.8% of global carbon dioxide emissions.</p></blockquote></figure>
  2531.  
  2532.  
  2533.  
  2534. <p>“It would mean at least 10 million more visitors,” Joan Manel del Llano, member of Zeroport, a coalition of environmental groups opposing the plan, wrote in an email. “So, more pressure on housing, on basic and vital resources like energy and water, more global and local warming, more crowds, more waste.”&nbsp;</p>
  2535.  
  2536.  
  2537.  
  2538. <p>Worldwide, the tourism sector is responsible for <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-54582-7" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">8.8% of global carbon dioxide emissions</a>, mostly from air travel, along with severe water and waste impacts from cruise ships. The airport has been a catalyst for mass resistance in the past. In 2021, the announcement of a similar airport expansion sparked a massive protest that drew at least <a href="https://www.catalannews.com/society-science/item/grassroots-groups-protest-barcelona-airport-expansion" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">10,000 participants and 300 groups</a>. While the plan was officially suspended before the scheduled protest due to disagreements between the regional and national government over the protection of La Ricarda, the thousands of demonstrators wanted to ensure it was truly dead. </p>
  2539.  
  2540.  
  2541.  
  2542. <p>Zeroport is preparing another demonstration on June 28 and a&nbsp;<a href="https://stay-grounded.org/strategy-conference/" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">July conference</a>&nbsp;on reducing aviation. Its network includes groups like Ecologists in Action and the ABDT, as well as international coalitions such as Stay Grounded.&nbsp;</p>
  2543.  
  2544.  
  2545.  
  2546. <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-organizing-half-a-continent">Organizing half a continent</h3>
  2547.  
  2548.  
  2549.  
  2550. <p>The shape of the anti-tourism movement is a series of fractalized collectives working together but independently. For example, the neighborhood association in Barcelona’s Vallcarca neighborhood that participated in Sunday’s protest is affiliated with the citywide platform ABDT, which in turn is affiliated with the SET Network, along with collectives in Mallorca; Ibiza; Formentera; Donostia; the Canary Islands; Lisbon, Portugal; Venice, Italy and more. </p>
  2551.  
  2552.  
  2553.  
  2554. <p>“It works quite chaotically, and at the same time quite well,” Pardo said. The geographic spread makes coordination challenging, but it also deepens their understanding of the issues. “We share problems, diagnoses, proposals,” he explained. Together, they have developed the view that “it’s not just about reducing the impact of tourism — it’s about changing the economic model.”</p>
  2555.  
  2556.  
  2557.  
  2558. <p>Maider Uralde from BiziLagunEkin, which means “With the Neighbors” in the Basque language, said the network helps her group stay connected and proactive. “It helps us overcome the feeling of isolation and better understand how to confront touristification,” she wrote in a statement. Places like Venice and Barcelona offer cautionary tales, but also strategies. “What’s happened in those places helps us stay ahead of the tourism industry’s tactics.”</p>
  2559.  
  2560.  
  2561.  
  2562. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>&#8220;It’s about changing the economic model.”</p></blockquote></figure>
  2563.  
  2564.  
  2565.  
  2566. <p>Sunday’s protests were the first SET-wide action since its formation around 2017. Another mobilization may take place in September to coincide with World Tourism Day. In the meantime, the various platforms are focused on local organizing. In Mallorca, Less Tourism, More Life continues to hold public talks and training sessions to build support for structural change. In Donostia, With the Neighbors is planning to combat the effects of the summer tourist season with workshops and street actions centered on the importance of community life. And in Barcelona, ABDT and Zeroport are preparing to resist the airport expansion.</p>
  2567.  
  2568.  
  2569.  
  2570. <p>While many activists remain frustrated by the slow pace of political change, most agree that public discourse around tourism has evolved significantly. “In 2017, when discontent first surfaced, it was stigmatized and dismissed,” Uralde said. “Now, the idea that tourism in Donostia can’t keep growing is common sense.”</p>
  2571.  
  2572.  
  2573.  
  2574. <p>For Pardo, this shift in narrative is the most important achievement of the movement so far. Still, he’s skeptical that awareness alone will drive real change. “What we need is to reduce the market,” he said. Relying on cultural shifts alone to fix these problems would take “centuries we simply don’t have.”</p>
  2575. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-movement-against-overtourism-is-sweeping-southern-europe/">The Movement Against Overtourism Is Sweeping Southern Europe</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
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  2585. <item>
  2586. <title>States Fear FEMA Funding May Be Drying Up</title>
  2587. <link>https://www.truthdig.com/articles/states-fear-fema-funding-may-be-drying-up/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=states-fear-fema-funding-may-be-drying-up</link>
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  2590. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Jennifer Berry Hawes /  ProPublica ]]></dc:creator>
  2591. <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2025 15:36:35 +0000</pubDate>
  2592. <category><![CDATA[Business & Economy]]></category>
  2593. <category><![CDATA[Courts & Law]]></category>
  2594. <category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
  2595. <category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
  2596. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
  2597. <category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
  2598. <category><![CDATA[fema]]></category>
  2599. <category><![CDATA[hurricane helene]]></category>
  2600. <category><![CDATA[kristi noem]]></category>
  2601. <category><![CDATA[national emergency management association]]></category>
  2602. <category><![CDATA[north carolina]]></category>
  2603. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.truthdig.com/?p=309181</guid>
  2604.  
  2605. <description><![CDATA[<p>Many states rely on federal money for the majority of their emergency management funding. FEMA's changes have local leaders in limbo.</p>
  2606. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/states-fear-fema-funding-may-be-drying-up/">States Fear FEMA Funding May Be Drying Up</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
  2607. ]]></description>
  2608. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  2609. <p class="has-small-font-size">This story was originally published by <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/fema-grants-trump-emergencies" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">ProPublica</a>.</p>
  2610.  
  2611.  
  2612.  
  2613. <p><strong>Upheaval at the nation’s top disaster agency</strong> is raising anxiety among state and local emergency managers — and leaving major questions about the whereabouts of billions of federal dollars it pays out to them.</p>
  2614.  
  2615.  
  2616.  
  2617. <p>The Federal Emergency Management Agency still has not opened applications for an enormous suite of grants, including ones that many states rely on to pay for basic emergency management operations. Some states pass on much of that money to their most rural, low-income counties to ensure they have an emergency manager on the payroll.</p>
  2618.  
  2619.  
  2620.  
  2621. <p>FEMA has blown past the mid-May statutory deadline to start the grants’ <a href="https://www.fema.gov/grants/preparedness/emergency-management-performance#nofos" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">application process</a>, according to the National Emergency Management Association, with no word about why or what that might indicate. The delay appears to have little precedent.</p>
  2622.  
  2623.  
  2624.  
  2625. <p>“There’s no transparency on why it’s not happening,” said Michael A. Coen Jr., who served as FEMA’s chief of staff under former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.</p>
  2626.  
  2627.  
  2628.  
  2629. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“There’s no transparency on why it’s not happening.&#8221;</p></blockquote></figure>
  2630.  
  2631.  
  2632.  
  2633. <p>FEMA’s system of grants is complex and multifaceted and helps communities prepare for and respond to everything from terrorist attacks to natural disasters.</p>
  2634.  
  2635.  
  2636.  
  2637. <p>In April, the agency&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20250404/fema-ends-wasteful-politicized-grant-program-returning-agency-core-mission" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">abruptly rescinded</a>&nbsp;a different grant program that county and local governments were expecting to help them reduce natural hazard risks moving forward. The clawback of money included&nbsp;<a href="https://www.floods.org/wp-content/uploads/FEMA-Advisory-Update-on-FEMA-Ending-the-Building-Resilient-Infrastructure-and-Communities-Program-April-16-2025.pdf" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">hundreds of millions already pledged</a>. FEMA also quietly withdrew a notice for states to apply for $600 million in flood mitigation grants.</p>
  2638.  
  2639.  
  2640.  
  2641. <p>On top of that, on June 11, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem began requiring that she review all FEMA grants above $100,000. That could slow its vast multibillion grants apparatus to a crawl, current and former FEMA employees said.</p>
  2642.  
  2643.  
  2644.  
  2645. <p>FEMA did not answer ProPublica’s questions about the missed application deadline or the impact of funding cuts and delays, instead responding with a statement from DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin that Noem is focused on bringing accountability to FEMA’s spending by “rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and working to ensure only grants that really help Americans in time of need are approved.”</p>
  2646.  
  2647.  
  2648.  
  2649. <p>The memo announcing the change arrived the day after President Donald Trump said he wants to begin dismantling FEMA at the close of hurricane season this fall.</p>
  2650.  
  2651.  
  2652.  
  2653. <p>All of this has left states — some of which rely on the federal government for the vast majority of their emergency management funding — in a difficult position. While Trump has sharply criticized FEMA’s performance delivering aid after disasters strike, he has said almost nothing about the future of its grant programs.</p>
  2654.  
  2655.  
  2656.  
  2657. <p>“It’s a huge concern,” said Lynn Budd, president of the National Emergency Management Association and director of the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security, which houses emergency management. The state agency gets more than 90% of its operating budget from federal funds, especially FEMA grants. “The uncertainty makes it very difficult,” she said.</p>
  2658.  
  2659.  
  2660.  
  2661. <p>In North Carolina, a state hit hard by a recent natural disaster, federal grants make up 82% of its emergency management agency’s budget. North Carolina Emergency Management leaders are pressing state lawmakers to provide it with “funding that will sustain the agency and its core functions” and cut its reliance on federal grant funding, an agency spokesperson said.</p>
  2662.  
  2663.  
  2664.  
  2665. <p>A forced weaning off of federal dollars could have an outsize impact in North Carolina and the other states that pass on much of their FEMA grants to county and local agencies. Many rural counties have modest tax bases and are already stretched thin.</p>
  2666.  
  2667.  
  2668.  
  2669. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>The clawback of money included hundreds of millions already pledged.</p></blockquote></figure>
  2670.  
  2671.  
  2672.  
  2673. <p>In May, ProPublica published&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/hurricane-helene-evacuation-warnings-yancey-county-north-carolina" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">a story detailing the horrors</a>&nbsp;of Hurricane Helene’s impact on one of those counties, Yancey. Home to 19,000 people, it suffered the largest per capita loss of life and damage to property in the storm. Jeff Howell, its emergency manager, was operating with only a part-time employee and said that for years he had been asking the county commission for more help. It wasn’t until after the storm that county commissioners agreed with the need.</p>
  2674.  
  2675.  
  2676.  
  2677. <p>“They realized how big a job it is,” said Howell, who has since retired.</p>
  2678.  
  2679.  
  2680.  
  2681. <p>But even large metropolitan counties rely on the grants. The hold up in opening the grant applications concerns Robert Wike Graham, deputy director of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Emergency Management, which serves an area of 1.2 million people and is home to a nuclear power plant. The training and preparation FEMA grants help the agency pay for are critical to keeping the community safe in the face of a nuclear catastrophe.</p>
  2682.  
  2683.  
  2684.  
  2685. <p>Yet Graham said he has resorted to scouring social media posts and news reports for bits of clues about the grants — and the future of FEMA itself.</p>
  2686.  
  2687.  
  2688.  
  2689. <p>“We’re all having to be like, hey, what have you heard? What do you know? What’s going on? Nobody knows,” Graham said.</p>
  2690.  
  2691.  
  2692.  
  2693. <p>Trump is on his second acting FEMA administrator in five months, and the director who coordinates national disaster response turned in his resignation letter June 11. More than a dozen senior leaders, including the agency’s chief counsel,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/climate/fema-trump-resignations-firings.html" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">have left or been fired</a>, along with an unknown mass of its full-time workers.</p>
  2694.  
  2695.  
  2696.  
  2697. <p>“Every emergency manager I know is screaming, ‘You’re screwing the system up,’” Graham said. “We’ve all been calling for reform, but it’s too much, too fast.</p>
  2698.  
  2699.  
  2700.  
  2701. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Vulnerable to political shifts</h3>
  2702.  
  2703.  
  2704.  
  2705. <p>Shortly after President Jimmy Carter created FEMA in 1979 to centralize federal disaster management, the agency began to dole out grants to help communities grappling with large-scale destruction. Over the years, its grants ballooned, especially after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, when huge new programs helped states harden security against an alarming new threat.</p>
  2706.  
  2707.  
  2708.  
  2709. <p>Today, FEMA operates roughly a dozen&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fema.gov/grants/preparedness" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">preparedness grant programs</a>. Among other things, the money serves as a financial carrot to ensure that even spending-averse and tax-strapped states and counties employ emergency managers who help communities prepare for and respond to terrorist attacks and natural disasters.</p>
  2710.  
  2711.  
  2712.  
  2713. <p>Former FEMA leaders said states have been largely content to sit back and let the feds pay up. As a result, they said, the grants have created a system of dependence that leaves emergency managers vulnerable to ever-shifting national priorities and, at the moment, a president set on dismantling the agency.</p>
  2714.  
  2715.  
  2716.  
  2717. <p>Across the country, the percentage of state emergency management agencies’ budgets paid by federal funding ranges from zero to 99.4%, a 2024&nbsp;<a href="https://nemaweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BR2024-proof-3_5.10.2024.pdf" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">National Emergency Management Association report</a>&nbsp;says. A spokesperson declined to provide a state-by-state breakdown, so ProPublica canvassed a few.</p>
  2718.  
  2719.  
  2720.  
  2721. <p>Wyoming tops 90%. Texas’ agency gets about three-quarters of its operational budget from federal funding. Virginia gets roughly 70%. South Carolina comes in around 61% federal funding for day-to-day operations.</p>
  2722.  
  2723.  
  2724.  
  2725. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Former FEMA leaders said states have been largely content to sit back and let the feds pay up.</p></blockquote></figure>
  2726.  
  2727.  
  2728.  
  2729. <p>Most state emergency managers agree that their states need to depend less on the federal government for their funding, “but there’s got to be some glide path or timeline where we can all work toward the goal,” Budd said.</p>
  2730.  
  2731.  
  2732.  
  2733. <p>Some states would need upward of a decade to prepare for such a seismic shift, especially those like Wyoming that budget every other year, she added. Its legislature is in the middle of budget negotiations for fiscal year 2027-2028.</p>
  2734.  
  2735.  
  2736.  
  2737. <p>If emergency managers instead are scrambling, “the effects that we’re going to see down the line is a lack of preparedness, a lack of coordination, training and partnerships being built,” Budd said. “We’re not going to be able to respond as well.”</p>
  2738.  
  2739.  
  2740.  
  2741. <p>A key reason states have become so dependent on FEMA grants despite the risk of national political upheaval is that state legislatures and local elected leaders haven’t always prioritized paying for emergency management themselves despite its critical role. With FEMA’s grants, they haven’t had to.</p>
  2742.  
  2743.  
  2744.  
  2745. <p>W. Craig Fugate has seen reluctance to wean off FEMA grants from all levels of government. He served as FEMA administrator under Obama and, before that, as head of Florida’s emergency management division under governors Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist.</p>
  2746.  
  2747.  
  2748.  
  2749. <p>“My experience tells me locals will not step up unless they are dealing with a catastrophe,” Fugate said.</p>
  2750.  
  2751.  
  2752.  
  2753. <p>Because most of the preparedness grants require no match from state or local governments, he said, it strips away any motivation for them to do so — especially with other pressing needs vying for those dollars.</p>
  2754.  
  2755.  
  2756.  
  2757. <p>“The real question is how much of this is actually critical and should be the responsibility of local governments to fund?” Fugate said. “Neither local governments nor states have been very forward in funding beyond the minimums to match federal dollars.”</p>
  2758.  
  2759.  
  2760.  
  2761. <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Small-town North Carolina</h3>
  2762.  
  2763.  
  2764.  
  2765. <p>After Hurricane Helene, North Carolina’s Emergency Management agency&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ncdps.gov/division/emergency-management/ts-helene-after-action-review/open" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">commissioned a report</a>&nbsp;that pointedly criticized the state’s “over-reliance on federal grants to fund basic operations.” Only about 16.5% of the state agency’s budget comes from state appropriations.</p>
  2766.  
  2767.  
  2768.  
  2769. <p>The report noted that this reliance had led to an inadequate investment by the state in its emergency management staffing and infrastructure. A staff shortage at the agency “severely compromised the state’s response to Hurricane Helene.” Among other things, a lack of staff hampered the State Emergency Response Team’s ability to maintain a 24-hour operation that was supposed to support local and county officials who were overwhelmed by the massive storm.</p>
  2770.  
  2771.  
  2772.  
  2773. <p>North Carolina state Rep. Mark Pless, the Republican co-chair of the House Emergency Management and Disaster Recovery Committee, said the state’s conservative spending and $3.6 billion in reserves have “afforded us the ability to fund ourselves for preparedness” if FEMA suddenly yanks its grants.</p>
  2774.  
  2775.  
  2776.  
  2777. <p>But Democratic Rep. Robert Reives, the House minority leader, worried that any financial flexibility would dry up if planned and potential tax cuts in the years ahead create a budget shortfall, as&nbsp;<a href="https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2025/05/29/n-c--revenue-predictions-recession-risk" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">some have predicted</a>.</p>
  2778.  
  2779.  
  2780.  
  2781. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Almost 82% of counties across the country report tapping into it.</p></blockquote></figure>
  2782.  
  2783.  
  2784.  
  2785. <p>In mostly rural Washington County, along North Carolina’s hurricane-prone Atlantic coast, Lance Swindell is a one-man emergency management office. His county, home to 11,000 people, lacks a big tax base.</p>
  2786.  
  2787.  
  2788.  
  2789. <p>Like other emergency managers across the state, Swindell said he supports cutting FEMA red tape and waste, but “grant funding is a major funding source just to keep the lights on.”</p>
  2790.  
  2791.  
  2792.  
  2793. <p>One of the grants in the FEMA program that blew past its deadline for opening applications pays half of his salary. That grant can fund core local operations such as staffing, training and equipment. It is critical to local emergency management offices: Almost 82% of counties across the country report tapping into it.</p>
  2794.  
  2795.  
  2796.  
  2797. <p>Cuts to that particular grant under the Biden administration already reduced what North Carolina gets — and therefore what gets passed down the governmental food chain to people such as Swindell. North Carolina was allocated $8.5 million in fiscal year 2024, down from $10.6 million two years earlier.</p>
  2798.  
  2799.  
  2800.  
  2801. <p>Looking ahead, Swindell is still waiting for the applications to open while wondering if FEMA will more drastically slash the grants — and, if so, whether his county could find the money to continue paying his full-time salary.</p>
  2802.  
  2803.  
  2804.  
  2805. <p class="has-small-font-size"><a href="https://www.propublica.org/people/mollie-simon" rel="nofollow external" target="_blank">Mollie Simon</a>&nbsp;contributed research.</p>
  2806. <p>The post <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/states-fear-fema-funding-may-be-drying-up/">States Fear FEMA Funding May Be Drying Up</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.truthdig.com">Truthdig</a>.</p>
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