Trump’s Election Security Speech: A Good Night for Putin

On Thursday night, after days of buildup, Donald Trump delivered a speech on election security in which he suggested US elections were threatened by China. He repeatedly pointed to China and its purported efforts to hack voter and election data and to mount influence operations to foment anti-Trump sentiment. But he provided no proof of Chinese interference with US elections or of any voter fraud. And, perhaps more significantly, he left out a big piece of the picture: Russia.

As Trump assailed US elections as totally rigged and lacking credibility—again, without offering any evidence of this—he fixated on Beijing. The connection was not clear. He seemed to be saying that China has been involved in subverting US elections, including the 2020 contest that he lost and that he has falsely insisted (ad naseum) was stolen from him. He denounced the supposed Deep State for having “worked to actively suppress and downplay information about the extent of China’s sinister election meddling, covering it up from both the president and the American people.” In 2020, though, the major culprit in terms of election meddling was not China, but Moscow.

Who says so? Trump’s own intelligence community.

In August 2020, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a brief statement assessing foreign efforts to influence the ongoing presidential election. It noted that the intelligence agencies had concluded that China and Iran favored Trump’s defeat. But the statement provided no details on what, if anything, China and Iran were doing to thwart Trump’s reelection.

As for Russia, the statement was more direct. It said Moscow was “using a range of measures to primarily denigrate” Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrats’ presidential candidate. It noted that a “pro-­Russia” Ukrainian parliamentarian named Andriy Derkach “was spreading” false claims—alleging that Biden had engaged in corruption in Ukraine—to “undermine” his candidacy. It added, “Some Kremlin-­linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television.”

Asked about this intelligence assessment at the time, Trump said, “I don’t care what anybody says.”

A month later, Trump’s Treasury Department sanctioned Derkach and called him “an active Russian agent for over a decade” and accused him of running an ongoing operation—by putting out bogus information about Biden—to discredit the Democrat. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin declared that “Derkach and other Russian agents” had employed “manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence” the US election.

Trump’s own administration was saying Moscow was actively interfering with the 2020 election.

Months after that contest, the US intelligence community released an assessment of “foreign threats” to the 2020 race. This is what it said about the Russian effort:

We assess that Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US. Unlike in 2016, we did not see persistent Russian cyber efforts to gain access to election infrastructure…A key element of Moscow’s strategy this election cycle was its use of proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence
narratives—including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden—to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration.

The report also evaluated Beijing’s involvement in the 2020 election: “We assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US Presidential election.” It added, “We did not identify China attempting to interfere with election infrastructure or provide funding to any candidates or parties.”

That’s a big difference. Russia ran an extensive operation to help Trump. China did not do much, if anything.

Trump has long denied that Putin intervened in the 2016 campaign and helped him win the White House—though various investigations, including a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee inquiry and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation concluded the Kremlin covertly aided Trump. In this speech, Trump made China the bad guy, ignoring Russia’s interventions in US elections.

If Trump were serious about combatting foreign attempts to mess in US campaigns, he’d address Putin’s meddling. Yet that would never happen. This speech was meant to back up his unfounded and hysterical claim that US elections have been wracked with rampant fraud—which is why, in his deluded telling, he lost in 2020—and he sought to blame China for that. The real culprit, Russia, was MIA.

Continue Reading…

Moms of Black Babies More Likely to Be Flagged to Police Over Alleged Pregnancy Drug Use

The mothers of Black newborns are more likely than those of White newborns to be referred to law enforcement over allegations of substance use during pregnancy, according to The Marshall Project’s new analysis of child welfare data from eight states. The referrals are often the result of unreliable hospital drug tests performed at childbirth that are easily misinterpreted and produce false positive results as much as half of the time, which can prompt incorrect reporting to child welfare and law enforcement authorities.

Medical centers can report claims of pregnancy substance use to child welfare agencies, which can then refer the cases to law enforcement. Using birth rates in eight states, The Marshall Project estimated that Black babies are around two and a half times more likely than White babies to be flagged to law enforcement over claims of substance exposure in the womb. The analysis is the first to measure the overrepresentation of Black newborns among these referrals and the disproportionate impact they can have on Black families.

During a seven-year period, child welfare agencies across 20 states referred the parents of more than 25,000 Black newborns to police or prosecutors over alleged pregnancy substance use, The Marshall Project found. In eight of those states that had enough detailed data to compare estimated rates of referrals across Black and White children, all showed referrals were more common when the cases involved Black families.

Child welfare data on newborns of other races and ethnicities was not provided to The Marshall Project.

In Oklahoma, an estimated 1 in 11 Black babies were flagged to law enforcement over accusations of pregnancy substance use. In Minnesota, the families of Black newborns were estimated to be about three and a half times more likely than those of White newborns to be referred to police.

Child welfare agencies can refer allegations to police or prosecutors even when their investigations clear the parents or find no evidence that they posed an urgent threat. The Marshall Project found this occurred with a considerable number of Black families. In a seven-year period, more than 14,000 cases involving Black newborns were sent to law enforcement agencies in the eight states, even though child welfare authorities did not conclude that child abuse or neglect occurred.

The data does not spell out why cases against Black families are more common, but decades of research spanning the country has shown that racial disparities are embedded through every step of the child welfare process. Black women are more likely than White women to be drug tested at childbirth and reported to child welfare authorities, more likely to be investigated and more likely to be separated from their children, previous studies have found.

The data also does not specify what happens after cases are referred to law enforcement. Many of these reports are filed away without consequence. But other mothers have been shamed, surveilled, arrested, jailed, prosecuted and left with enduring trauma.

The referrals to police likely contribute to higher rates of depression and stress among Black postpartum women, exacerbating the Black maternal mortality crisis, said Miriam Mack, senior legal counsel at the advocacy group Movement for Family Power.

“It’s not about what you do, what substances you use, how much you’re using, whether you’re using, but it’s about who you are,” Mack said. “It’s about the simple fact that you are Black and you have given birth in the hospital.”

The Marshall Project has previously documented the harms to Black mothers who are drug tested during childbirth. Ayanna Harris-Rashid was arrested in South Carolina in 2021 after testing positive due to legal CBD gummies and a topical hemp-based ointment she took during her pregnancy. Amid the stress of criminal charges and incarceration, she lost the ability to breastfeed her newborn son.

Melissa Robinson, a Black elementary school librarian in Alabama, was investigated in 2024 after she had a false positive test for cocaine. The hospital barred Robinson from breastfeeding and child welfare officials told her she could not be alone with her baby, even though a second hospital drug test disproved the allegation against her. The case was ultimately closed due to insufficient evidence.

“To have such a beautiful experience tainted by something like that, it’s difficult,” Robinson told The Marshall Project in 2024. “Truthfully, it’s turned me into somebody different.”

To conduct the analysis, The Marshall Project obtained seven years of data, stretching between mid-2018 and mid-2024, from the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect, which stores the information from state child welfare agencies. The eight states with more detailed numbers on newborn race and referrals were California, Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas.

Child welfare officials in the eight states were allowed to review the findings. In Oklahoma, officials called the analysis “misleading and inaccurate” because it excludes children who have a multiracial parent if the other parent is not Black or White, which could overestimate how often law enforcement referrals take place. The Marshall Project conducted a subsequent analysis and found that the overrepresentation of Black newborns was consistent in the data whether the children of multiracial parents were Black, White or neither. Read more about the methodology here.

Seven of the states included in the analysis have policies requiring child welfare to automatically share cases of pregnancy substance use with law enforcement, even if the allegations are unfounded.

When child welfare workers review a claim of drug exposure in the womb, they may investigate and find no evidence of child abuse or neglect, or decide the risk to the child is low enough to offer support services rather than conduct an investigation. Even so, the agency can be required to share these allegations with law enforcement, potentially leading to unnecessary surveillance, arrest or prosecution. Those referrals typically occur before child welfare has completed its reviews of the cases.

For the eight states in the analysis, among families referred to law enforcement, child welfare agencies were 25% more likely to dismiss or divert pregnancy substance use allegations made against Black families compared to White families. The difference was especially stark in Kentucky, where child welfare workers were 38% more likely to close a case without a finding of abuse or neglect when the newborn was Black. The findings suggest that Black parents are more likely to be reported to authorities over substance use claims that are unfounded or pose a low safety risk to their children.

The Marshall Project interviewed more than a dozen doctors, researchers and parent advocates to understand why Black newborns were overrepresented in the data. Most pointed to the fact that hospitals disproportionately drug test and report Black mothers and babies. Racial bias and poverty also play a role, with providers more likely to report someone that they perceive as lacking financial or social support, even if the parents may be competent and caring, doctors said.

Another reason may stem from changes in state and federal policies. Drug testing of pregnant women began in the 1980s during the crack epidemic, when fears of “crack babies” spurred state laws classifying substance use during pregnancy as child abuse or neglect. During the opioid epidemic in the early 2000s, hospital drug testing policies expanded again, with Congress directing states to identify all newborns “affected by” substance use, whether illegal or not. As a result, more parents are now reported to child welfare over positive tests triggered by legal substances, including prescribed medications, over-the-counter products and marijuana.

Two cases from a single hospital near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, show how a positive drug test for marijuana can produce vastly different outcomes.

When a Black mom and her newborn at Tidelands Waccamaw Community Hospital tested positive for THC in July of 2024, the hospital reported her to the state Department of Social Services, which referred her to law enforcement, Georgetown County Sheriff’s records show. A positive THC test can be triggered by legal substances, such as a CBD gummy. The documents do not indicate that officers interviewed the mother or attempted to identify the cause of the positive test before arresting her days later on a charge of child abuse.

Two months later, a White woman giving birth tested positive at the same hospital for the same substance. This time, however, a child welfare investigator told police the agency did not want to press charges. The patient had told the investigator that she tested positive because of a single CBD edible she had purchased at a store. The child welfare agency “believes the offender is not a threat to the victim,” the police report said. Police did not arrest the mother.

The community hospital and Sheriff’s department did not respond to requests for comment about the two cases. The South Carolina Department of Social Services declined to comment.

Marijuana testing floods the system with families who are not likely to harm their children, said Joseph Ryan, a professor of social work at the University of Michigan. He co-authored a study that found that the parents of Black newborns were more likely to be reported to child welfare over positive marijuana tests but rarely went on to commit child abuse or neglect.

“There’s really no reason to be testing for THC,” Ryan said. Though he said alcohol has far more detrimental effects on a developing fetus than marijuana, hospitals rarely screen for it. Reducing testing and reporting of marijuana would lessen the disproportionate number of Black families getting reported into the system, he said.

Attorneys and advocates for parents said the data may also obscure the reality of many cases that end up dismissed or that go through a process known as “alternative response.” During a child welfare investigation or assessment, parents may be asked to submit to drug tests and home inspections, to turn over their children to other caregivers or to agree to complete what are considered voluntary services in exchange for avoiding a formal child abuse or neglect case. These agreements can come with an implicit or explicit threat — if parents do not sign, child welfare may open an investigation or petition a judge to remove their child anyway. Many parents quickly agree, often without a lawyer present.

In Kentucky, such agreements are common and can lead to weeks or months of surveillance or separation, said civil rights attorney Paul Hill, who has represented people who signed prevention plans under threat of their children being sent to foster care. One of Hill’s clients was required to be supervised by her husband after testing positive at her child’s birth due to poppy seeds, according to court records.

A spokesperson for Kentucky’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services said the agency has seen “firsthand the positive impact that prevention plans play in supporting families and kids across our commonwealth” and welcomes feedback on each case.

Even cases that are eventually dismissed cause distress during a crucial bonding time and open the door to further intervention, advocates said.

Mothers can find themselves subject to new child welfare cases later on in their children’s lives if they struggle with their mental health or have trouble paying bills. Child welfare or police reports documenting the original substance use allegations from childbirth could be cited as evidence, even if the claims were unfounded. The hospital reports also erode trust between providers and patients, leading many parents to avoid medical care altogether.

For Brittany Pettway, a Black mom in Kentucky, the experience of being drug tested and reported on two separate occasions after she gave birth has made her scared to have another child.

“I think race does play a big part in it,” she said. “It just seems like they already think we’re unfit and unstable.”

All of this worsens health outcomes, experts say. The stress of an investigation, even one ultimately closed, can trigger relapse into substance use or otherwise harm the health of the mother or infant — in a healthcare landscape in which Black women are already at higher risk of death.

“The sheer fear of living with being investigated by the police, of living with being investigated by CPS — that in and of itself is the harm,” said Mack, the attorney at Movement for Family Power. “The impact that that has on a person’s body, a person’s health, a person’s well-being, that’s the harm.”

For many advocates and doctors, the solutions are clear. Leading medical groups advise against routine drug testing of pregnant women. Such tests do not prove that someone has an addiction and are often conducted without a patient’s knowledge or consent.

Earlier this year, following The Marshall Project’s reporting, the state of New Jersey began requiring hospitals to confirm drug screens with more precise tests prior to sharing results with child welfare authorities. The state also instructed providers to obtain informed consent before drug testing pregnant patients and confirmed that a positive result alone does not constitute child abuse or neglect. The state now has an anonymized form for hospitals to share information about substance-affected infants without triggering a child welfare investigation.

Instead of funding the punishment of women through costly child welfare or criminal cases, advocates said officials should fund family support services, such as drug treatment programs that offer childcare and food assistance.

“These places, they’re not invested in Black parenting. They’re not even invested in Black motherhood survival,” said Erin Miles Cloud, a civil rights attorney who has represented mothers with child welfare cases. Cloud said the default response to these structural problems has become punishment. “We should all be worried about a system that is set up to divert people to the police.”

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, Reveal and CBS News.

Methodology

The Marshall Project analyzed data that state child welfare agencies voluntarily submit to the federal Children’s Bureau, which is part of the Department of Health & Human Services. That information is provided to and stored by the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect (NDACAN), a federal contractor. Upon request, NDACAN staff provided The Marshall Project with data from fiscal years 2018 to 2024 showing the number of prenatal substance exposure cases reported to state child welfare agencies, as well as the number shared with police or prosecutors.

The data detailed the number of allegations involving Black and White newborns and whether child welfare deemed the babies to be either “victims” of abuse or neglect or “nonvictims.” A newborn is considered a victim if abuse or neglect is substantiated or suspected by child welfare workers. Nonvictim cases occur when child welfare does not substantiate a claim of maltreatment or redirects the family to support services rather than opening an investigation.

Due to low or unreliable counts, no other racial or ethnic categories beyond White or Black were provided. As a result, these other categories were excluded from our analysis.

Over the seven-year period, 20 states submitted at least one year of referral data on Black newborns. We added up all these available counts to produce a minimum total of how many cases against Black families were referred to law enforcement during this time.

NDACAN did not provide numbers when annual counts fell below 10 individuals to protect people’s privacy. Seven states had no suppressed numbers in any years. In California, there were four years of data without any suppressed values. We included non-suppressed values in these eight states in a more detailed race analysis.

In the NDACAN data, children can be included in more than one race category and thus can appear in the aggregated totals for both Black and White newborns. State child welfare agencies can follow different practices for collecting this race information from families. We also incorporated data from CDC WONDER on the number of children born each federal fiscal year, which runs from October to September, to estimate how often the families of newborns of each race have a case of pregnancy substance use shared with law enforcement. A small number of suppressed values, when counts fell below 10, were excluded from the birth totals. Using the CDC WONDER data, which collects race information from parents’ birth certificates, we counted a child as Black if at least one parent was Black, and a child as White if at least one parent was White.

Our calculations excluded newborns whose parents were listed as “more than one race” in the CDC data if the other parent was not White or Black because the data did not specify the races of multiracial parents. As a result, the analysis could overestimate the frequency of referrals or exaggerate the difference in referral rates between Black and White newborns. The Marshall Project calculated minimum and maximum estimates of birth counts in each state by assigning all mixed-race parents as Black but not White, and then White but not Black. We found that the overrepresentation of Black newborns was consistent in the data whether the children of multiracial parents were Black, White or neither.
Classifying all multiracial parents as only Black substantially lowers the estimates of potential racial disparity, because Black birth counts are relatively small in most states. Counting multiracial parents as only White produces maximum estimates but does not shift the results as dramatically, because the number of White babies born in each state is relatively large. These calculations provide a range of possible values, but without clear data specifying how many multiracial parents are Black and White, they don’t indicate where within the range the actual values fall.

The analysis of referral rates by race can only produce estimates rather than exact results because of a lack of precision in the birth data. For this reason, and because the data only covers eight states, The Marshall Project does not encourage ranking or comparing results across states.

The analysis does not examine trends occurring during the seven-year period of data. States could have experienced changes in referral rates and nonvictim case rates over this time period.

The Marshall Project consulted with several scholars on this analysis, including Dr. Mishka Terplan, a Maryland OB-GYN and leading researcher on substance use disorders during pregnancy. We also provided the data and analysis to the eight state child welfare agencies and NDACAN before publication and gave them a chance to share feedback.

The quality and comprehensiveness of the NDACAN data varies by state. Read more about The Marshall Project’s work with the data here.

Continue Reading…

Todd Blanche Just Opened the Door to a National Abortion Ban

This article has been republished from Autonomy News, a worker-owned publication covering reproductive rights and justice. Follow Autonomy News on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok, Threads, and LinkedIn.

At the very end of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s Wednesday confirmation hearing, Texas Senator Ted Cruz got Blanche to commit to taking a step that could upend abortion access in all 50 states.

Cruz brought up the Comstock Act, an 1873 anti-obscenity law that abortion opponents want to use to stop the mailing of abortion pills. He pressed Blanche to review Biden-era guidance that cleared shipments of medication abortion into states that ban abortion. Alarmingly, Blanche agreed.

The 19th-century law made it a federal crime to mail, possess, give away, or sell “obscene materials”—including items used for abortion. Parts of the law relating to birth control were repealed in 1971, but Comstock was never repealed in its entirety. When abortion providers started prescribing pills to patients in states where abortion was banned thanks to “shield” laws, anti-abortion activists argued that this was a violation of the Comstock Act. Project 2025 also called for criminal prosecutions of abortion pill providers under Comstock, though the document only references the law by statute number, not by name.

In response, a December 2022 opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said it was not illegal for the U.S. Postal Service and other carriers like FedEx and UPS to deliver abortion medications to states that ban abortion, and that Comstock did not apply unless the sender intended pills to be used unlawfully. That interpretation has reassured abortion providers that they can prescribe pills across state lines without fear of federal prosecution.

Cruz asked the nominee point blank to review the 2022 memo. Blanche said he would. “Office of Legal Counsel opinions may be reconsidered when the attorney general concludes they are inconsistent with the law,” Cruz said. “Will you commit to carefully reviewing that opinion to ensure that it faithfully reflects the actual statutory text [of the Comstock Act] that Congress enacted?” Blanche responded with an instant “yes.”

Notably, Donald Trump appointed two anti-abortion lawyers to the Office of Legal Counsel last summer: Elliot Gaiser, who in 2020 called abortion a “moral evil;” and Josh Craddock, a Comstock proponent who also believes that fertilized eggs are people under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Cruz also brought up Comstock in the context of a lawsuit that Louisiana filed against the Food and Drug Administration, which seeks to end telemedicine prescriptions of mifepristone, the first of two drugs in a typical medication abortion. “Without asking you to comment on the merits of that litigation, will you commit that the [Justice] Department will carefully evaluate every lawful action available to ensure the faithful enforcement of the Comstock Act and other federal pro-life acts?” Again, Blanche said yes.

Blanche, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, didn’t hesitate in any of his responses to Cruz. Here’s video of the exchange.

Ted Cruz is the latest of a string of Republican senators to push an agreeing Blanche to ban the mailing of mifepristone. They're coming for abortion pills next.

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 11:05 AM · Jul 15, 2026

Blanche’s comments come as anti-abortion activists and lawmakers like Missouri Senator Josh Hawley are pressuring him to commit to the DOJ settling with Louisiana in its suit against the FDA. Ostensibly, a settlement would involve the agency agreeing to end telehealth prescriptions of mifepristone nationwide. Hawley’s wife Erin is representing Louisiana in that litigation.

That case is pending before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, with a hearing scheduled for September. When an emergency appeal in the lawsuit reached the Supreme Court in May, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissent espousing the same view on Comstock that Cruz took today. Thomas claimed that “it is a criminal offense to ship mifepristone for use in abortions” under the law and that the drug’s manufacturers are engaging in “criminal enterprise.”

Nearly 115 Republican members of Congress, including Cruz, filed a “friend of the court brief” on Louisiana’s side at the Supreme Court, arguing that mailing mifepristone violates the Comstock Act. Cruz also signed a January 2023 letter to then-AG Merrick Garland urging him to enforce Comstock related to the shipping of mifepristone, alongside 40 other members of Congress including now-Vice President JD Vance.

American Civil Liberties Union chief political and advocacy officer Deirdre Schifeling called Blanche an “anti-abortion yes man” in a statement. “Todd Blanche demonstrated that if confirmed as Attorney General, he will be content to go along with anti-abortion extremists’ plan to restrict medication abortion nationwide,” Schifeling said. “Senators pushed dangerous misinformation about medication abortion and fringe legal theories that would ban abortion nationwide entirely—and Blanche blithely entertained them.”

Katie O’Connor, senior director of federal abortion policy at the National Women’s Law Center, said, “Once again, Blanche has shown that he is a Trump loyalist above all else, and would rather further the president’s extreme anti-abortion agenda than work on behalf of the American public.”

The abortion-related provisions of the Comstock Act were rarely enforced after the 1930s. The law only applies to “unlawful” abortions, and judges have generally agreed that it doesn’t apply to medications or devices prescribed or used by physicians.

However, anti-abortion leaders argue that the DOJ could weaponize Comstock to ban not just telemedicine abortions, but shipments of abortion drugs to brick-and-mortar clinics. The most extreme interpretation could even result in a ban on shipping supplies used in procedural abortions, as Comstock applies to all materials, not just medications. As anti-abortion legal activist Jonathan Mitchell said in early 2024, “We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books…There’s a smorgasbord of options.” Mitchell has filed multiple lawsuits that ask federal courts to declare the law is active.

That’s why some Democrats wanted to repeal Comstock ahead of the 2024 election. However, three major reproductive rights organizations—Planned Parenthood, Center for Reproductive Rights, and the American Civil Liberties Union—advised Vermont Rep. Becca Balint not to introduce a Comstock repeal bill in 2024, per NOTUS. They were concerned it could affect the outcome of the first abortion pill lawsuit to work its way up to the Supreme Court after the fall of Roe v. Wade. Some Democrats also worried that introducing a Comstock repeal could validate anti-abortion ideologues’ interpretation of the law, which they believe to be incorrect.

Anti-abortion leaders argue that the DOJ could weaponize Comstock to ban not just telemedicine abortions, but shipments of abortion drugs to brick-and-mortar clinics.

But others viewed complacency as dangerous. “I fully agree with the [Biden] administration’s position … that it’s illegal to use Comstock to ban abortion,” Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith told NOTUS. “However, I can see, as can everybody else, that the extreme right-wing MAGA Republicans have a road map for using Comstock to do exactly that, and so, as a legislator, it’s my job to do everything I can to take that tool away from them.”

In June 2024, Smith and Balint were among the cosponsors when a repeal bill was finally introduced. This happened shortly after the Supreme Court punted the legal battle over abortion pills back to lower courts, which seems to have assuaged previous concerns from Planned Parenthood, CRR, and the ACLU, because they endorsed the measure.

Still, the bill disappointed many advocates because it failed to fully repeal the Comstock Act. Instead, it would have merely removed language about abortion from the statute. A source involved in crafting the legislation told Garnet at the time that this was because of an unlikely roadblock: the Biden Department of Justice. The DOJ claimed it needed the Comstock Act—specifically, the part that bans “obscene” materials—to prosecute cases involving child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

“Obviously, we couldn’t really have that,” the source said. “It’d be a GOP field day on ‘Dems support child porn.’”

The partial repeal was always a longshot. Even if it had gained majority support in both chambers, it almost certainly couldn’t have won a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. But lawmakers worried that having the repeal effort labeled “pro-porn” or “pro-child abuse” would have killed any attempt to repeal Comstock in the future. Similar bills had been introduced in 1997, 1999, and 2001, but none ever received a floor vote.

Following the death of Senator Lindsey Graham, Blanche can’t lose a single Republican vote on the Judiciary Committee. Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis had been noncommittal about his confirmation, but released a letter Tuesday urging him to settle the Louisiana mifepristone lawsuit. Nothing Cornyn or Tillis said during the hearing suggested they would vote against advancing Blanche.

Blanche also spouted misinformation during the hearing, telling Senator Chuck Grassley that, “For the first time in a decade, HHS and the FDA are actually taking a real look at what’s happening with some of these abortion pills and whether they’re actually safe or not.” To Senator Katie Britt he said, “it’s not only what the Department of Justice can do, but it’s what the FDA is doing right now for the first time in a decade: Actually doing real studies about the safety and the appropriateness of these drugs.” More than 100 studies have shown mifepristone to be safe and effective for ending an early pregnancy. The FDA’s decision to allow telehealth prescriptions was based on real-world data.

Hawley did not directly ask Blanche Wednesday to settle the suit, though he did ask why the administration couldn’t just restore the old rules requiring in-person appointments while the FDA conducts a politicized safety review. Blanche responded, “I don’t think it’s appropriate to talk about our litigation strategy here, except to say that we want to get to a good result consistent with President Trump’s administrative directive and priorities, and we very much believe that the Biden rules were wrong.”

Blanche then said part of the purpose of the FDA’s bogus review is to have something to point to in court. “We have to have studies that we can defend in court,” he said. “We have to be able to say to a judge, probably in this district, that our change was not arbitrary and capricious.”

His answer shows that the Trump administration expects lawsuits in response to any changes it may make to mifepristone prescribing. But the DOJ could significantly limit access to medication abortion even without changes to FDA policy. Rescinding the Biden-era guidance on Comstock would signal to telehealth abortion providers that federal prosecutions may be coming—and that could scare some of them away even if no charges were ever filed.

Continue Reading…

What ICE Didn’t Say About Its Latest Killing

Since Donald Trump returned to office, federal agents have shot at more than 20 people as part of the administration’s immigration crackdown, killing six of them. Almost all those shootings have had one thing in common: They aimed at someone inside their vehicle. That includes Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, the two men ICE agents killed in Texas last week and Maine on Monday.

Soon after Durán’s death on Monday, ICE directed its officers to temporarily pause most stop vehicle stops. On Wednesday, Trump reversed that decision, posting on Truth Social that “we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!”

Durán, who was 25, came to the United States in 2023 and received work authorization last year, the Washington Post reported. Friends and family members told the paper that he made the journey to provide a better life for his then-infant daughter. In Maine, he spent the morning cleaning a veterinary office and delivered food later in the day.

Mary Hayes, a retiree who lived near Durán, told the Post that she saw his partner sobbing on her knees after the shooting.“If anybody with a heartbeat stood there and heard it, and it didn’t bring tears to your eyes, then I don’t know what kind of person you are,” Hayes said. “I’ve never seen pain like that before.” She added that the couple’s daughter, who recently celebrated her third birthday, was standing near her mom with a pink backpack on the ground.

The number of people immigration agents are shooting inside their vehicles is shocking. Police officers have been taught for decades to avoid shooting at moving vehicles. The reason is simple. As Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, explained, “For the most part, you do not shoot at vehicles because if you hit the driver, now you have an unguided missile.” Instead, cops are told to simply step away. “It takes more time to pull your gun and do that than it does to take three steps back,” Alpert said.

In previous shootings, DHS alleged that the people it killed posed a specific threat.

Most police officers seem to have absorbed the training they receive about not shooting at drivers. A nationwide study of people shot by municipal police between 2015 and 2020 found that only 7 percent involved a person described as being “armed with a vehicle.” For the Trump administration’s immigration agents, that figure now stands above 90 percent. “From what we’ve seen, it doesn’t look like they’ve been trained very well, if they’ve been trained at all in this,” Alpert said about how immigration agents are handling vehicle stops.

The agent who killed Durán was hired this year as part of ICE’s recruitment surge, according to The Atlantic. He previously worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs Police.

The Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly tried to justify shootings by claiming that drivers threatened the lives of immigration agents by “weaponizing” their vehicles. In many cases, videos and other evidence have made clear that these justifications were false and bore little resemblance to what actually happened. The department’s response to the killing of Durán, the 25-year-old Colombian man killed by an immigration agent in Maine on Monday, is different.

Instead of responding immediately, ICE took most of Monday to craft an ambiguous statement about why Durán was killed, claiming that agents were “conducting targeted surveillance on the last known address of an illegal alien with a final order of removal” then encountered an “illegal alien” leaving that residence. It neglects to say Durán was apparently not the person whom ICE agents were targeting.

The statement explains the shooting on the basis that the “vehicle attempted to flee the scene and fearing for public safety an officer discharged his weapon.” In previous shootings, DHS alleged that the people it killed posed a specific threat to immigration agents. ICE did not respond to a request for comment asking whether the agent who killed Durán feared for his own life.

Can a general fear for public safety ever justify shooting the driver of a moving vehicle? “Hell no,” Alpert replied. He added, “What does that mean? What do they know about this person? What do they know about them at the time the officer pulled the trigger? What was the immediate threat?”

Seth Stoughton, a former Tallahassee police officer and current professor of law and criminology at the University of South Carolina, said via email that the “generic statement that an officer ‘feared for public safety’ would not, in and of itself, establish that the fleeing subject’s actions presented a threat justifying the use of deadly force.” At a minimum,” Stoughton added, he would expect a clear account of why the person’s driving “created a serious threat.”

Six days before killing Durán, ICE agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant who had lived in Houston for three decades. Like Durán, Salgado was not the person whom ICE agents in unmarked vehicles were pursuing.

“I want to tell you about my dad,” Ronaldo Salgado said at a press conference last week. “He was a hardworking family man. He was also a man of routine.” He said that his dad got up before dawn to drive to work on a construction site—the same thing he had done for the past 35 years. Ronaldo Salgado said he found that his dad had died from a video posted on social media. As Mother Jones has reported, he said he recognized his father immediately “from his voice, crying for help as he lay on the street bleeding out.”

DHS claimed that Salgado “weaponized his vehicle,” but has provided no evidence—and, as with Durán’s killing, agents were not wearing body cameras. A video analysis of security camera footage by the Washington Post shows agents “aggressively following” Salgado but does “not appear to show Salgado Araujo ramming a vehicle” as DHS alleges.

The fatal shootings of Durán and Salgado come after numerous accounts of shootings by DHS have been contradicted by video evidence and witness accounts. After Ruben Ray Martinez was fatally shot by immigration agents in Texas last year, the agency later claimed Martinez “intentionally ran over” a DHS agent.

Joshua Orta, who was in the car at the time, rejected that account. Orta said in a statement that Martinez was shot “without giving any warning, commands or opportunity to comply.” He added that Martinez “was unarmed, nonviolent, not fleeing and not resisting at the time he was shot.” (In February, Orta died in a car accident in Texas.)

In October, a Border Patrol agent shot Marimar Martinez as part of DHS’ “Midway Blitz” operation in Chicago, led by disgraced Border Patrol “commander at large” Gregory Bovino. In the aftermath of the shooting, DHS claimed that Martinez was one of two “domestic terrorists” who ambushed Border Patrol agents and “rammed” them with their vehicles before taking “defensive fire.” The Trump administration then tried to prosecute her.

Text messages and body camera footage unraveled the case. Body camera footage showed one of the Border Patrol agents saying “Do something, bitch,” and “It’s time to get aggressive,” shortly before Charles Exum, the agent who shot Martinez, jerked the steering wheel of his SUV as part of an apparent effort to ram Martinez’s vehicle. Exum then jumped out of the SUV. Within seconds, he shot Martinez five times. “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys,” Exum later wrote in a text message about his actions.

Three months later, immigration agents shot and killed Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. DHS initially said that Good attempted to “kill” federal agents after she “weaponized her vehicle” in “an act of domestic terrorism.” But Good’s death was captured on video from multiple angles that made clear that she was driving away from the ICE agent who killed her.

DHS similarly alleged that Pretti, who was killed after an immigration agent removed his holstered and permitted handgun, appeared to be trying to “massacre law enforcement.” Video evidence showed that he was disarmed, surrounded, and defenseless when immigration agents killed him.

The nationwide backlash to Good’s and Pretti’s deaths cost Bovino his authority and forced DHS to at least temporarily adopt a less publicly confrontational approach. In the five months after Pretti’s death, immigration agents shot one person during interior enforcement activities. But in the past month, as arrest numbers increased, they have shot at four people, including Durán and Salgado. And in the case of its latest killing, the agency is offering essentially nothing in the way of explanation.

Continue Reading…

The Manosphere and Christian Nationalist Roots of Hegseth’s “Low-T” Fixation

On Wednesday, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced an initiative to screen US military members for low testosterone. “The modern battlefield is brutal and unrelenting,” he said. “It requires and demands maximum psychological and mental readiness. And by addressing these health markers early, we’re keeping you on the leading edge of lethality.” Troops found to be deficient in the screening, Hegseth said, would be offered testosterone therapy—which, he promised, would make them better warriors. “It’s about restoring and optimizing your natural capabilities,” he said, “protecting your longevity, ensuring you have the biological foundation required to sustain the fight.”

The idea of a widespread testosterone deficiency—”Low-T” among the extremely online—is having a moment. Over the last few years, influencers have made a cottage industry of telling men that their testosterone levels are low and selling them testosterone therapy. Consumer research firms estimate the market value for testosterone replacement therapy at around $2 billion; that number is expected to increase by a third by 2033.

Earlier this year, the Guardian reported on a recent study of low-T influencers by Emma Grundtvig Gram, a public health researcher at the University of Copenhagen. Gram and her colleagues analyzed 46 TikTok and Instagram posts with a combined following of more than 6.8 million. In the study abstract, the researchers noted that common themes in the posts included “the rebranding of low testosterone from an ‘old man’s problem’ to an issue affecting younger men and their fitness” and “low testosterone as a crisis of masculinity and male sexual performance.”

Yet the notion of a testosterone crisis in need of treatment is not backed by science, says Adriane Fugh-Berman, a professor of pharmacology and physiology at Georgetown University Medical Center. Screening for testosterone levels isn’t always accurate, she wrote in an email to Mother Jones, because in otherwise healthy men, levels can fluctuate dramatically. Symptoms can be “vague and nonspecific;” classic ones such as fatigue, brain fog, and low libido can be caused by myriad other conditions. What’s more, she says, “there is very little evidence that administration of testosterone can help symptoms.” The drawbacks of overprescribing testosterone are considerable; adverse effects include blood clots, fractures, heart arrhythmia, high blood pressure, kidney problems, infertility, and, adds Fugh-Berman, “let’s not forget testicular shrinkage.”

Despite these drawbacks, the Food and Drug Administration seems intent on exploring more applications for testosterone therapy. Last December, the agency convened what it described as an expert panel on the subject; panelists claimed that testosterone supplementation could improve men’s health and quality of life. In a comment to the FDA after the panel, the National Center for Health Research, a medical product safety advocacy group, wrote that testosterone therapy “does not improve strength or physical ability” and that “there is no established relationship between ‘Low-T’ and most of the symptoms that testosterone is being promoted to treat.” Testosterone, the group warned**,** “is not a fountain of youth or vitality.”

“A masculine message is not going to be declared by effeminate men. We have a real crisis in masculinity.”

But that doesn’t stop online influencers from claiming it is exactly that. Gram’s team wrote in the study abstract that the “low-T” posts they analyzed “prey on men’s insecurities about relationships and sexual performance” to sell “testosterone products for improving the masculine self without supporting evidence.”

In addition to the manosphere, another influence on Hegseth’s fixation on masculinity may be his spiritual leader, Doug Wilson, the self-proclaimed Christian nationalist Idaho pastor who preached at the Pentagon earlier this year. Wilson has opined extensively about the virtues of “biblical masculinity,” which he has called “cultural gluten.” Without a patriarchal society led by manly men, he wrote in his 2023 book Mere Christendom, “the cookie just crumbles to pieces in your hand, and is tasteless on top of that.” In a 2020 YouTube broadcast, Wilson declared, “A masculine message is not going to be declared by effeminate men. We have a real crisis in masculinity.” In a February interview with Military Times, Wilson noted, “We should do everything we can do to keep women out of combat roles.”

In an email to Mother Jones, Wilson called Hegseth’s testosterone screening initiative “a fascinating move” and said he would be “interested to see what they find out.”

Since becoming defense secretary in January 2025, Hegseth has ended affirmative action and trans-inclusive policies, dissolved the Pentagon committee that supported female troops, and blocked female military leaders from being promoted. In a speech at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, last year, he proclaimed, “No more dudes in dresses, we’re done with that!”

Continue Reading…

Trump’s Deportation Policing Force Is Killing People. It Was “Foreseeable In the Most Tragic Way.”

In the span of a week, immigration officers shot and killed two people in the streets of American cities. And a third person died on Tuesday in Florida after being struck by a tractor-trailer while running from an encounter with federal agents.

Last week, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, his brother, and two others were driving to work at a construction site in Houston when ICE stopped their van. An agent then reportedly fired into the passenger window, fatally hitting Araujo. He was not, however, the intended target of ICE’s operation.

Fifty-two-year-old Araujo was a father of three from Mexico and had lived in the United States for 35 years. He was in the process of obtaining lawful status. His son, Ronaldo Salgado**,** learned about the shooting from a video on social media. Speaking at a press conference the following day, he described his father as a family man who**,** after a hard day at work**,** liked to spend the evenings resting on his porch, listening to music**,** and petting his dog.

“He did not deserve to die,” Salgado told reporters. “He did not deserve to be reduced to a headline of ‘Mexican Man Shot and Killed by ICE.’”

As the Araujo family grieved, another casualty made the headlines. On Monday, July 13, an ICE agent shot and killed 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero inside a vehicle in Biddeford, Maine. The Colombian-born father of a three-year-old girl worked two jobs as a food delivery driver and a cleaner at a veterinary clinic. Like Araujo, Guerrero apparently wasn’t ICE’s initial target either.

In both shootings, the agents involved wore no body cameras. The Department of Homeland Security has claimed, without providing evidence, that Araujo had “attempted to evade arrest” and “weaponized” his vehicle against law enforcement. About Guerrero, DHS said he “attempted to flee the scene” and the officer, “fearing for public safety,” fired his weapon.

Araujo and Guerrero are among some 20 people who have been shot at by immigration agents since September, according to the New York Times. And there have been at least 17 shootings of motorists by federal immigration officers during Trump’s second term, the Washington Post found.

“When you see now people losing their lives,” said Naureen Shah, the ACLU’s Director of Government Affairs, Equality Division**,** “it’s not surprising that it’s happening. It’s totally foreseeable in the most tragic way.”

“A pattern of civil rights violations arising from immigration enforcement—at a scale and severity without precedent in our nation’s history.”

A new ACLU report co-authored by Shah documents howthese deadly ICE shootings were not only predictable; they fit into a broader pattern of reckless misconduct by the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement machine. Entitled “Agents of Chaos and Cruelty,” the reportanalyzes the ways in which this national deportation policing force has inflicted harm in communities around the United States.

The killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis, the report’s authors note, “were not the excesses of a few rogue officers.” They were “part of a pattern of civil rights violations arising from immigration enforcement—at a scale and severity without precedent in our nation’s history.”

After reviewing more than 1,200 immigration enforcement-related incidents across eight US states between January and December 2025, the ACLU found for instance:

• 432 incidents of misconduct by agents, including use of threatened force, intimidation tactics, and retaliation against observers and witnesses;
• 437 incidents likely involving racial profiling;
• 418 times agents pushed, shoved, tackled, or pinned people;
• 375 incidents involving use of force or threatened force by agents;
• 361 times agents deployed chemical irritants—132 of which were directed at individuals;
• Dozens of instances of excessive use of physical force that could have been deadly, including 52 times agents pressed knees and hands on people’s backs and necks;
• 76 times agents pulled people from cars.

“The incidents we reviewed,” the authors write, “indicate agents used force and the threat of force as default tactics and tools to coerce immediate compliance rather than to respond to a threat.” In more than 370 of the reviewed incidents, the agents were masked.

The comprehensive report paints a damning, albeit incomplete, picture of a policing force—made up of more than 50,000 agents among ICE, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and other federal, state, and local law enforcement—acting with few guardrails and increasingly unlimited resources.

In the last year and a half, the Trump administration revoked policies that limited immigration enforcement in areas such as schools, places of faith, and courthouses and set priorities for arrests. In the words of Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and architect of the immigration crackdown, “Everyone is fair game.”

Enabled by billions of dollars awarded by Congress,ICE went on a recruiting spree, adding about 12,000 agents to its force, while lowering hiring and training standards. At the same time, the administration gutted DHS’s internal watchdog. DHS whistleblowers warned Congress earlier this year that without oversight, the number of deaths and injuries in detention and as a result of excessive use of force would rise, as they have.

The ACLU report’s authors attribute the pattern of misconduct not to the actions of “a few bad apples”—individual agents—but rather to a “systemic breakdown in professional norms and standards” and “a culture of abuse, practices designed to evade accountability, and direct orders and encouragement of abuse by senior administration officials.”

Their findings also reinforce how no one, anywhere, is safe. The documented immigration enforcement incidents took place on highways, atbus stops, ingrocery stores, car washes, restaurants, and construction sites. And the people impacted included US citizens, green card holders, DACA recipients, as well as those with humanitarian protections. The authors also counted 214 children who experienced or were exposed to law enforcement misconduct.

“While the administration has tried to make it seem like they are now taking a quieter, smarter approach to immigration enforcement, they actually haven’t changed the way they’re behaving day to day.”

“While the administration has tried to make it seem like they are now taking a quieter, smarter approach to immigration enforcement, they actually haven’t changed the way they’re behaving day to day,” Shah said. “We still have these agents who are causing chaos wherever they go. These street arrests are creating danger zones out of places of daily life, like bus stops and gas stations and small town intersections, and that’s what we just saw in these shootings, and that’s also what we’ve seen around the country in many occurrences that just haven’t broken through in the national headlines over many months.”

In the report, Shah and her co-author warn that the abuses and practices they documented offer a blueprint for authoritarianism, including the suppression of protests, retaliation and intimidation of observers and witnesses, and the use of federal law enforcement agencies as an “internal security force.”

“We should think about this mass deportation drive as a project of the authoritarian slide that we’re in,” Shah said. “And if we want to future-proof our democracy against authoritarianism, we have to fix the system.”

Following the killings of Araujo and Guerrero, the Trump administration ordered ICE to halt most vehicle stops. But in an interview with Fox News, border czar Tom Homan said the pause would be temporary while ICE leadership and DHS looked into the incidents: “Is there something that could have been done better? Is there any training that can be improved? Or is ICE simply doing its job, and bad things happen when people don’t comply with law enforcement officers?”

Homan said the “noise” wouldn’t affect ICE’s arrests moving forward and called it a “bump in the road.” On Wednesday, Trump also indicated that he had no intention of slowing down the immigration crackdown surge, posting on Truth Social that ICE should “go back and do your very important job.”

“These officers aren’t getting enough training on how to distinguish the circumstances of an arrest to know when they should be engaging in it,” said Ryan Schwank, a former attorney and instructor for ICE who became a whistleblower. “What we’re seeing is officers are rushing to make arrests. They’re being pressured to get high numbers. And as a result of that, they’re looking for the opportunity to get the arrest done quickly.”

Schwank said the “escalation” of action by agents in the recent fatal shootings doesn’t “fit their training and it doesn’t fit their operational practices historically.” He added: “I don’t think that an agency like ICE stops a practice like vehicle stops, which is so critical to its operations, without having internally already decided that something was going wrong, that there’s clearly a failure if they’re having this many fatalities, this many incidents…They know this is not working, and they’re going to keep doing it anyway because they’ve been ordered to do so.”

Continue Reading…

Coloradans to Vote on Whether They Have a “Right to Natural Gas”

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A ballot measure written by a conservative nonprofit could amend the Colorado Constitution to enshrine fossil fuel companies’ right to sell methane gas and possibly force communities that have tried to eliminate gas appliances from new construction to back away from those efforts.

Advance Colorado, which wrote the measure and led the effort to gather enough signatures to add the measure to the ballot, submitted its petition on June 25 to put Initiative 177, the “Right to Natural Gas,” to voters in November’s state election.

The broad language of the measure—only 60 words in total—makes it difficult to predict how state agencies would implement it if it passes and many people worry the amendment would endanger Colorado’s ability to reach its climate goals.

The proposed amendment states that “producers and utilities have the right to sell natural gas to homes and businesses.” That could force changes to building codes that encourage electric heating and cooking, undoing progress towards electrification.

“This would be the first constitutional amendment to provide a right to a particular fossil fuel.”

“Really, it’s just a cynical attempt to lock fossil fuel industry profits into the state constitution,” said Kelly Nordini, CEO of Conservation Colorado, an environmental nonprofit. “That’s bad for people’s pocketbooks, for clean air, for clean water; it has no provisions for public health or safety.”

The ballot measure faced pushback earlier this year from House Democrats and Conservation Colorado. House Democrats proposed a bill that would have preemptively placed protections for public health and safety on the right to natural gas amendment. However, House Republicans ran out the clock on the bill during the final day of the legislative session, preventing it from being introduced.

Conservation Colorado initially filed four ballot initiatives for November’s state election in response to the amendment: three seeking to hold oil and gas companies liable for harm caused by their operations, and one to stop utilities raising rates to pay for natural gas infrastructure expansion. The organization later decided not to pursue these initiatives to focus on opposing the right to natural gas measure.

Advance Colorado did not respond to requests for comment. However, in a report published in April, they argued that “burdensome” regulation places hidden costs on consumers and calls on the state to protect the right to energy choice. The report said that efforts towards decarbonization and electrification—key pillars of the state’s efforts to confront climate change—“would have a devastating impact on Colorado.”

Legislators and industry groups in other states have pursued similar actions to prevent the transition away from domestic methane gas use. From 2020 to 2024, 26 states passed preemptive bans on policies that required the states to transition away from methane gas use. For example, in 2021, Utah enacted a law banning restrictions on connections to gas utilities.

While the right to natural gas measure in Colorado has similar motivations to actions taken in other states, it takes a unique approach.

“We’re in uncharted terrain,” said Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. “This would be the first constitutional amendment to provide a right to a particular fossil fuel.” A constitutional amendment would trump most legislation seeking to limit the use of methane gas, while the laws in other parts of the country don’t have the same power.

Electric heat pumps emit less carbon than gas furnaces, even when methane powers the local grid.

Colorado’s ballot measure is also unique in its breadth: The language contains no caveats, explanations, or provisions for public safety. “It doesn’t reflect the sort of thorough public engagement and decision making, and the application of technical expertise which typically you would want when making these kinds of decisions,” said Burger.

The decision to pursue the policy as a ballot measure also reflects a larger trend in Colorado politics. In recent years, citizen-initiated ballot measures have become the strategy of choice for conservatives in the state to pursue their policy priorities without going through the majority-blue legislature.

Ballot measures historically have been used to pursue policies that would struggle through an unsympathetic legislature. Colorado’s 2004 Renewable Portfolio Standard, which established the state’s first push towards renewable energy, succeeded as a ballot measure when Republicans held a majority in the state government.

Voter turnout and engagement is low for local and state elections, especially for ballot issues, so financial backing can exert greater influence on the outcome. According to campaign finance disclosures, more than $1,000,000 was spent this year on signature collection for the right to natural gas initiative.

Over the last three years, Advance Colorado and other conservative nonprofits have spent more than $8.6 million on canvassing for ballot initiatives that Advance Colorado writes. Since 2023, four conservative nonprofits—Advance Colorado, Colorado Dawn, Defend Colorado, and Common Sense America—have accounted for nearly all of the $10,000,000 of reported spending by citizens on ballot initiative canvassing in the state.

While Advance Colorado has deep pockets, it does not have to disclose its funders, which led Nordini to worry about the motivations behind the ballot measure. “Who’s funding that? Who’s behind this? Who stands to benefit?” she asked. “We have no idea.”

Oil and gas has historically held considerable political power in Colorado state politics. According to state lobbying disclosures, three oil and gas companies—Chevron, Civitas, and Kinder Morgan—collectively registered 21 lobbyists in the 2025 session, and industry groups registered at least another 16. The state’s three largest employers—the University of Colorado, Denver International Airport, and Walmart—registered only 8 total in the same year.

In 2023, Civitas, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Colorado Oil and Gas association lobbied to support HB23-1127 “Customer’s Right To Use Energy”—a proposed bill very similar to the right to natural gas amendment. The bill, which failed in committee, also would have prohibited local building codes that limited the use of natural gas.

The right to natural gas measure arrives as the state pursues policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions from natural gas. Colorado currently generates around a third of its electricity from methane gas, and around 70 percent of the state’s homes use it for heating. In 2022, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission issued a rule requiring emissions from heating buildings to be cut by 41 percent by 2035.

The state relies on incentives to encourage homeowners to make energy efficiency upgrades in their homes. Rebates for switching to electric heat pumps, funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, were hugely popular with Coloradans—of the $31.9 million in funding released by the state in November 2025, only $3.5 million remains. Homeowners in the eastern half of the state reserved the four years’ worth of rebates available to them within six months.

Electric heat pumps emit less carbon than methane gas furnaces, even when methane gas powers the local electricity grid. They are more energy efficient, and as the grid incorporates more renewables, the emissions per unit of heat they generate goes down. Heat pumps can also lower utility bills, reduce indoor pollution and minimize the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning.

In the past five years, some municipalities in Colorado have adopted ambitious building codes that require heat pumps in new buildings to reduce carbon emissions. A 2022 policy in the City of Denver requires swapping methane gas furnaces for heat pumps whenever a home or commercial building needs a major repair to its heating system. The town of Crested Butte now requires new construction to be all-electric—that means no methane gas for heating, boilers, or cooking.

If Advance Colorado’s right to natural gas amendment passes in November, those building codes would likely need to change to maintain distributors’ ability to sell gas to homeowners and businesses.

The right to natural gas has to earn 55 percent of the vote to become part of the constitution, but it will face vocal opposition from environmental and progressive groups throughout the state. Conservation Colorado has submitted a campaign finance complaint alleging that Advance Colorado has failed to register an issue committee and disclose all expenditures related to the campaign.

Even though Advance Colorado gathered the signatures necessary to get the initiative on the November ballot, Nordini is optimistic that it won’t prevail in the election: “I think Colorado voters will see through this.”

Continue Reading…

“I’m Ashamed of My Country”: Biddeford, Maine Locals Grieve Neighbor Killed by ICE

The day after hundreds of locals poured into the streets of Biddeford, Maine in protest of ICE’s killing of 26-year-old Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero on Monday, I drove through the former mill town. It seemed eerily still, as if in shock. When the horrors of Minneapolis and Houston come to your small corner of New England, what can you do?

In Mechanics Park in Biddeford, a small but diligent group presented one answer: you keep showing up.

“When I woke up this morning, I knew that this was the place I should go right to,” said Wayne Miller, 71, a retired pilot of 35 years and resident of Beverly, Massachusetts. “This is my backyard. This is my neighborhood.”

He paused, then started to cry. “I’m ashamed of my country. I love the country. I’m ashamed.”

Miller was standing with a sign that read “Dissent while you still can” at the corner of Mechanics Park in Biddeford, where the protest and vigil for Guerrero had been held the day before. A nearby chain-link fence served as a memorial, lined with flowers, signs, and letters of grief and apology for Guerrero and his family. One read, “3-year-olds should be watching Bluey, not their fathers being executed.” Above a “No Trespassing” sign, someone had placed another: “Biddeford was built by immigrants.”

I spoke with Miller and others who had come out on Tuesday to continue expressing their grief for their neighbor, the second person killed by federal agents in less than a week.

“It’s one thing to see a news story from a distance,” said Tessa, 28, a waitress and resident of Biddeford. “But watching it happen close to home, it really recontextualizes the safety that you feel walking around in your neighborhood.”

For Linda Henry, 27, a retired firefighter and Gloucester, Massachusetts resident, it was only a matter of time. “I know that it doesn’t matter where you live. It’s going to happen, you know. ICE is going to come.”

“I’m ashamed of my country. I love the country. I’m ashamed.”

Guerrero was a Colombian citizen who lived in Biddeford, Maine with his partner and 3-year-old daughter. He is one of at least nine people killed by federal immigration agents since the start of Donald Trump’s second term. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin claims Guerrero “weaponized” his vehicle during a traffic stop. But similar claims by DHS have quickly fallen apart after video footage of shootings has come to light.

Reports say that not only was Guerrero authorized to legally work in the US, but he wasn’t the target of ICE’s operations that day.

Katie, a 48-year-old educator from New Hampshire, shared her anger. “A gun is not a license to kill. These agents have no business drawing their guns,” she said. “They aren’t judge, jury, and executioner, and they don’t have the right to be killing people the way that they are.”

“We were taught from the time we were little, ‘liberty and justice for all.’ We were taught that the United States was a place for everyone, and the current regime has changed that,” Katie continued.

A sign at a makeshift memorial for Guerrero at Mechanics Park in Biddeford, Maine.

Most of the protesters were standing with signs on the sidewalk along the adjacent intersection, shouting “ICE OUT” while passing cars honked. Near the memorial, a man on a bike caught my eye. He was off to the side, alone, quietly reading the letters addressed to Guerrero.

He introduced himself as Diego, 30, a restaurant worker and Biddeford resident. “I knew the guy. He was always around,” he said. “I was working and I was about to cry, to be honest. Because it’s injustice, you know? I’m an immigrant, and this country was built for immigrants.”

“We work, we pay taxes. We also need rights, as everybody does,” he said. “It’s not about left or right. It’s not about a political party. It’s about human rights.”

He told me that while he’s never felt disrespected by his neighbors and the people of Biddeford are good, the government is not the same. He said he feels unsafe and his community of immigrants feels like it’s hiding.

“How many need to die for us to understand?” Diego said. “He’d got a kid, a little daughter. And that’s the most devastating. Because, you know, if I do something wrong, I can say ‘I’m sorry, I apologize.’ But he’s dead. There’s no apology that can bring him back, you know? He’s dead. I can’t even believe it, I can’t even believe this is happening.”

Letters, flowers, and signs lined the fence at Mechanics Park.

When I asked Diego why he had stopped on his bike, he said out of solidarity—for Guerrero, for his partner and daughter. And when I asked what he would say to his community, he said, “Thank you for all the solidarity of people. Thank you for all the understanding. And I hope we can stop the violence.”

Continue Reading…

Meet the Multi-Millionaire Pro-Hamas Activist Who Was Arrested in Spain

Last week, Spanish authorities arrested far-left activist Fergie Chambers in Ibiza after the US Department of Justice called for him to be extradited on international money-laundering charges. His family has denied the charges and claims that Chambers is a victim of political persecution. “Fergie is being jailed because he uses his wealth to support Palestine and those suffering genocide in Gaza,” Chambers’ partner, Stella Schnabel, wrote in a statement reported by the Guardian. “In short, he is facing political persecution for having dedicated his life to building a better society, rather than exploiting people and profiting from war.” If convicted, Chambers could face up to 30 years in federal prison.

According to reports in multiple news outlets, the indictment, which is currently sealed, accuses Chambers of transferring $7.5 million to bank accounts in Tunisia, where he lives, with the alleged intent of providing support to organizations designated as terrorist groups by the US government. Chambers’ legal team and family maintain that these funds were not used to aid terrorist groups, but instead for the work he has supported in Palestine, which is humanitarian in nature.

As I reported in 2024, Chambers’ fortune comes from his father’s family’s company, Cox Enterprises, a global conglomerate with automotive and media holdings worth nearly $30 billion. In July 2023, Chambers divested from the family business because of political differences. He told me he received $250 million and will get an undisclosed additional sum in the coming years.

To convict Chambers, the Trump administration will have to make a convincing case that he intended to use the money he transferred to his accounts to support terrorist groups. On social media and in the press, where Chambers is a notorious firebrand, they will find ample evidence of his support for the Palestinian military group Hamas, a US-designated terrorist organization. On October 14, 2023, seven days after Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel, he posted on X, “No faction of the Palestinian resistance, Hamas or other, has done *anything* wrong.” Eight days later, he wrote in another post that “Israel has no right to exist.”

In the past, Chambers has also supported radical activist groups such as Palestine Action, now known in the United States as Unity of Fields, which celebrated Hamas’ October 7th massacre. Activists associated with these groups have been convicted of criminal damage, including using a van to ram through the fence of a defense technology company in 2024 and defacing the property of companies, universities, and private residences.

When I interviewed Chambers in 2024, he was characteristically frank about his political views:

While the broader Cox family’s political reputation is squarely centrist, Chambers’ is somewhere in the vicinity of Chairman Mao. When we spoke—after a few weeks of phone tag that involved me missing some pre-dawn calls back from Chambers—he seemed to relish defying mainstream orthodoxy, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin “one of the better statesmen of our century,” and describing Hamas’ October 7 attack as “a moment of hope and inspiration for tens of millions of people.” While he denies a recent claim in Los Angeles Magazine that he chants “death to America” every day, he allows that the idea is more or less true. “I think the most important thing for the prosperity of humanity is the destruction of the US,” he told me.

When we spoke, Chambers had recently converted to Islam and moved to Tunisia. There were, he told me at the time, “definitely murmurings of the FBI looking at me.”

Continue Reading…

A Haitian Republican Pastor and the Conservative Movement Letting Him Down

When President Trump promised to be a “champion” of Haitian-Americans during his 2016 presidential run, Rev. Daniel Ulysse and other conservatives believed him. Ulysse has stayed the course supporting Trump in the decade since, even as he’s seen that promise shattered.

As head of the Haitian American Republican Caucus, a political organization that lobbies on behalf of Haitian Americans, Ulysse acknowledges that his group is underfunded, and lacks the political weight other lobbying groups can throw around. It’s never been easy advocating for Haiti. But he believes that can change.

With an estimated 700,000 eligible voters of Haitian descent in the U.S., a more powerful Haitian voting bloc is not out of the question. A majority of those voters swing Democrat, but Ulysse says he’s made allies of Republican lawmakers in states with large Haitian populations like Florida and New York. But those connections are up against the raging current of a Republican Party pushing a national anti-immigration agenda that’s been directed at Haitians.

“Nobody’s speaking for Haiti, so I have to devote most of my time, my energy, for Haiti,” Ulysse told me.

In February 2025, the Trump administration terminated Temporary Protected Services (TPS), the designation for people fleeing countries experiencing extreme armed conflict or disaster that gave temporary immigration status to over 300,000 Haitians. The termination was immediately challenged in court, and some hope followed this spring when a bill to extend TPS passed the House with the help of 10 Republicans.

We’re gonna have to make a choice between money and the future of this country, and the future of the Republican administration.

Then, last month, the U.S. Supreme Court upended the fight. It sided with the Trump administration and effectively decreed that Haitians living in the US through TPS must return to Haiti, a country in the thick of a food insecurity crisis and ongoing gang violence. It’s not as if officials in the Trump administration don’t know about the situation in Haiti; the U.S. State Department advises Americans not to travel to Haiti due to the risk of crime, terrorism, kidnapping and unrest.

After the news broke, I reached out to Ulysse to find out what this moment means for Haitians, what it is like to navigate a Republican Party that widely celebrated the end of TPS, and where he is finding hope at this time.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

How would you describe the current moment for a Haitian living in the US?

It’s a very difficult moment. Many of them feel betrayed because they were expecting a better outcome from the Trump administration than Biden. Many of them voted for Trump. We supported him, and he pledged to help Haiti, to be Haiti’s greatest champion, and that never materialized.

We believe that Biden had an opportunity, and Obama, to do something to [create] a pathway to citizenship. But instead they have that program, TPS, and the other program Biden program (CHNV parole) that didn’t really help Haitians.

And then moving forward, the next term, Trump 47, we were expecting better, but things got worse. And that’s why people feel betrayed and not happy. We deserve better.

How is your community responding to the news about TPS?

They’re afraid. They are sad. They’re very angry. They wouldn’t mind going back to Haiti, but the place is a mess. It’s got worse. It gets worse because of the mercenaries, all they do is create problems, killing people, making money. So it’s a total mess with the American administration right now, where big money makes the decision.

When you destabilize a country, when you destroy all the institutions, when you impose a guy like Alix Didier Fils-Aimé (acting prime minister of Haiti since 2024) who has no credibility. They are the ones running the show. They have the money, and they are paying the lobbyists. You pay, you play. That’s what’s going on in Haiti. Human life has no meaning for these people. That’s why I stand, that’s why many of us stand for justice and righteousness and bring these people to common sense. You cannot and shouldn’t deport these people in this situation.

What was your reaction?

I was very disappointed. I was shocked ’cause I thought that the people would have known better. They know the crime and the violence.

But it was not, honestly, until I realized Erik Prince was pushing for mass deportations. (A company led by Erik Prince, the founder of the former military contractor Blackwater, recently signed a ten-year deal with the Haitian government to build prisons, manage security and border security.) This mass deportation is about money, about Erik and some other guys who wanna make money building jails and deporting people. It’s a business. Private prisons here in the United States: shutting Black and Brown people in prison. They know how much money can be made, so they have to listen to their donors and who gives money to push that agenda. That’s exactly what is going on with the TPS thing.

The Haitian community has been attacked by Republican leaders in the past two years, like President Trump calling Haiti a “shithole” country, or Vice President JD Vance falsely speaking about Haitian migrants eating pets. How do you square that with the party?

I don’t support anyone who makes such statements. Whatever you say reflects on your personality. It’s quite simple. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

The Republican people paid because their constituents who are racist, give them money. When you give money, they say whatever their constituent wants. Usually, politicians have a language, wherever they are, to please their base. They will never dare saying such a thing about Israel. But, you know, a country like Haiti, they have no political power yet.

So I need to make it clear, do you still support this Presidential administration?

Yes, I do. I don’t support the action, but I don’t have another administration.

Do any of these policy decisions make you question your support for this administration and the Republican party?

People need to understand how American policy works. People, where they are an anti-immigrant group who have money, will lobby to push an anti-immigrant agenda. People take advantage, so we become a scapegoat in political discussion. So the administration will listen to people who give money, will lobby, who hate Blacks, who hate immigrants, and they’re the ones pushing the agenda. They will be the one they listen to.

So it’s not the elected person per se, but whose agenda they’re supporting. Look at what’s going on with Netanyahu and Israel, that the Jewish lobby is so powerful. So this is my take on it. We don’t have the resources. We’re not there yet politically. But if we were organized, and we had big money, then you wouldn’t hear that.

Have you found any Democrats that stand up for Haiti in ways that you would hope?

You see Democrats like (Senate Minority Leader Chuck) Schumer, for example, they will speak up for supporting Haiti. You will see them put their neck out. But it’s only now that for the first time you can see Republicans putting their neck out, like (Rep. Mike) Lawler and (Rep. Carlos) Gimenez. Rarely do you see that.

Do you fear that the end of TPS could be the start of the end of the US Haitian diaspora?

The problem is only temporary. President Trump, I mean, how much time does he have in office, okay? We’ve seen the political cycle, and this TPS [decision] will hurt the Republican Party, unfortunately, in many areas. That’s why many Republicans are afraid. They know the Venezuelans, the Cubans, many other people will organize. The Democrat is using this tool–deportation–against them.

As Republicans, I wish they would have common sense and do better. But otherwise, many Republicans are gonna lose, and the Democrats are going to come back and use that political tool again, and hopefully they will come with a pathway to citizenship.

I mean, ICE picking up people, taking them somewhere is money. I think we can do better. The US can do better. Trump can do better. I know I will have an opportunity to speak to him, and hopefully he will listen.

I’ve been around these people, and all I want to do is to have them understand what’s at stake for the country. How do you talk about deporting all those people, when we have no government in Haiti? Our own US State Department knows. Rubio knows Haiti. Markwayne Mullin, the Secretary of Homeland Security, all these people. They know what’s going on. But again, the money of Erik [Prince] and all those guys are pushing them to look the other way. Eventually we’re gonna have to make a choice between money and the future of this country, and the future of the Republican administration.

These deportations have been part of the conservative movement. As someone who’s been part of that movement, how do you feel about your role in this?

I haven’t done enough. I think there are many conservative movement people who are standing for religious liberty. So the conservative [movement], the church, needs to know the atrocity and the criminal activities that’s going on today in Haiti.

As a conservative movement, people need to know if you’re defending the church, if you’re defending religious persecution, if we are anti-abortion, we should stand with the Haitian people.

Where do you think the Haitian community can find hope right now?

Haitians can find hope in fighting to fix Haiti, in fighting to restore democracy in Haiti, in fighting to kick the criminals out of Haiti. Because, no matter what, it’s not just about TPS. People in Haiti need to live. Haitians need to get organized and fight, and change that country. We deserve better. This is the real story.

Is there anything else you want to say?

We want people to extend TPS. We want justice. We want better for Haiti. We want the United States to understand Haitians are decent, good people. We want people to stand up in solidarity with Haiti right now. Yes, we appreciate the Democrats and the Black Caucus, those who stand up for TPS. But we need more than TPS.

We need a delegation, we need to come and expose what is going on in Haiti. That’s the best help. We want to develop our country. We need factories. We need business. We don’t need a handout. We need the world to know what is going on in Haiti, where they destroy everything so that Haiti becomes an export.

Continue Reading…

What Trump’s Proposal to Ban Pregnant Tourists Could Look Like

In the days after the Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship as the law of the land, an enraged Trump administration has been rigorously investigating new ways to crack down on “birth tourism,” a practice that refers to pregnant women who come to the United States solely to give birth and obtain US citizenship for their children. And to do so, they have floated an alarming option: a potential ban on pregnant foreigners.

“You have mothers that come in fully pregnant, have a baby, go home,” Stephen Miller told Fox News, as host Jesse Watters cracked about “banning foreign pregnant women” from entering the US. “That baby then gets Medicaid,” Miller continued, “and that baby gets welfare, and that baby gets cash assistance.”

In a separate Fox News appearance, wherein host Brian Kilmeade similarly suggested a blanket ban on pregnant tourists, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin seemed receptive to the idea. “It’s absolutely a national security issue,” he said, going on to describe an elaborate scenario in which Chinese nationals give birth in the US and return to China with their newly minted American citizen babies. Once there, Mullin continued, these Chinese mothers would raise US citizens in a “communist regime,” only for them to return as adults to attend American universities where they could begin “stealing intellectual property.”

It is not illegal for foreign nationals to give birth in the US. But coming to the US solely to give birth, thereby lying on visa applications or deceiving border officials, is prohibited. So too are companies that sell birth tourism schemes. But for all the warnings about the scale and vastness ofbirth tourism, there is scant data on the issue. “There’s no direct data on this, which is what’s creating the confusion,” Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, said. “Everyone is pandering to numbers with whatever they feel like.”

“If you’re determined that this is the obsession you have, cost doesn’t matter.”

The lack of data hasn’t stopped Trump officials, who remain determined to fundamentally reshape our understanding of who is considered to be a “real” American after losing at the Supreme Court, albeit narrowly. But in targeting pregnant foreigners, they omit a key detail: A 2020 federal regulation that denies travel visas to pregnant people and gives border agents wide latitude to deny entry to women suspected of birth tourism already exists—thanks to the first Trump administration.

That regulation, according to Chishti, amounted to a “significant change in the way we structure US law,” in that it shifted the burden away from the government to establish an attempt at birth tourism to a pregnant person having to prove they weren’t traveling to the US just to give birth. If found inadmissible, the regulation also denied pregnant people opportunities to plead their cases.

So, how are such determinations made? Do Customs and Border Patrol officials, who have such broad discretion to deny anyone entry into the country, carry pregnancy tests? Have OB-GYNs been engaged to patrol airports to assess how pregnant a person is? Theoretically, we should have some answers about how such determinations are made, given that the regulation has been on the books for over six years. But when Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia, attempted to FOIA information about how enforcement was being carried out, she never received an answer.

According to Homeland Security’s online guidance, officers will often consider “the date your child is due for delivery and the length of time you intend to stay in the United States.” They also tend to check if you have sufficient insurance to cover any medical expenses. But nothing is said about how officers determine a woman is pregnant in the first place, which is troubling considering the enormous variation in how a person’s physical appearance coincides with their gestational state.

“I don’t trust a customs official to know how people look different at different stages of pregnancy.”

“I don’t trust a customs official to know how people look different at different stages of pregnancy,” Frost said, adding that she was concerned with how the policy “polices pregnant women.”

No such concern was evident at the Supreme Court in April, when Solicitor General John Sauer claimed that 1.5 million Chinese nationals hold US citizenship because of birth tourism. But Chief Justice John Roberts appeared skeptical. When pressed on how rampant birth tourism actually was, Sauer acknowledged, “No one knows for sure.”

That’s true. But a more accurate response would note that although there is no official tally, experts widely agree that the number is far less than 1.5 million from a single country. Even the conservative anti-immigration group, the Center for Immigration Studies, estimates that there are 26,000 such births at most. Which adds up to less than 1 percent of all babies born in the US in a year.

Roberts, in upholding birthright citizenship, referenced this very lack of evidence in his opinion. “The trouble is that there is scant evidence for this dramatically revisionist view. Certainly, no one said that such a change had occurred.”

The natural question, then, becomes what more the Trump administration could do beyond enforcing the already existing federal regulations. One option, Chishti said, could be ramping up the number of women placed under expedited removals, which sidesteps the legal right to a judge—the same process that the Trump administration has used in its wider immigration crackdown to quickly deport people without a court hearing. Also on the table: prosecuting individual women, instead of organized groups that sell birth tourism services.

As for pregnancy tests at the border, that might seem extreme, even for this White House. But Chishti cautioned against dismissing the potential of such alarming— not to mention logistically complicated—measures getting added to the government’s enforcement protocol. “If you’re determined that this is the obsession you have,” Chishti said, “cost doesn’t matter.” In fact, the US has a long history of using medical tests to bar entry to foreigners, including those who tested positive for HIV and Chinese immigrants who tested positive for a slew of diseases and infections during the Chinese Exclusion Act back in 1882, as well as using forced sterilizations against Black and indigenous groups.Should pregnancy exams take place at the border, they would arrive at a moment when states are increasingly embracing digital surveillance tools to track pregnant people seeking abortions.

It certainly helps the Trump administration that birth tourism, to the extent that it is a problem, does not poll well with Americans, even though a majority of Americans support birthright citizenship as a constitutional right. That’s because many see the former as a strategy for “others” to game a system through exploitation. The reward? According to opponents, it’s largely access to the US welfare system. But for many, Frost said, Americans are more likely to disapprove of birth tourism because it insults their notions of American belonging. To them, “citizenship is not just about a passport and legal rights,” she said, “it also carries a sense of membership, a being part of ‘us’—and [birth tourism] offends those ideas.”

All of which, under the right scenario, could open the doors for more profiling. For now, it’s unclear what exactly the Trump administration has in mind. But considering the once-unthinkable ways the administration has carried out the largest deportation campaign in US history, and the unnervingly close decision that barely saved birthright citizenship, it seems reasonable to prepare for the worst.

Continue Reading…

ICE Won’t Change Under Trump

President Trump said on Wednesday morning that ICE should continue making vehicle stops, appearing to contradict his own administration’s suspension of the stops following federal officers fatally shooting two men within a week.

“We must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands.”

ICE agents killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston last Tuesday and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine on Monday. Both men were unarmed, neither was the actual target of a federal immigration operation, and the agents did not wear body cameras.

People with knowledge of the directive told several news outlets that federal officers had been told to temporarily halt pulling over drivers on Tuesday, but it remains unclear what officer conduct the administration would evaluate during the pause.

“What I understand [from] talking to the director of ICE, it’s a short pause just to make sure we are doing the right thing,” Tom Homan said on Fox News on Tuesday, insisting that the decision would not affect the number of ICE arrests. According to the Associated Press, the suspension includes carve-outs for carrying out criminal warrants or working with partner agencies.

Since the start of Trump’s second term, federal immigration agents have shot and killed at least 11 people. Five of them were in their vehicles at the time. As my colleague Sophie Hurwitz wrote last week, the Department of Homeland Security’s go-to justification is that the victims weaponized their vehicles and were thus dangers to the officers and the public. Noah Lanard reported for Mother Jones, that, according to ICE’s own data, none of its officers have been killed by an immigrant and law enforcement officers are taught not to shoot into cars, as doing so will likely not stop a moving vehicle.

Even if the Trump administration follows through with its temporary suspension of vehicle stops, its violence will continue.Isabela Dias noted in January that ICE implements the brutality by design with its goal to hit record numbers of arrests. According to the New York Times, federal officials detained more than 10,000 people in five days, and ICE has doubled its daily arrest numbers from last year.

Continue Reading…

The Most Extreme GOP Candidate in the Nation

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land_. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial._

Before I get to the most extreme Republican candidate…

By now you’re probably sick of hearing about Graham Platner and the debacle in Maine. Last week, the allegation from a former girlfriend that he had once raped her—a charge he denied—ended the Senate campaign of this Marine vet and oysterman who had been embraced by some Democrats and progressives as the Great Blue-Collar Hope of the party. That credible accusation led to much debate over whether Platner’s advocates had been wrong to stick with him through earlier scandals about his Nazi tattoo, extramarital sexting, assorted online remarks, and allegations that he had mistreated girlfriends, with some folks suggesting Platner had been cut slack because he was a white guy. Three hundred members of the Democratic Socialists of America angrily urged DSA candidates to cut ties with Morris Katz, a key consultant to Platner’s campaign; New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is a DSA member who has a close relationship with Katz.

No one’s asking me for advice. But with so much at stake in the coming midterms, such post-Platner squabbling is not useful. Donald Trump and the GOP have been implementing authoritarian measures, and American democracy is at risk. Democrats looking to counter this threat need to succeed in November. Those elections should be their sole focus—be they DSAers or centrists. This truly is not the time for intraparty score-settling.

Okay, one more thing about the Platner disaster. I hate to come across as an institutionalist, particularly when our political institutions, including the Democratic Party, are frequently failing to serve the best values of the nation. But there’s often good reason for traditional practices.

It’s generally good to develop experience as a politician. There’s a reason why virtually all major league baseball players start in the minor leagues. That’s where they learn the ropes.

Platner was a political novice. As has been widely noted, he was not thoroughly vetted. I’m not confident that a thorough investigation would have turned up what happened between him and an ex-girlfriend. Campaign vetting is hardly a magical operation that uncovers all. But had he run previously for lower offices, this and other past conduct might have become known.

Seeking political office is damn hard, and candidates must contend with many challenges—some real, some manufactured by opponents. It’s generally good to develop experience as a politician. There’s a reason why virtually all major league baseball players start in the minor leagues. That’s where they learn the ropes. It’s also where their potential can be scoped out and evaluated by coaches and fans.

Platner parachuted into politics at a high level. Very few people can do this. (You-know-who did so, and that’s been good for him and his cronies, but a disaster for the nation.) Pursuing a career in politics by moving up the ladder from one office to another is easily scorned. But it does repeatedly put candidates in front of the electorate and in a position to be poked, probed, and examined. Platner skipped all that. That was to his detriment and that of Maine voters.

To be sure, there are people who can traipse into politics from other fields. And given how broken American politics have become, it’s easy to be cynical about conventional candidates and hopeful about fresh-faced outsiders. But perhaps the lesson here is that experience and battle-testing ought not to be readily dismissed by those who justifiably yearn for political change.

Now on to another disastrous but successful newbie politician who is perhaps the most extreme GOP candidate in this year’s elections: Victor Marx, who last week won the Republican gubernatorial primary in Colorado in a highly competitive contest.

Marx, a Christian fundamentalist, is a Marine vet who once worked as an assistant to James Dobson at Focus on the Family, a leading religious-right outfit. Dobson, who died last year, was one of the nation’s most prominent opponents of LGBTQ rights and marriage equality. He called for women to be subservient to men in the home. He said that mass school shootings were God’s vengeance for Americans’ acceptance of abortion and homosexuality. You know, the whole megillah.

Marx founded a nonprofit ministry called All Things Possible that says it mounts operations in “high-risk” areas, such as war-torn nations, to rescue women and children. His campaign website claimed that his group had rescued more than 45,000 women, but that assertion proved not to be true and was removed. Marx blamed a campaign consultant for the supposed error.

Marx says that when he was three years old, his stepfather forced him to behead a cat andwear the cat’s carcass on his head. He also says that when he was seven, his stepfather made him shoot and kill a man.

When Colorado reporter Kyle Clark in May pressed Marx on how many rescues his ministry had accomplished, Marx wouldn’t share an estimate. He was also shifty when Clark asked him for details on the 130 missions he had previously said his group had run to rescue women and children, and he provided no specifics on these operations. He also wouldn’t share any information to back up a previous claim that on one of his missions he called in an airstrike on ISIS.

Here is my full 30 minute interview with the Republican frontrunner for Colorado Governor: youtu.be/KywOV9EkNFg?…

— Kyle Clark (@kylec.bsky.social) 2026-05-31T17:19:23.482Z

It was hard to watch Clark’s interview with Marx and not conclude there has been a fair bit of BSing on Marx’s part.

And there are plenty of other suspicious elements within his biography. Marx says that when he was three years old, his stepfather forced him to behead a cat andwear the cat’s carcass on his head. He also says that when he was seven, his stepfather made him shoot and kill a man. Not surprisingly, there’s no proof of these awful stories.

Beyond pitching (tall?) tales about his past, Marx promotes the concept of spiritual warfare, which holds that Satan is rather busy in the real world and responsible for the evils perceived by Christian fundamentalists, such as abortion and homosexuality. That means that anyone supporting reproductive rights or LGBTQ rights is in the clutches of the devil and that only believers in Jesus Christ (as Marx defines that belief) are on the right side. He produced a movie that declares “spiritual warfare is real.” Marx has repeatedly criticized Christian pastors across the country for being “cowardly.” Appearing on Charlie Kirk’s podcast in 2022, he complained that “in America, the Christian faith has been hijacked by…woke…or passive…or liberal” people.

In a 2023 podcast, he noted that he “hunts demons” and that his dog once identified a supernatural presence in a couple at a pool, and he subsequently freed the woman from “five demons that had been assigned to her.”

There’s more: Marx claims that demonic possession is real and that he has been able to remove demons from the possessed through prayer. In a 2022 talk, he described how he had rescued a demon-possessed girl incarcerated in a juvenile prison. He purportedly did so after meeting with her in the prison—encountering the demon who spoke through her and claimed to be Satan—and later simply saying a short prayer for her. He didn’t explain why it was essentially so easy to beat back this Satan-wannabe demon.

Marx asserts that demonic possession can be caused by pornography or unmarried couples living together. In a 2023 Turning Point USA podcast, he noted that he “hunts demons” and that his dog once identified a supernatural presence in a couple at a pool, and he subsequently freed the woman from “five demons that had been assigned to her.” He has called himself—jokingly, he says—a “reluctant exorcist.”

During the primary campaign, Marx, who had not previously run for any office, deliberately avoided offering specifics on policy matters, noting he’d rather have voters adjust to his unorthodox background. He was endorsed by Rep. Lauren Boebert and Ted Nugent. He won the primary with 39 percent, besting state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer by 2,500 votes. Coming in third was Scott Bottoms, a state representative. Throughout the campaign, establishment Republicans criticized Marx, and some questioned whether he was a con man.

A majority of Colorado Republicans did not back Marx. But this race shows that as Trump’s approval ratings plummet, the GOP remains dominated by extremism and Christian fundamentalism. Marx is not the Republicans’ Platner. But he’s an inexperienced candidate with a sketchy past who believes most of the people he seeks to lead are being controlled by Lucifer. His primary victory is a reminder that Trump is far from the only dangerous influence within the GOP.

Continue Reading…

Nation’s Biggest Public Utility Just Doubled Down on Coal, Gas, and Nuclear

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

For the past four years, Angie Mummaw has been told the gas-fired electrical plant planned by the Tennessee Valley Authority in rural Tennessee was a necessary stop on its move away from coal. But recent directives from the Trump administration mean the coal-fired plant that was slated for closure is most likely staying—and so is the planned gas plant next door. She lives across the river from the smokestacks of the Cumberland Fossil Plant.

“To hear that they just decided to continue burning coal indefinitely was kind of a slap in the face,” said Mummaw, a resident of Montgomery County, Tennessee and an organizer for the environmental nonprofit Appalachian Voices.

But for America’s largest public utility, keeping fossil fuel-powered plants running might be the wave of the future.

The Tennessee Valley Authority is at a pivotal moment, one driven by new direction from above as the Trump administration eliminates renewable incentives, rearranges the utility’s leadership, and encourages extending the lives of coal- and gas-fired plants. As the utility plans its next quarter-century of energy production, those who run it insist they’re doing the best they can to meet the demands of the times, even as environmental organizations and community members protest its backtracking on the energy transition.

The agency’s comprehensive Integrated Resource Plan, or IRP, evaluates the future power needs of the 10 million residents of the seven states the TVA serves—all of Tennessee, and parts of North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, and Virginia—through 2050. The utility completed its last plan in 2019, and says changing market and political trends prompted the start of a revision last year. Now, there’s yet another draft, with significant departures from the last iteration—many of which abandon an earlier, if limited, emphasis on expanding renewable energy and instead prioritize nuclear, gas, and coal.

“Those plants are no longer economic and increasingly unreliable.”

The latest plan is something of a reboot, given changes in the utility’s and the Trump administration’s priorities. These changes reflect the turmoil that has roiled the Tennessee Valley Authority since President Trump’s second inauguration. The plan drafted in 2025 had gone through several drafts and rounds of public comment, only to stall when the agency’s board lost its quorum last year after Trump summarily fired three of its members. That delayed any decision-making for more than nine months. The utility’s CEO, Don Moul, stepped down and was replaced by Mike Skaggs, the former vice president of operations and construction at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant. When Trump appointed three new board members over the winter, IRP discussions began anew.

TVA spokesperson Scott Brooks says the changes represent practical priorities. “It’s all a reflection of what’s happening in the market,” he said.

The updated plan is based on three economic assumptions.

The first is a reduction of federal tax incentives for renewable energy. Because of rollbacks in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025, new utility-scale solar construction must break ground by 2027 to benefit. While the 2025 plan predicted up to 20 gigawatts of potential solar generation, the latest iteration expects no more than five. Wind energy is off the table entirely, though Brooks said the utility will continue to consider offers from wind and solar developers.

The second assumption revolves around federal deregulation of nuclear, gas, and coal power, which the utility defends as necessary to manage reliability. The Trump administration has lifted what it termed “burdensome” Environmental Protection Agency restrictions on coal plant emissions, and encouraged utilities to keep coal plants open beyond their expected lifetimes and reopen those that have been closed. It has even offered federal support to upgrade some of them. The utility now hopes to retain its coal fleet through 2039, and may nearly double, to as much as 26 gigawatts, its previous estimated investment in gas. The TVA also plans to pursue licenses to extend the lifetimes of its three nuclear plants.

“We’re always going to comply with the regulations to protect the environment … And that’s been true with every administration for 90 years.”

The plan also assumes data centers will continue to pressure the region’s grid infrastructure and increase demand for energy. The TVA is exploring the possibility of establishing a rate specifically for these energy-intensive operations, which currently account for as much as 20 percent of the utility’s industrial load, an amount the board expects to double by 2030.

From these assumptions, TVA has developed three scenarios: One based on the utility’s current economic and political realities, another pegged to mounting energy demand from population growth and data centers, and a third based on the possibility of future legislation to reduce carbon emissions. However, not everyone is convinced the TVA’s plans are sensible—not only for the climate, but for its financial health.

Dennis Wamstead, an energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said that any decision, such as keeping coal-fired plants open, based on changes in politics don’t reflect reality.

“Their decision or their endorsement of a pretty concrete retirement date scenario in 2021 has been upended perhaps by political events, but that does not change the economics,” Wamstead said. “Those plants are no longer economic and increasingly unreliable.”

Angie Mummaw and other grassroots environmentalists in the region are gearing up for a fight around the Cumberland Fossil Plant, which was slated for closure in 2028 until the current board approved keeping it open.

On June 25, the Southern Environmental Law Center, representing Appalachian Voices, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Sierra Club, sent a letter to the new TVA leadership threatening lawsuit over what it called a flagrant violation of the Clean Air Act. It calls the TVA’s permits for the new gas plant insufficient because it was sought under the auspices of ending the use of coal at the Cumberland site, which is the largest and most-polluting in Tennessee.

Brooks defended the TVA’s decision to retain coal and gas power and said the facilities comply with current federal rules regarding air quality. “We’re always going to comply with the regulations to protect the environment,” Brooks said. “And that’s been true with every administration for 90 years.”

The Tennessee Valley Authority is accepting public comment on the latest Integrated Resource Plan through July 22nd. A final recommendation is expected August 6.

Continue Reading…

The Race to Stop AI’s Threats to Democracy

OpenAI and its revolutionary chatbot ChatGPT have single-handedly accelerated AI’s boom and threatened to upend much of how we work, create, learn, and communicate in the process. But when OpenAI was founded a decade ago, the company’s approach to artificial intelligence wasn’t taken seriously in Silicon Valley. Tech journalist Karen Hao has been covering OpenAI’s astounding rise for years and is the author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI. She says that while many in Silicon Valley warn of AI’s sci-fi-like threats, the real risks are already here.

“We are allowing the tech industry to consolidate this extraordinary degree of resources unlike anything ever before,” she tells More To The Story host Al Letson. “We thought that they were already powerful during the social media era. In the AI era, the amount of resources and the amount of influence and domination that they now have is of a fundamentally different degree.”

The Center for Investigative Reporting, which produces Mother Jones, Reveal, and More To The Story, is currently suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement.

On this week’s More To The Story, Hao sounds the alarm about the risks to the planet from AI’s growth, examines the Trump administration’s efforts to deregulate the industry, and explains why the version of AI being developed by Silicon Valley could destabilize democracy.

This episode first aired inOctober 2025.

Find More To The Story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, or your favorite podcast app, and don’t forget to subscribe.

Continue Reading…

Mahmoud Khalil Is Suing the White House and Heritage Foundation

Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist who spent months in ICE detention, has filed a federal lawsuit against what he alleges is a “public-private conspiracy” to deport him, taking aim at both the Trump administration—one of the suit’s targets—and a constellation of right-wing figures and organizations that relentlessly targeted him over his involvement in anti-Israel protests at Columbia University. Khalil contends that the White House collaborated with these groups in violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction-era law that sought to restrict government coordination with racist vigilantes.

Khalil’s suit, filed Tuesday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges that federal officials entered into a conspiracy with ideologically driven groups including the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission, and Betar, to “single out Mr. Khalil and other non-citizen Palestinians and their supporters for arrest, detention, and deportation, as punishment for their support of Palestinian rights.”

“I will not stop fighting until everyone who willingly contributed to taking 104 days of my life from me answers for what they’ve done,” Khalil said.Video by Peter Berger and Sophie Hurwitz

Aspects of that alleged relationship have been publicly documented. Shortly after federal immigration officials detained Khalil in March 2025, his lawyers told Mother Jones they had reason to believe the White House was involved. Months earlier, Ross Glick, who then led the radical right-wing Zionist group Betar USA, claimed he had “started commencing lists of Jew-hating foreign nationals on visas who support Hamas” and sending those lists to Trump administration officials. In addition to Khalil, at least eight other noncitizen Palestinians or supporters of Palestinian rights were targeted for deportation based on their advocacy, according to the lawsuit.

Months after Khalil’s arrest, unsealed court records proved that the federal government was targeting students for arrest and deportation based on pro-Palestinian speech—and relying partly on information from groups like Canary Mission, a website cataloging and encouraging harassment of people who express pro-Palestinian views, in order to do so. In July 2025, a senior ICE official testified in court that the Department of Homeland Security created a team to investigate student protesters “based on a list of 5,000 people identified on the Canary Mission website,” according to the Knight First Amendment Institute.

“I think the evidence has, in a way, been there all along,” Khalil’s lawyer Astha Sharma Pakharel said at the press conference. “The Heritage Foundation admitted as early as October of 2024 that it intended to recruit a public-private partnership once a willing administration entered into the administration.” The lawsuit alleges that the Heritage Foundation, perhaps the single most influential outside organization with respect to the second Trump administration, created a blueprint, known as Project Esther, for linking individual student protesters to a supposed “Hamas Support Network” and targeting them for deportation, and relied on groups like Canary Mission and Betar to identify targets.

If his case moves forward, court proceedings may compel the Heritage Foundation and the Trump administration to make public more details of how specific students were pursued for deportation.

To prove a conspiracy, though, Khalil’s lawyers will need to offer evidence beyond anti-Palestinian ideological alignment. “The government’s behavior in Khalil’s case stinks to high heaven,” Stephen I. Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor, told the New York Times. “Whether that opens the door to this kind of broad theory of civil liability is another question altogether. Courts will be worried about what kind of precedent it would set unless there are clear reasons Khalil’s case is not just factually unique but legally unique.”

Khalil’s own deportation case is ongoing, and is expected to eventually reach the Supreme Court. But while that separate litigation proceeds, he is seeking damages from the groups he says contributed to his 104-day detention.

“This case is about far more than what was done to me, Khalil said at Tuesday’s press conference. “It’s about a coordinated, ongoing campaign to punish, silence, and intimidate anyone who dares to speak out for Palestinian liberation, and it’s about exposing the network of organizations, political actors, and institutions that work together to criminalize solidarity with Palestine.”

Continue Reading…

Top Homeland Security Democrat Demands Cancellation of Massive DHS Self-Deportation Contract

Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, wants DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to cancel a nearly billion dollar contract awarded last year to a company called Salus Worldwide to carry out a Trump administration program to encourage undocumented immigrants to self-deport.

But Salus, in an unusually aggressive move, is hitting back, arguing that criticism of its contract is being drummed up by larger DHS contractors that it accuses of undermining the Trump administration’s voluntary deportation efforts to pad their own profits.

DHS in May 2025 gave Salus a contract worth up to $915 million to help administer what the administration calls “Project Homecoming,” by providing free plane tickets and $1,000 payments to immigrants who sign agreements to give up legal challenges to deportation and leave the country voluntarily.

The award drew a lawsuit from CSI Aviation, a major ICE contractor, alleging that the contract was “unlawful, rushed, and noncompetitive.” It also drew scrutiny from inside DHS. One department official said the procurement was flawed and “created an appearance of favoritism toward Salus,” as Mother Jones and POGO Investigates reported.

In a letter sent Friday to Mullin, Thompson called it “incomprehensible” that DHS this May okayed a six-month extension of Salus’ contract. “You must take immediate action to stop this wasteful and corrupt spending,” the Mississippi Democrat wrote.

Thompson’s letter augurs what is sure to be intense scrutiny of DHS contracting by congressional Democrats if they win control of the House or the Senate next year. It comes as the Trump administration, which lacks the manpower to forcefully expel the millions of migrants it wants to push out of the country, relies heavily on “self-deportation” to persuade migrants to leave. After the Supreme Court recently allowed the administration to strip migrants from Haiti and Syria of temporary protected status, Mullin urged people from those countries to leave the US voluntarily.

Mullin is evaluating how to proceed with the Salus contract along with other DHS awards made under former Secretary Kristi Noem that have drawn controversy. Though DHS extended Salus’ contract in May, Salus owner William Walters said the contract is being recompeted with a new award in November.

Thompson, citing reporting by Mother Jones and POGO along with the Daily Beast, noted that Salus won the self-deportation contract in 2025 despite limited federal contracting experience, after Walters, a former State Department official, developed ties to top DHS officials. Walters in October 2024 donated $10,000 to a political action committee tied to Kristi Noem, who was DHS Secretary when Salus’ contract was awarded.

A federal judge this year threw out the lawsuit by CSI Aviation. The judge said that the contract had been awarded legally and noted that his review of the procurement process did not reveal “any evidence of bad faith or unfair dealings.”

But Thompson is just the latest of a series of congressional Democrats who have questioned the Salus contract.

Thompson’s letter states that Salus “is also part of a sweeping review by the DHS Office of Inspector General looking into whether Corey Lewandowski,” who formerly worked as a top advisor to Noem at DHS, “accepted kickbacks for granting government contracts.” Lewandowski has denied playing a role in DHS contracting or seeking kickbacks. Salus has charged in letters to lawmakers that an NBC News report that linked it to Lewandowski was false and “defamatory.” Salus threatened to sue NBC over the report but has not done so.

In a letter sent Monday to Thompson, Walters defended Salus’ performance and offered to meet with Thompson and work with the committee to “resolve this misunderstanding.”

In a statement to Mother Jones and POGO, Walters said that “Salus remains proud of the humane and dignified support that it has provided to over 130,000 people that have chosen to take the Assisted Voluntary Departure pathway.” Walters asserts that those efforts have saved US taxpayers “over $2.2 billion.” He derived that estimate from the added expense imposed by involuntary deportations, with extended detainments in government facilities.

Walters argues that those added costs boost the bottom line of contractors that provide detainment facilities and mandatory deportation out of the US. He pointed to GEO Group, the private prison behemoth that provides detention facilities to DHS, and CSI Aviation, the company that protested Salus’ contract and that provides flights for migrants being forcefully expelled from the US.

“Congressional letters have fallen victim to bogus tabloid reporting standards engineered by companies such as GEO Group and CSI Aviation who stand to profit the most from longer detention and custodial deportation of immigrants in chains,” Walters said in his statement to Mother Jones and POGO.

Walters noted that the GEO Group’s political action committee has given Thompson’s campaigns thousands of dollars since 2010. And he pointed out that Thompson’s former longtime chief of staff, Lanier Avant, since 2019 has worked as a lobbyist for GEO Group. Avant’s recent lobbying disclosure forms say his work for the company focuses on the House of Representatives.

Avant did not respond to inquiries. Nor did spokespeople for GEO Group and CSI Aviation.

A Homeland Security Committee aide questioned Walters’ claims: “There is nothing ‘humane and dignified’ about helping migrants deport out of fear because DHS ran advertising campaigns threatening to hunt them down.” The aide said Salus’ claims about savings rely on a dubious calculation that all migrants who have left the country under Project Homecoming would have been detained and incurred costs to house and feed. “Plus, how many beds is the government already paying for whether in use or not?” the staffer asked.

The suggestion that GEO Group is influencing Thompson, who has been the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee for more than 20 years, is complicated by Thompson’s record of aggressive oversight of GEO Group and other contractors. Last month, Thompson and committee Democrats ripped DHS and GEO Group over conditions at the Delaney Hall detention facility in New Jersey, which the contractor operates. “Given DHS’s and GEO Group’s unwillingness to address these deplorable conditions and treat persons detained there humanely, we demand that you close Delaney Hall immediately,” the lawmakers wrote. Committee Democrats also held a field hearing near the facility.

“If DHS or any of its contractors have engaged in waste, fraud, or abuse, we will investigate and hold them accountable on behalf of the American people,” Thompson said in a statement. “This is a fact.”

This story was reported with POGO Investigates, the news reporting division of the Project On Government Oversight.

Continue Reading…

Lawsuit: Meta Used AI For Discriminatory Layoffs

A group of 26 current and former Meta employees filed a lawsuit Monday evening accusing the tech company of using AI software to target employees with disabilities and those who took medical or family leave in its mass layoffs in May.

Those layoffs were part of Meta’s plans to cut 10 percent of its staff, or roughly 8,000 workers, and close about 6,000 open positions, in an effort to prioritize AI initiatives. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, also reassigned 7,000 employees to work on AI.

“Meta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work,” the workers alleged in their lawsuit. Instead, the suit contends that the firm used “a constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems” to create a performance-ranking system.

The plaintiffs stated that, by design, the productivity metrics penalized those who had used their legal right to take time away from work. All 26 employees requested or were approved to take protected leave within the past two years.

According to the lawsuit, the AI tools Meta used to evaluate employees included, among others, a dashboard that tracks their level of AI usage and keystroke and mouse data, browser history, and messaging, which Meta began using to train its own AI models in April. The company announced the monitoring program in an internal post in a secondary group instead of the official employee channel and many workers did not receive an acknowledgement or consent option, the 26 employees state.

In other words, it’s alarming that Meta isn’t only using its employees’ work to train the AI tools that may eventually take their jobs—the company is allegedly applying similar tools to a discriminatory layoff process.

In a statement, Meta said the former employees’ claims were incorrect: “Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.”

The former employees are asking the court to order Meta to halt their terminations and have an independent auditor review the company’s selection process for its layoffs.

Continue Reading…

“Huge Wave” of Carbon Storage Projects Sets off Alarms in Rural Indiana

_This story was originally published b_y the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The plan to bury carbon under remote Indiana farmland is supposed to be a slam dunk for the climate, according to its supporters—all generously funded by US tax dollars.

But as far as Melissa Harrison and some other residents of Clymers, Indiana, are concerned, it just might be the end of their town. “This is our place,” she says. Generations of her family are buried in the cemetery, and she is raising her five grandchildren in one of several dozen white-clapboard homes among corn fields and industrial plants serving the farming industry.

Now a local ethanol plant has spearheaded a project to bury vast stores of carbon deep in the geologic formation that runs under the town and surrounding farms.

The government subsidies for the plan, which is supposed to help prevent global heating, are so generous that companies all over the country have been rushing to get permission for similar projects.

“If they make Clymers bad enough that no one wants to live here, they can take over the whole town, real cheap.”

But residents around some of these carbon sequestration projects are organizing to stop them, making Clymers an epicenter of emerging national tensions around these projects.

While international climate monitors say carbon sequestration projects could be secondary tools to help contain global warming, they also say the main focus must be on urgent and deep cuts to fossil fuels. Some environmental groups question the benefits of carbon sequestration and are concerned it could delay the transition to clean energy and pose risks to surrounding communities.

Harrison said the town of Clymers is already overburdened by hazards from industrial agriculture facilities including a fertilizer supplier, a hazardous waste recycling company and the giant ethanol plant that is proposing the project. She said the community faces contaminated well water, a lack of sewage facilities, and high poverty rates.

Warmly remembered as once having been a thriving “heartland” community with a beautiful white church, two grocery stores, a Chevy dealer, and a diner, the town is now struggling. Its school is closed; the old Methodist church has been demolished, and the playground is surrounded by fertilizer tanks on trailers, which the fertilizer company rents to nearby farms.

Harrison, like other residents in the area, received a letter about the project. Some were asked to accept $150 a year in exchange for having the carbon sink under their properties.

“If they make Clymers bad enough that no one wants to live here, they can take over the whole town, real cheap,” she said.

In a statement to the Guardian, the company proposing the project, The Andersons Renewables, said it “is a safe, established technology, with a rigorous permitting, engineering, and monitoring process to protect groundwater, public health, and the surrounding environment.”

“The proposed project would capture carbon dioxide from the ethanol production process, compress it, and then inject it deep underground, more than 3,000 feet, into geologic formations identified for permanent storage,” said the statement. “We were able to determine the site’s suitability through seismic analysis and by drilling a test well,” it added.

The company, which was partly owned by a subsidiary of Marathon Oil at the time it proposed the project, said in its statement that it understands why residents might be concerned, but it plans to work transparently with the community to allay those worries.

Federal subsidies can rival the revenues from selling the ethanol itself, thereby potentially doubling a plant’s earnings.

The undertaking is one of dozens of carbon sequestration projects expected to be given the green light for construction by the Environmental Protection Agency and state environmental regulators in the next year, as a flood of corporate permit applications reach the end of their approval processes. Oil industry companies are often sponsors and benefactors of these projects.

Carbon sequestration involves capturing industrial CO2 emissions that would normally be vented to the atmosphere before they can contribute to global heating, and burying them in rock formations thousands of feet underground for what proponents say is permanent storage.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said carbon capture storage (CCS) is one mitigation option that could help keep global heating in check, assuming it supports deep fossil fuel cuts, but has warned it should not be over-relied on. Both Democratic and Republican presidential administrations have supported such plans in past years. The Biden administration authorized a lucrative tax credit reimbursement program for them as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.

The Trump administration, which has called the climate crisis “a hoax” and canceled funding for many other types of climate projects, continued this tax credit, which often benefits energy companies that are already using underground technology such as fracking. It offers companies $85 in transferable tax credits for each ton of point-source carbon stored—a bounty that has set off what some call “a carbon-capture gold rush.”

Since even the smallest projects expect to store hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon each year, the tax credits could be hugely profitable, said Brad Johnston, an analyst with Enverus, an energy industry market research company and data company that tracks permits for this type of project. Many are proposed for ethanol plants, which emit a nearly pure stream of CO2, making their emissions simpler to capture and put underground.

While only a handful of projects are operating, a “huge wave” is about to be approved, Johnston said.

Experts say the money brought into these companies by tax credits from these carbon projects can rival the revenues from selling the actual ethanol itself, thereby potentially doubling a plant’s earnings.

“It’s just the stupidest way to reduce emissions,” says the founder of an early carbon-capture company who later soured on the technology.

Many environmental groups criticize the projects, saying they merely subsidize oil and gas industry companies and don’t reliably cut emissions at scale.

For instance, a small project that sequesters 200,000 metric tons of carbon per year can earn $17 million annually through a tax credit called 45Q. Larger projects plan to sequester tens of millions of tons of carbon, said Kerwin Olson, executive director of the Indiana group Citizens Action Coalition, which has helped residents in the state organize against the many projects proposed there. “You can do the math,” he said. “That is a lot of cash—an enormous amount of cash.”

“You’re talking billions of dollars.”

Environmental experts say the risks of carbon storage include earthquakes, water table contamination, and potentially deadly carbon leaks, and point to several cases where carbon has leaked.

In 2024, the nation’s first commercial carbon capture project, under a lake that provides drinking water for large parts of central Illinois, developed two leaks. The state subsequently banned new CCS projects under one of the state’s biggest aquifers.

In 2020, a pipeline carrying carbon dioxide ruptured in rural Mississippi, creating a mass poisoning that resulted in 45 people being hospitalized and 200 evacuated. Emergency responders found people lying on the ground unable to breathe and didn’t know what was happening. “It looked like you were going through the zombie apocalypse,” Jack Willingham, emergency director for the affected county, told NPR.

Charles Harvey, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT, helped to start one of the world’s first companies devoted to sequestering carbon to prevent global heating in the early 2000s. But since then, he has become a staunch opponent of the strategy, and acknowledged experiencing guilt akin to what J Robert Oppenheimer felt over inventing the atomic bomb.

“It’s just the stupidest way to reduce emissions,” said Harvey. Oil companies are lobbying hard for the projects, he said, but he believes C02 emissions could be best tackled if the money was spent on renewable energy. “It is loved by the industry because it’s a subsidy for whatever they’re already doing,” he said.

Johnston, the Enverus analyst, said that, given the setbacks caused by the Illinois leaks, his sense was that companies were being extra careful to engineer their projects to avoid any further problems.

“I think any additional setback from a leak or a failure of one of these wells would be pretty detrimental to the CCS industry,” he said. “So I think a lot of these operators are very diligent about doing it right and probably overbuilding a lot of these systems.”

The Clymers project’s sponsoring companies called a meeting of residents and landowners in the area and told them that the carbon storage was perfectly safe and couldn’t leak.

“I said that’s bullcrap. I’m worried about my well,” said farmer Dennis Crume, who refused to sign the form offering him $150 an acre to accept the plan. But Indiana state law essentially strips individual landowners of the right to reject these proposals, experts say.

Crume grows soybeans and corn on several plots of land skirting Clymers, some of which he leases from other owners. He raises a few cows in a grassy field behind his house and tries to grow everything his family eats in his garden. But he worries about the pollution he sees cropping up all around him.

“I’m trying to look out for our grandkids,” said Crume, who has two of them living nearby. “We’ve got to do something for the environment.”

Continue Reading…

Hegseth’s Study of Women in Combat Is Designed to Reach One Conclusion

This article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter.

Two months before Pete Hegseth appeared in front of Congress to testify before his confirmation to be secretary of defense, he sat across from the podcaster Shawn Ryan, talking about the Pentagon’s 2015 decision to open ground combat roles to women.

“It hasn’t made us more effective. It hasn’t made us more lethal,” Hegseth said. “I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles.”

By the time of Hegseth’s appearance on the show in late 2024, women had been serving in combat positions for nearly a decade across the military. The decision to integrate women had been thoroughly studied—before, during, and after the process—and thousands of women had served in roles ranging from infantry to combat engineers to special operations. The debate over women in combat was largely considered to be over.

But Hegseth was looking to reignite that debate. His book, The War on Warriors, which he was on the show to promote, dedicated a full chapter to the idea.

“Dads take us to push risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bikes,” he wrote in the book. “We need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.”

Hegseth softened his rhetoric during his January 2025 confirmation hearing, telling senators that women service members deserved the opportunity to serve in any role they qualified for.

“Women in our military, as I’ve said publicly, have and continue to make amazing contributions across all aspects of our battlefield,” he said.

Yet barely two months into his tenure at the Pentagon, Hegseth was already laying the groundwork to call into question those contributions. In March, he created a task force to review standards. Then, in December, the Pentagon’s personnel chief, Anthony Tata, announced a “review of the operational effectiveness” of ground combat units in the Army and Marine Corps, according to an internal memo obtained by The War Horse.

Now, that study is raising fears among military researchers and advocates for service women.

“We’re all concerned that this study is going to be used as a pretext to remove women from combat arms.”

“We’re all concerned that this study is going to be used as a pretext to remove women from combat arms,” said Sue Fulton, the executive director of the Women in the Service Coalition, which advocates for women in the military.

Advocates have reason to worry: The researcher leading the current study on the issue, Jane Pinelis, helped lead a controversial review for the Marine Corps in 2015 that found mixed-gender units did not perform as well as all-male units. In his book, Hegseth drew heavily on that study to support the argument that women should not serve in combat arms.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the 250th Amphibious Capabilities Demonstration Beach Bash at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California, October 2024.Cpl. Joshua Bustamante/U.S. Marine Corps

“It was a flawed design from the get-go,” retired Army Col. Ellen Haring told NPR in 2015.

Defense officials initially assigned the current study to the Institute for Defense Analyses in December—only to change course and move the study to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, where Pinelis works, in April.

The highly unusual decision raises questions about the study’s independence, according to advocates and defense analysts.

“Why was this removed from IDA, where this kind of research is in their wheelhouse, and given to [the Applied Physics Lab], where this is clearly outside their expertise?” Fulton asked.

At his confirmation hearings, Hegseth told lawmakers that his concerns were not about women in combat, but rather that standards had fallen to facilitate the integration of women in those units.

This February, after the Pentagon began its review, Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii, asked the senior enlisted leaders from each military branch to testify on whether standards had been lowered. All of them said no.

“I’ve seen no data that supports that there’s been any lowering of standards or that there’s lowering of the readiness of units with those females in those units,” Navy Master Chief David Isom, a SEAL serving as the senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified.

Women who have served in combat roles agree.

“It becomes abundantly apparent very quickly if you are contributing to the team or detracting from the team when you have to move 40 ammo cans from point A to point B,” a female officer who served in the 75th Ranger Regiment told the military news website Task & Purpose earlier this year.

Even before combat units were integrated, women guarded convoys in Iraq and Afghanistan, accompanied special operations soldiers on missions, and frequently came under enemy fire.

“Women were already serving in combat,” said Rita Graham, the policy director at Service Women’s Action Network, an advocacy group for women in the military. The decision to open all combat roles to women came in part because four women service members, along with SWAN, sued the military for sex discrimination.

“They were being denied the recognition, the training, the medals, leadership opportunities, but most importantly, the career advancement,” Graham said.

Yet almost since he assumed office, Hegseth has been searching for evidence that standards have slipped.

Early on, Hegseth convened a team of advisers to evaluate standards at the Army’s Ranger School and special operations training programs. Hegseth served in Iraq with the team’s leader, Eric Geressy, who retired from the Army as a sergeant major. In The War on Warriors, Hegseth notes that Geressy was critical of women moving into frontline positions, which he called “chicken shit.”

The team quickly moved to lay the groundwork for a new study of women in combat, beginning with visits to Ranger school in March 2025 to “review and restore” standards, according to documents reviewed by The War Horse. Tata announced the study internally nine months later.

“Service members want a challenge[,] they do not want to be part of a loosing [sic] team and want to serve alongside the best,” a briefing document from the team’s visit to Ranger School said.

The first three female rangers graduated from Ranger School more than a decade ago. Today, more than 180 women have passed the course.Paul Abell/AP/U.S. Army Reserve

Laura Junor Pulzone, who served as the Pentagon’s principal deputy undersecretary for personnel and readiness as the military prepared for full gender integration in 2014, questioned whether a new study was even necessary.

“I was the readiness person,” said Junor Pulzone. “The only thing that mattered to me was making sure that we had a predictably ready force that was capable of executing the national defense strategy, full stop.”

“What I saw was an analytically based, sound way of doing this,” she said, noting that she would have raised red flags if she felt the military had not fully studied and prepared for the transition to gender-integrated combat units.

Gender-neutral standards for jobs open to men and women in the military were first required more than 30 years ago, as the military began training women to fly fighter jets. The same requirement held true for combat roles as they opened to women, and there is scant evidence that standards for those positions have declined in the past decade.

“This study has already been done. We know that women who serve continue to perform and meet the same standards in ground combat as their male colleagues.”

“This study has already been done,” Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), an Air Force veteran, told The War Horse. “We know that women who serve continue to perform and meet the same standards in ground combat as their male colleagues.”

Since 2015, thousands of women have served in Army ground combat units, and hundreds more have served in similar Marine units. Multiple women have completed Army Special Forces training and the Air Force’s special warfare training pipeline. More than 180 women have graduated from the Army’s Ranger School, one of the military’s most demanding combat leadership courses. And a recent Army study found that women who completed the course showed fewer signs of physiological stress at the end of training than men.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks to Rangers of 3rd Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment in 2025.Spc. Luke Sullivan/U.S. Army

Researchers who spoke with The War Horse said a new study makes sense if at least some anecdotal evidence has found problems in mixed-gender combat units. But that has not been the case, they said.

“What is the evidence of the problem?” Junor Pulzone said. “What is the problem we’re trying to solve?”

Researchers also told The War Horse the timeframe of the study—initially six months, though extended to a year when it was transferred to Johns Hopkins—was unusually compressed.

“If I were to set up doing a study like this, it would be a large mixed-methods [study]. There would be a lot of data from the past. There’d also be a lot of conversations that would have to happen—interviews, focus groups, which are going to require some pretty significant institutional review board proposals, as well as data-sharing agreements,” said another researcher who has studied women in the military extensively and who declined to be named over potential career impacts.

“It’s a very short time for a study like this.”

On its website, the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins lists 39 areas of expertise, ranging from “Space Technology” to “Tactical and Ballistic Missile Defense Systems” to “Cyber-Physical Security.” It does not list anything related to military readiness, personnel, or ground combat.

That has raised suspicions among military researchers, who told The War Horse they were surprised the Pentagon moved the study from the Institute for Defense Analyses to Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory. It’s unusual for the Pentagon to change the institution conducting a study, particularly in the middle of it, they said.

“Shopping around for researchers is not a good look,” Junor Pulzone said.

And the choice of the Applied Physics Laboratory struck researchers as especially unusual.

“They have robotics people, AI people, chemists. I don’t understand why they have [the study]. I really don’t. It doesn’t make any sense,” said one researcher, who spoke on condition of anonymity over fears of potential career impacts.

A Pentagon spokesperson declined to answer The War Horse’s questions on the record. But in a response provided on background, a Pentagon official said that after the study was assigned to the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Defense Department “recognized the need to incorporate combat-relevant field tests” into the assessment.

The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory “has the capability to examine existing personnel and operational data, as well as conduct the field tests,” the official said.

The Applied Physics Laboratory did not respond to requests for comment.

“The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory is a world-renowned research institution focused on artificial intelligence, robotics, and emerging scientific discoveries—no doubt vital and urgent work,” Houlahan said. “However, the Applied Physics Lab is not the first place that comes to mind when examining the role of women in ground combat.”

On Pinelis’ LinkedIn profile, the study’s lead researcher describes her current role as chief AI engineer at the Applied Physics Lab. She also lists work as the chief scientist for special operations. Years before, in 2015, as a statistician, she led the design and analysis of the Marine Corps study into gender-integrated units.

That study concluded that all-male units outperformed mixed-gender units on 69 percent of tasks. At its conclusion, the Marine Corps requested an exemption from the Pentagon’s directive to open all combat roles to women.

“This was a very politically unpopular conclusion,” Pinelis told an interviewer from Forbes in 2022. “There’s no room for compromise when it comes to scientific rigor.”

Pinelis did not respond to a request for comment from The War Horse.

The methodology behind the 2015 study drew sharp critiques. Critics pointed out that the units drew experienced male Marines, while female Marine volunteers had just gone through the Marine Corps’ initial nine-week infantry training course and only had to meet the minimum male physical fitness score to participate. It also evaluated women based on average scores, rather than assessing how capable individual female Marines were of meeting a standard.

“The fear is that something similar could happen,” said SWAN’s Graham, who previously served as an Army field artillery officer after the specialty was opened to women. “We’re really not opposed to an evidence-based review, if it’s done legitimately, if it’s done with the proper research questions, if it’s done with the proper sample sizes.”

In The War on Warriors, subtitled “Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,” Hegseth cites the study’s finding that female Marines were injured at a higher rate than male Marines as evidence that women should not serve in combat. But Marine Corps briefing materials on the study found that better screening for physical fitness would have eliminated that issue.

US Marine Corps Sgt. Hailee A. Harrismorales, a drill instructor graduate, was recognized in March 2026 as her class’s honor graduate.Lance Cpl. Janell B. Valerio Alvarez/U.S. Marine Corps

Critics also note that the Marine Corps’ summary of the study omitted findings favorable to mixed-gender units, which had better problem-solving skills, higher morale, and fewer disciplinary issues than all-male units.

Advocates for women in combat argue that Hegseth’s fixation on standards—which he often ties to physical fitness—reflects a limited understanding of the reality of modern combat, which requires soldiers to be flexible, solve complex problems, and increasingly demonstrate technical proficiency.

Designing a study to clearly answer the question of whether women should be in combat units is exceptionally difficult, said Michael McGurk, the former director of research and analysis at the Army’s Center for Initial Military Training, because so many issues come into play.

“How do you determine that women are the factor that’s causing the difference, and not the company commander’s leadership, the sergeant’s leadership?” he said. “You can always find the tactical reason why we shouldn’t do this.”

This March, Houlahan introduced a bill addressing the Pentagon’s decision to reexamine women in combat.

“Now more than ever, we should be supporting each and every servicemember willing to wear the uniform, not scrutinizing and pushing out qualified women simply because they are women,” Houlahan said in a statement.

The bill, called the WARRIOR Act, would prohibit gender-based exclusion in the military and ensure that positions have clear standards reflecting the needs of the job—not only physical requirements, but tactical, technical, and cognitive demands.

Although women were technically restricted from combat positions before 2015, many effectively served in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and came under enemy fire. Here, members of a Female Engagement Team from the Army’s 4th Infantry Division talk with locals in Afghanistan in 2011.Staff Sgt. Ruth Pagan/U.S. Army

“Don’t you want the best human being, regardless of gender, piloting that humanoid robot?”

Advocates who spoke to The War Horse agree that not every woman is up to the task of serving in combat roles. But if the military is to operate as a true meritocracy, they argue, then everyone—men and women—should be given an opportunity to serve as long as they meet the high standards those jobs require.

“We can’t claim something as the Army’s premier leadership school, and say, well, you know, it’s only for leaders that are male,” said Thomas Stone, a former Army Ranger who oversaw training given to soldiers prior to Ranger School when women were first permitted to attend the course.

And as the nature of combat evolves, so do the skills required of a soldier to excel in it.

Stone pointed out that fitness standards—like the Army Ranger requirement to hike 12 miles with a 35-pound pack—are rooted in earlier conflicts, from a different time. He argued that focusing so much attention on a question of standards developed for older conflicts risks misunderstanding the requirements of a future conflict. The Pentagon, Stone noted, recently earmarked $54 billion for autonomous warfare in its upcoming budget.

“What does the future of war look like?” he said. “Don’t you want the best human being, regardless of gender, piloting that humanoid robot?”

Continue Reading…

Attack Ad Calls Climate Activist an Oil Investor Because of His 401(k)

William Lawrence, the 36-year-old Sunrise Movement co-founder running a progressive congressional campaign in Michigan, has positioned himself as an enemy of big corporations. But a new attack ad aired this week suggests the opposite: Lawrence, the Crush MAGA PAC advertisement claims, has “invested thousands in Wall Street, big oil, and data centers.”

Lawrence’s public financial disclosures show the truth is much more modest: he has approximately $11,000 invested in a T. Rowe Price 401(k). Like nearly every 401(k), the T. Rowe Price 2055 Retirement Fund has exposure to fossil fuels. And finding out exactly how much of one’s retirement account is invested in fossil fuels is famously difficult.

Crush MAGA PAC is reportedly spending about $500,000 on the advertising campaign—that is, more than 40 times the sum of Lawrence’s retirement fund. The group, an affiliate of Save Democracy PAC—which has been described as part of the “pro-Israel Super PAC cinematic universe”—says on its website that it is “dedicated to fighting against Trump’s presidency and defeating any MAGA Republicans who uphold his dangerous rhetoric.” But Lawrence is a progressive Democrat who has built his campaign on opposing hyperscale data center development in Michigan.

The same tactic—framing a candidate’s 401(k) as a nefarious investment strategy —was also used against Randy Villegas, the Bernie Sanders–backed community college professor who recently defeated California state legislator Jasmeet Bains to become the Democratic nominee for a congressional district in the state’s Central Valley. Bains’ website points out that Villegas criticized BlackRock, but invests with them— investments that consist of a single retirement account, a mutual fund worth less than $15,000. In 2024, Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick ran ads accusing Bob Casey Jr., then his Democratic opponent, of owning stock in a Chinese fentanyl producer. Casey had less than $50,000 in a 529 college savings account, partially invested in a Fidelity index fund, 0.001 percent of which was reportedly invested in a Chinese medical firm that produces fentanyl.

These ads assume voters might not understand how mutual funds work, and that these candidates have decided to invest in the things they rail against on the campaign trail.

Back in Michigan, Crush MAGA PAC’s advertisement also asserts that Lawrence “spent years running a dark money organization.” Lawrence’s campaign says that’s a reference to the Sunrise Movement, the youth-led climate activist group that rose to prominence in the 2010s. Sunrise’s political arm spent about $2,500 on elections in 2018, the year Lawrence reportedly left the organization.

“I’ve got eleven thousand bucks,” Lawrence said in a video. “I don’t think that’s going to be enough to retire…if this is what they’ve got on me, I’m feeling pretty good.”

Continue Reading…

Polio Made Mitch McConnell MAHA’s Enemy

On Sunday, after four weeks of absence from Congress caused by a medical emergency—which led to extensive speculation about his health—Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) released a letter to his constituents saying that his hospitalization was the consequence of a fall. The 84-year-old former Senate Majority Leader noted that he has lifelong mobility issues related to a childhood case of polio.

Polio—largely eliminated in the US following the pathbreaking development of the Salk vaccine in 1955, when McConnell was 13—is a life-altering disease: if it doesn’t kill a person, it can lead to disabilities. Even decades after a polio infection, people can develop what is called post-polio syndrome, which contributes to symptoms such as muscle weakness and pain. Falls like McConnell’s are often related, at least in part, though McConnell has not publicly said whether he’s been diagnosed with post-polio syndrome, and falls not related to the condition are not unusual at his age.

Despite over a century of knowledge of the impacts of polio, and seventy years of widespread vaccine availability, some American parents are either delaying or avoiding getting their kids vaccinated against it. According to CDC data published in March, around 8 percent of toddlers born in 2021 and 2022 did not receive at least three polio vaccines by age two, with similar data available for kids born in the early 2010s. Unlike with measles , there have yet to be polio outbreaks as a consequence, with just one recent recorded case in the United States in an unvaccinated adult in 2022 (and none in children).

McConnell has consistently advocated for vaccines and spoken about his experience with polio decades after his infection at two years old—a voice that might help sway vaccine-hesitant parents who lean conservative, and a counterpoint to President Donald Trump’s expression of anti-vaccine sentiments, and appointment of anti-vaccine activists to top public health posts.

McConnell voted against confirming anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary in February 2025. In a statement released at the time, McConnell made his views on anti-vax sentiment clear.

“I’ve watched vaccines save millions of lives from devastating diseases across America and around the world,” he wrote. “I will not condone the re-litigation of proven cures, and neither will millions of Americans who credit their survival and quality of life to scientific miracles.”

It would be ahistorical to portray McConnell as any sort of health care hero. As Senate Majority Leader during the first Trump administration, McConnell led efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which, among other things, bans insurance companies from refusing to cover chronically ill people based on their disabilities. He also voted for Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, the 2025 budget bill that has already resulted in major public health cuts and which will strip millions of people of Medicaid through administrative burden.

Texas pediatrician and vaccine advocate Vincent Iannelli, who maintains a website tracking anti-vaccine propaganda, says voices like McConnell’s have been important in containing anti-vax sentiment. Trump, meanwhile, has questioned whether McConnell truly had polio—and various anti-vaxxers have done the same.

“The polio vaccine in particular is one of the greatest accomplishments of our science innovation,” American Public Health Association executive director Dr. Georges C. Benjamin told me. Benjamin noted that polio has been detected in wastewater domestically, suggesting that there are further unreported cases. “In communities that are not picking up the vaccine, the risk of polio is occurring,” he added.

New York University Grossman School of Medicine professor emeritus Arthur Caplan had polio when he was six years old and experienced temporary paralysis. Decades later, Caplan is experiencing the effects of post-polio syndrome, and now uses a mobility aid.

“It’s hugely important that polio survivors bear witness to the terrible damage that polio did in the US,” Caplan told me.

Asked what he thought about parents not vaccinating their children on the grounds of parental autonomy, Caplan, a bioethicist, says: “That is utter bullshit.”

Grace Rossow contracted polio in India as an infant in 1992, shortly before being adopted by a family in the United States. Despite access to quality medical care, Rossow’s symptoms, including paralysis in one leg and fatigue, persist. She’s had 19 surgeries to address the fallout.

Recovery from health problems, due to underlying neuromuscular issues, takes much longer after polio, Rossow, now 34, told me.

Right now, polio risk remains very low, Iannelli says. But if vaccination rates drop—as they have for other conditions, including measles, where such a drop was once hard for public health officials to imagine—that could change. Caplan cites the Florida surgeon general‘s efforts to end vaccine mandates in schools.

“Polio can hide. It hides in animals. People are asymptomatic. You cannot let your guard down against polio,” Caplan said. “It’s especially important for McConnell and other people who had polio to speak up.”

Continue Reading…

Colombian Man in Maine Reportedly Killed by ICE Agents

On Monday morning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were involved in yet another fatal shooting, this time in Biddeford, Maine.

The Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine said the victim was a 26-year-old Colombian man who was authorized to work in the United States, according to the Portland Press Herald. “He was a member of our community, a neighbor, and a human being whose life was cut tragically short. We extend our deepest condolences to his family, loved ones, and everyone now grieving this unimaginable loss,” the two immigration organizations said in a statement.

Daniel Boucher, who witnessed the aftermath of the shooting, told the Portland Press Heraldthat he was getting ready for work and after hearing what sounded like fireworks, he witnessed agents remove the driver of a sedan. “He was bleeding profusely from the head,” Boucher told the Press Herald. “He was talking. He said, ‘I tried to stop.’”

A representative of the Biddeford Police Department said calls about the shooting should be directed to ICE; the Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to a request for comment. FBI agents were photographed at the scene of the shooting as part of an apparent federal investigation.

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) told the Associated Press that he spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin about the shooting. Mullin reportedly told him that the victim “weaponized” his vehicle. Similar claims by DHS have fallen apart after video footage of shootings has come to light.

It is unclear whether video of Monday’s shooting will emerge. The ICE agents involved were not wearing body cameras, according to King.

Monday’s victim is one of more than 20 people whom federal immigration agents have shot at since last year, according to the New York Times. Most of those shootings have involved people who were inside their cars. At least nine people have now been killed during encounters with immigration agents during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Another witness to the aftermath of Monday’s shooting, who asked to be identified as Em, told the Press Herald that she heard gunshots then saw a white car whose driver appeared to have lost control of his vehicle. ICE then rammed into the car to get it to stop, she said.

Lucas Scott told the paper that he saw an ICE agent draw his weapon as he was yelling at the driver of the car. Scott then said he witnessed the driver try to hit the ICE agent with his car before the agent opened fire.

Images from the scene of the shooting show what appear to be bullet holes through the windshield of a white Kia sedan. The victim can be seen lying on the ground alongside the car.

A Kia sedan reportedly driven by the victim of a fatal shooting can be seen with apparent bullet holes in its windshield.Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald/Getty

Gov. Janet Mills said that she has been “briefed on the shooting” and that Maine State Police are on the scene. Other state politicians have been more outspoken. Democrat Ryan Fecteau, speaker of the House of Representatives, was quick to name ICE as the agency involved. Troy Jackson, who is running to replace Graham Platner as Maine’s Democratic nominee for the US Senate, called for ICE to be abolished. “For too long, ICE agents have been abducting our neighbors in brazen violation of the Constitution, and today they have tragically escalated even further,” Jackson said. “This rogue agency must be abolished.”

Last week, ICE agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant who lived in Texas for three decades. As Mother Jones has reported:

Salgado’s son Ronaldo Salgado held a press conference Wednesday calling for an independent investigation into his father’s death. “I want to tell you about my dad,” he said. “He was a hardworking family man. He was also a man of routine.” Every day, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo got up before dawn and drove to work on a construction site, just as he had done for 35 years.

“At 6:45 a.m., he should have been picking up the last of his guys before heading to North Houston to finish up construction on some houses,” Ronaldo Salgado said. By 6:55, his father had been shot by ICE agents who followed him in an unmarked car.

In a statement, DHS said Salgado had attempted to evade arrest and “weaponized his vehicle,” echoing language used in the hours after an ICE agent shot and killed US citizen Renée Good in her car in Minneapolis in January.

DHS ran with the same story to justify the shooting of Marimar Martinez in Chicago; she survived. In both cases, video evidence greatly undermined the government’s claims. DHS’s lies following the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January further eroded the department’s credibility.

After Good’s killing, Seth Stoughton, a former Florida police officer who is now a professor of law and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, made clear in a Q&A with Mother Jones that cops have been trained for decades not to place themselves in front of a potentially moving vehicle and to avoid shooting at drivers. “If you imagine a vehicle driving toward you, shooting the driver is not going to cause that vehicle to stop,” Stoughton explained. “One, you might not actually incapacitate the driver. But even if you do, you’ve just gone from having a guided missile to having an unguided missile.”

In the aftermath of the Monday morning shooting, calls to Maine’s Immigrant Defense Hotline reported ICE activity elsewhere in the area. Mufalo Chitam, executive director of the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, called for accountability in a statement shared with the press. “We are grieving, we are furious, and we will not allow his death to be treated as routine or inevitable,” she said. “How much more harm must our communities endure before those with the power to act acknowledge that this has gone too far?”

Continue Reading…

Trump’s Energy Policies Are “Fattening the Wallets of his Cronies” at Public Expense

_This story was originally published b_y the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Trump administration has directly spent $2.7 billion of taxpayer money on its crusade against wind power while pouring $1.1 billion into boosting coal, which critics say is pushing up Americans’ bills.

They say the moves are evidence that the president aims to serve fossil-fuel companies like those which donated record sums to his presidential campaign, rather than the working-class Americans to whom he pledged to lower energy bills and other costs.

“Trump is getting Americans coming and going,” said Jay Inslee, the former governor of Washington state and a Trump detractor. “He’s forcing higher power bills on them by blocking clean energy, then he’s fattening the wallets of his cronies—all with billions of our tax dollars.”

The Department of Interior has, since March, struck four deals with energy companies, paying them to cancel a total of eight offshore wind projects and pledge to invest in fossil-fuel power. The first such agreement was announced in March with the French energy company TotalEnergies, sparking a lawsuit from seven Democratic-controlled states that alleged it was an illegal use of taxpayer money.

“Coal has largely died because of economics, and so forcing it to stay afloat is not a good energy decision, and not a good economic decision.”

The latest deal with Duke Energy was announced late last month.

The president has derided wind energy as “ugly” and “disgusting,” and called efforts to slash planet-warming pollution a “scam.” Previous administrations have canceled or delayed energy projects via permitting, litigation or regulatory changes, but there is no precedent for the federal government directly paying developers to relinquish legally acquired offshore wind leases, said Jenny Rowland-Shea, senior director for conservation policy at the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress.

“They are trying to snuff out an entire form of energy,” she said. “And it’s at a time when the United States needs more energy…as people’s rates are going up for electricity, as we see data centers gobbling up more energy.”

As it has worked to suppress offshore wind, which experts say should be a key part of any climate plan, the Trump administration has bolstered coal, the dirtiest and most expensive fossil fuel. In September, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced it would spend $625 million to “expand and extend the life of” coal-fired power plants, allocating $350 million to “modernize” coal plants, $175 million to fund coal projects powering rural communities, and $50 million to upgrade wastewater management systems to extend coal plants’ lifespans.

Trump’s second-term spending to kill offshore wind and boost coal

Guardian graphic. Sources: DOI, DOE

Last month, the agency also set aside up to $500 million from the Defense Production Act to “expand and reinvigorate” the capacity of 13 coal plants, and to help build a coal export terminal in Oakland, California. A week later, the department announced an additional $3.6 million to “refurbish or retrofit” nine existing coal plants.

In an email, a DOE spokesperson, Ben Dietderich, said the administration is “proud” of its efforts to boost coal. “Before President Trump ended the Green New Scam, taxpayers paid the bill for trillions of dollars of so-called green energy energy subsidies,” Dietderich wrote, saying this resulted in the “premature shutdown” of fossil fuel plants, higher energy costs, and increased blackout risk.

“It’s worth noting that states with their own anti-coal and gas policies experienced the highest price increases during that time period,” he said.

There is evidence that renewables can lower energy costs.

Reached for comment, a White House spokesperson, Taylor Rogers, said officials were “not spending taxpayer dollars on these deals.”

“The administration is returning the money that companies bid on offshore wind projects that are unable to be built due to national security concerns, and those companies are voluntarily redirecting those returned bid amounts to energy projects that will provide affordable, reliable, and secure energy for American families and businesses,” she said. “The reality is that the Biden administration lured companies into these projects with the promise of millions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies to make these offshore wind projects viable.”

“We’re paying as taxpayers to keep economically unviable plants open,” resulting in “immeasurable harm to the local environment.”

But money from energy leases on public lands and waters goes into public accounts, said Rowland-Shea. “They can use the word return, but they are paying the companies not to produce this energy or to give taxpayers what was promised,” she said. The Biden administration indeed made subsidies available for offshore wind, but fossil fuels have long been subsidized by federal administrations, she noted.

The Guardian has also contacted the interior department for comment.

Coal is the most carbon-dense fossil fuel, making it a major contributor to the climate crisis. It is also harmful to public health, with one 2023 study estimating that as many as 460,000 deaths in the US from 1999 to 2020 were attributable to tiny particles of air pollution from coal plants alone.

Coal plants are also more expensive to build and run than renewable alternatives, experts warn. “Coal has largely died because of economics, and so forcing it to stay afloat is not a good energy decision, and not a good economic decision for taxpayers,” said Rowland-Shea.

Taxpayers are likely to pay for the White House’s anti-renewable and pro-coal moves twice, critics say: first through the billions in direct public spending, and then through higher electricity bills as utilities continue relying on more expensive coal generation instead of cheaper renewable energy.

A 2025 analysis from research firm Grid Strategies suggests that if all 35,000 megawatts of large fossil power plants scheduled to retire by 2028 were kept running, this would cost ratepayers at least $3.1 billion by the end of 2028.

In an email, Rogers, the White House spokesperson, said without subsidies, offshore wind projects “are not only the costliest source of power, but also the least dependable.”

Yet 99 percent of domestic coal-fired power plants cost more to run than it would cost to replace them with renewable power sources, a 2023 report from the research organization Energy Innovation found. Generating power with coal in 2024 cost 28 percent more than the same amount would have cost in 2021, Energy Innovation found last year.

“The failure of this coal sale demonstrates the Trump administration’s willingness to use significant resources to subsidize a dying industry.”

“These coal plants that are being supported by the government are coal plants that were going to close down because they couldn’t keep themselves open on their own,” said Gabrielle Levy, spokesperson for green advocacy group Climate Action Campaign. “So we’re paying as taxpayers to keep economically unviable plants open, and meanwhile those are doing immeasurable harm to the local environment, to people’s health, and to the climate, which costs us more, too.”

The spending comes alongside a broader effort to tilt the nation’s energy policy toward fossil fuels and away from renewable power. In October, the energy department allocated an additional $1.5 billion in public money in the form of a loan to restart and repurpose a coal gasification plant. And in February, the president signed an executive order directing the Pentagon to purchase electricity from coal plants, in another attempt to boost the United States’ coal industry through federal funding.

Officials have also curtailed many of the clean-energy tax credits created under the Inflation Reduction Act; frozen or slowed permitting for new wind projects; and streamlined permitting for fossil-fuel projects while making it more difficult for renewable projects to move forward. They have also taken other steps to make coal more economical.

Through a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, officials lowered royalty rates on federal coal from 12.5 percent to just 7 percent, slashing the amount of money that coal companies pay to the federal government and states to extract on public lands—a change that Wyoming alone estimates could cost it $50 million per year. In October, when the administration also held the largest US coal leasing sale in over a decade, the only bid amounted to one-tenth of a penny per ton.

“Even though the bid was ultimately rejected, the failure of this coal sale demonstrates the Trump administration’s willingness to use significant resources to subsidize a dying industry,” Rowland-Shea said.

Inslee said the Trump administration’s actions amounted to a “mugging.”

“We pay more, Republicans rubber-stamp it, and Trump’s donors walk off with the bag,” he said.

Continue Reading…

A Little Law Gives Hope That Government Can Suck Less and Make People’s Lives Better

When Sam Levine, Commissioner of New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP), was eleven, he signed up for a service that would send him ten free CDs in the mail. “I didn’t know it then, but I had just signed up for my first subscription,” Levine said. A few months and a pile of bills later, he was begging his parents to help him cancel the membership he’d unknowingly purchased.

It’s been 28 years since Levine was lured in with the promise of a Cher CD, but the problem of “subscription traps”—subscriptions which are easy to get, but a minefield to cancel—has only gotten worse. At a press conference Friday, Levine joined New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and former FTC Commissioner Lina Khan to present a municipal-level solution: New York City’s Click To Cancel Rule.

“These are now part of the business model for some of the largest companies in our economy.”

The idea behind the regulation is simple. A subscription should be as easy to cancel as it is to sign up for. A person should not be required to cancel a gym membership in-person if they got that membership online, or mail in a letter, or spend hours on hold with customer service in order to stop being charged for a service they aren’t using. Click to cancel is not a new idea: Under Joe Biden and Commissioner Khan, the Federal Trade Commission approved a federal click to cancel rule in 2024—only for that rule to be struck down on procedural grounds by the Eighth Circuit Court a year later, after a trade group representing major cable and internet providers sued to block it from going into effect. (Trump’s FTC may revive the rule, which was widely popular with consumers, later this year.)

“At the Federal Trade Commission, we would receive tens of thousands of complaints each year from people who had lost hard-earned money to these predatory schemes,” Khan, a member of Mamdani’s transition team, said at Friday’s press conference. “People wrote to us about spending days trying to cancel a gym membership, about charges that kept appearing months after they’d been canceled…These are not just the tactics of fly-by-night scammers. These are now part of the business model for some of the largest companies in our economy.” Uber, for instance, is currently being sued by the FTC and a coalition of state Attorneys General for allegedly “misleading customers by trapping them in recurring subscriptions to its Uber One service that were exceedingly difficult to cancel.” Adobe, too, has been accused of using these practices: An Adobe executive, according to court documents unearthed in 2024, called hidden early-termination fees “a bit like heroin” for the company.

Now, under Andrew Ferguson, the FTC is less aggressive about consumer-protection enforcement than it was under Khan. But on the state and city levels, consumers still have advocates. In California, Maryland and Colorado, statewide Click To Cancel rules are in effect. In New York, too, statewide consumer protections are already among the strongest in the country. But when New York City’s rule goes into effect this October, it will be the first municipal law of its kind, Mamdani said. It will add a local enforcement mechanism, DCWP Commissioner Levine said, giving New Yorkers the opportunity to complain directly about subscription traps by calling 311. And it’s expected to collectively save New Yorkers somewhere between $21.5 and $162.5 million per year, according to the Roosevelt Institute.

Friday’s announcement—held, notably, in a gym, in front of a cluster of elliptical machines—is part of a broader crackdown on predatory pricing. New York City is also targeting so-called “junk fees” that raise the final price of everything from apartments to sporting events, requiring companies to advertise final prices including additional charges or fees up-front. “It is estimated that the average family of four loses more than $3,200 per year on junk fees and hidden costs,” Mamdani said at the press conference.

Enforcement will begin October 1, with businesses that don’t provide easy cancellation processes facing civil penalties starting at $525 per violation. For 187 New York City gyms, warning letters were already sent out this past February. New Yorkers will be able to file complaints through the Department of Consumer and Worker Protections, which may then take subscription-trapping companies to court.

Under Trump’s regulation-averse federal government—one that in fact brands itself as having the “most ambitious deregulation agenda in history”—big companies tend to be able to extract value from people and come out on top without repercussions. Unwanted subscription fees, Khan said, “represent an upwards transfer of wealth; often from people who are already living on the financial margins of this city, to people who ultimately looking to buy a private jet or a second yacht.” So it’s nice to see that, at least on the local level, protecting people from predatory corporate tactics might still be possible.

Continue Reading…

How Lindsey Graham, Eager to Serve Trump, Became a Useful Idiot for Putin

Within moments of the early Sunday morning announcement that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) had died, there was much obvious commentary about his journey from Trump foe to Trump suck-up. During the 2016 GOP presidential primary, when Graham was competing with the onetime reality TV celebrity, he blasted Donald Trump as a “demagogue” and a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” He urged voters to tell Trump to “go to hell.” He predicted his party would be “destroyed,” if it nominated Trump.

Yet after Trump won, Graham became a full-fledged Trump lackey. He played golf with his new buddy and relished the access to power he now possessed. After the 2020 election, he joined Trump’s effort to pressure Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to rework the state’s vote count so Trump would prevail. And when Graham won a hard-fought Senate primary last month, he lavished praise on Trump, exclaiming, “Mr. President, you’re not far behind God.”

Graham lavished praise on Trump, exclaiming, “Mr. President, you’re not far behind God.”

One sign of Graham’s descent into the abyss of Trump toadyism is not likely to receive much attention: his acrobatic flip-flop on the Trump-Russia scandal.

After the 2016 election, during which Russia mounted a covert hack-and-leak attack and an extensive clandestine social media operation to cause chaos, hinder the Hillary Clinton campaign, and boost Trump, Graham was one of the Republican legislators who was boiling mad. He proclaimed, “I think they did interfere with our elections, and I want Putin personally to pay the price.” Graham even lobbied Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, then the majority leader, to lead the Senate’s investigation of the Russian assault. (McConnell opted to hand the probe to the Senate intelligence committee, where it would be less visible to the public.)

In this regard, Graham was at odds with Trump, who had falsely denied Putin had interfered in the 2016 election and who derided the scandal as a “hoax” and not worthy of an investigation, which he repeatedly called a “witch hunt.” Graham also joined with Sen. Marco Rubio to press the Trump administration to impose tough sanctions on Russia—which Trump was not keen on doing.

But eventually Graham got on board with Trump’s Russia denialism. He mounted a side investigation that focused not on Putin’s operation but on the FBI’s investigation of the Russian operation and the Steele dossier, the series of memos produced by a former British intelligence official that contained uncorroborated allegations of Trump-Russia collusion. Attacking the FBI probe and the Steele dossier—which was paid for by an opposition research firm retained by a lawyer working for the Clinton campaign—became the Republican’s main tactic to divert attention from Putin’s assault on the 2016 campaign and from Trump’s complicity (that is, his false insistence that there had been no Russian intervention).

Shortly before the 2020 election, Graham urged John Ratcliffe, a Trump devotee who was then director of national intelligence, to declassify intelligence that suggested that the Clinton campaign in 2016 had concocted a scheme to “stir up a scandal against US Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee,” with the goal to “distract the public from her use of a private mail server.”

Graham, who once decried Putin’s covert attack on the United States, now was an obsequious Trump foot soldier.

What neither Graham nor Ratcliffe told the public was that this intel was based on Russian intelligence reports that had been pilfered by the Dutch intelligence service and that CIA analysts believed were not credible and perhaps even disinformation. Graham was deploying unverified Russian intelligence to back up Trump’s phony claim that there had been no Russian assault on the 2016 election and that the whole thing was a Democratic hoax. He had pulled a complete 180.

Graham, who once decried Putin’s covert attack on the United States, now was an obsequious Trump foot soldier. He recklessly and irresponsibly called the suspicious Russian intelligence that Ratcliffe made public “the smoking gun.”

And he stuck to this line. Last year, when Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee for FBI director, appeared before the Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing, Graham railed against the Trump-Russia investigation and called it “one of the most disgusting episodes in FBI history…led by corrupt people.” He falsely stated that a Justice Department inspector general’s investigation had declared the inquiry “fraudulent.” (The IG report concluded it was legitimately opened but identified several problems with the probe.) Graham had become a pit bull for Russia denialism.

What’s odd is that while Graham was helping Trump cover up Putin’s attack on American democracy, he was also a fierce advocate for Ukraine. “Lindsey was a true defender of freedom and the values that make our world safer,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote after learning of Graham’s death, saying he was “deeply saddened.”

So when the issue was Ukraine versus Russia, Graham was fervently opposed to Putin’s barbarous war and tried to nudge Trump into maintaining US support for Kyiv. But on the matter of Putin’s attack on the United States, Graham fully caved in order to protect Trump—and became a useful idiot for Putin. No matter which principles Graham held and which policies he cared about, ultimately what mattered most was the influence he gained by serving a demagogue.

Continue Reading…

Scientists Ponder a New Climate Defense Tactic: Throwing Shade at El Niño

This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

This year’s El Niño is shaping up to be among the strongest on record, and it’s set to create chaotic weather around the world.

A new study suggests that there could be a way to mitigate some of the impacts of future El Niños and global warming: dimming the sun.

El Niño develops naturally in the tropical Pacific every few years, caused by weakened trade winds that push heat from the ocean toward the coast of South America. This tilts the odds toward higher-than-average global temperatures, as well as droughts in some regions, intense rains and floods in others, and more cyclones in the Pacific. Piled on top of warming driven by burning fossil fuels, a strong El Niño can mean hundreds of billions in economic losses.

“The thesis seems quite reasonable,”… but actually executing something like this would be “a political nightmare.”

The new study argues that deflecting solar energy could cool the ocean and help moderate El Niño events before they become too strong, staving off the worst impacts.

“El Niño is one of these things where something happens in the tropical Pacific, and then it rearranges the way the entire global atmosphere is holding energy that year,” says Katherine Ricke, a coauthor of the study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances and a climate scientist at UC San Diego and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “It’s an ultimate pressure point in the climate system.”

Ricke and her coauthors looked at using marine cloud brightening, or MCB, as a way to dim the sun in the Pacific. The technique entails spraying seawater into marine clouds to enhance the clouds’ reflectivity. While some pilot projects and randomized controlled trials have tested the technique’s efficacy, they’ve only been on very small scales.

MCB is one of a few different solar geoengineering methods intended to reflect sunlight back into space. Other methods, like using planes to inject aerosols into the stratosphere, can only work globally. But MCB has the potential to be a regional cooling solution.

To get around the lack of MCB experiments, researchers looked at a recent natural phenomenon that mimicked it: the catastrophic 2019-2020 Australian bushfire season. More than 10,000 bushfires raged across the country, producing almost 1 million metric tons of smoke. That represents one of the largest inputs of smoke into the stratosphere that humans have observed with satellite technology.

While the effects of this massive amount of smoke were complex, previous research shows it helped trigger a rare triple-dip La Niña—the opposite phase of El Niño—thanks in part to reflective particles in the smoke.

This event, Ricke says, enabled her and her coauthors to finally address a question they’d had for years about whether regional interventions can help relieve the pressure events like El Niño put on the global climate system. The researchers created a model based on the MCB effects of the Australian bushfires, and ran it against two different historic El Niño events to observe its effects. The modeling showed that lowering the amount of sunlight reaching the Pacific’s surface would have significantly reduced the magnitude of those El Niño events and their global impact.

Geoengineering techniques have traditionally been viewed as a method to cool the entire planet, acting as a counterbalance to humans’ use of fossil fuels—albeit an extremely controversial one. The new study makes the case that some forms of geoengineering would be better used to target regional events, like El Niño. Doing so has the potential to avoid—or at least lower the risk—of the compounding effects of El Niño piled on top of rising temperatures due to human activity.

“There’s the possibility that you’ll create an unpredicted problem that is worse than the problem you’re trying to solve.”

“The idea of having to sustain geoengineering indefinitely gives a lot of people pause—we all understand that cooperation at that magnitude would be hugely complicated in the world we live in,” Ricke says. “This is a totally different way to think about geoengineering.”

Geoengineering techniques like using planes to inject aerosols into the stratosphere—or even more fantastical ideas like space mirrors—have been met with skepticism from scientists, policymakers, and the public. This is mainly due to their unpredictability—altering the weather can come with a lot of unintended consequences—and their potential to create political instability. It’s likely even a regionalized approach like the one proposed in the new study would run into the same issues, but it appears to be scientifically feasible—or at least worth further study.

“The thesis seems quite reasonable,” Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University, says of the Scripps study. But Dessler warns that actually executing something like this would be “a political nightmare,” resulting in conflict or war if something goes wrong in what would be a worst-case scenario.

“These models are imperfect, and there’s the possibility that you’ll create an unpredicted problem that is worse than the problem you’re trying to solve,” Dessler says. “I think this is a really interesting paper, and I learned a few things reading it, but I certainly would not say that this is a great idea and we should implement it.”

Ricke agrees: “There’s a lot of things we need to figure out from models before trying it in the real world,” she says. Still, she says, this research could prove crucial for the future if humanity fails to address fossil fuel pollution. “The reason people do research on solar geoengineering is because we might end up in a world where we need it.”

Continue Reading…

A World Cup Star Can Be “Babygirl.” But For Now, He’s Mostly AI.

As someone who watches too much soccer and knows Erling Haaland as perhaps the world’s most formidable striker playing today, seeing friends and acquaintances show me viral videos of the player as an onion has been quite funny.

@mw10.03

Every household has some Halaand onions. My garlic has become a spirit. Strange garlic heads. Halaand. Halaand Song. Haaland. World Cup Meme King Tournament.

♬ 原声 – mw10.03

Despite my distaste for his club team (Manchester City is effectively owned by the United Arab Emirates, in large part to launder its image amid human rights violations), I do find Haaland very fun, especially in a sports industry where unrefined celebrity is rare. I particularly like this one:

Ok, I'm a fan of Haaland now after that smack he gives the 2nd kid

— Razzball (@razzball.bsky.social) 2026-07-06T21:28:15.170Z

Over the past month’s FIFA Men’s World Cup matches, fans have called the Norwegian striker various versions of “babygirl” and “princess.” The names largely come from the sharp contrast between his gigantic frame and endearing personality both on-camera and online. Haaland posts selfies with his “twin”—a low-res image of the animated character Shrek—on his Snapchat, and has a large designer bag collection—Chanel, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, etc. He is tailor-made for internet fandom.

But a lot of the most viral content is AI-generated, gets endlessly reshared, and is often uncannily accurate—including one where Haaland appears to get scared by his own reflection while eating.

I'm seriously going to die laughing at Haaland. pic.twitter.com/1Wfcbz2qza

— Crazy Moments (@Crazymoments01) June 29, 2026

We’re now at the point where news organizations and AI experts are fact-checking viral Haaland posts.

It’s unfortunate because I have enjoyed much of the internet’s newfound love affair with the player: comparisons to Dragon Ball Z villain Majin Buu, or the Heated Rivalry-inspired, if imaginary, shipping of Haaland and former teammate Jude Bellingham that has spiraled into yaoi lore fan-fiction.

bellingham vs haaland… heated rivalry https://t.co/7qQ8wtONDu pic.twitter.com/oo0Uf2CsFN

— currently clowning for BP3 (@sauritgaurs) July 6, 2026

The guy is showing many people how the sport, and the culture inseparable from it, can be fun. He effortlessly creates content on his own and inspires fans to run with it. We’ve got the memes and the fan fiction, so why do we need AI?

Computer, I beg you, please show me the true creativity and passion of the internet.

Continue Reading…

DOJ Subpoenas New York Times Journalists Following Air Force One Security Report

The New York Times said that at least four of its journalists received subpoenas on Friday from the Justice Department following their report on concerns over insufficient security on the new, Qatari-donated Air Force One.

The Times said that federal agents went to some of the reporters’ homes to deliver their subpoenas—an act of intimidation that David McRaw, the paper’s top newsroom lawyer, called “an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country.”

The subpoenas order the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury on Wednesday but, according to the Times, do not clearly indicate what they are expected to testify on. The newspaper also said the subpoenas were issued by Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York and Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence.

On Wednesday, four New York Times reporters wrote that security concerns led Trump to use the old old Air Force One jet that same day to leave the NATO summit in Turkey, following a recommendation from the Secret Service. The reporters cited “people briefed on the plans” who called the move a precautionary measure due to antagonistic relations with Iran.

When Trump presented the new $400 million jet from Qatar last month, he boasted that it “is considered the world’s most luxurious plane” and was “built at a level that will probably never be seen again.” In addition to questions over the propriety of accepting a donation from a foreign government, the “luxurious plane” required the Air Force to beef up the jet’s security. In fact, the Air Force has reportedly been working on upgrading securitysince September, likely at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The subpoenas represent yet another significant attack on press freedom by the Trump administration. The Times said that before its Wednesday story was published, a senior FBI official asked the newsroom not to release it due to an issue of national security but did not offer further explanation.

“When the government claims it needs to investigate journalists to protect national security, it really means its own reputational security,” Seth Stern, the chief of advocacy of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit that supports journalists with digitally-secure communication tools, said in a Saturday statement. “The administration’s embarrassment that it reportedly charged taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars to retrofit a flying bribe that still isn’t secure enough for hostile times does not supersede the need for a free and independent press.”

Continue Reading…

The Secret Story of FTX’s Rise and Ruin Part 1

Sam Bankman-Fried was once called the “crypto king.” But in November 2022, his company, FTX, imploded within a matter of days. All around the world, customers of the cryptocurrency exchange were suddenly cut off from their money.

“I tried to withdraw an amount, you know, and it would spin and say, your, your withdrawal is pending,” says Tareq Morad, an investor from Canada. “I remember myself doing that around 7, 8 o’clock at night, checking back, going to look: Okay, did it go through? Did it go through? No. No. No.”

Meanwhile, inside the company, employees were panicking. “All that we were told was there’s been a run on the bank and, somehow, money is missing and we don’t know who to trust,” remembers Caroline Papadopoulos, part of FTX’s accounting leadership at the time.

This week on Reveal, through prison interviews with Bankman-Fried, his parents, FTX insiders, and customers, we take you through the frantic week of FTX’s collapse and the controversial and less well-known bankruptcy that followed. At a cost of nearly $1 billion, it has become one of the most expensive in history.

Read the FTX bankruptcy estate’s on-the-record statement to Reveal.

This is an update of a show that originally aired in September 2025.

Continue Reading…