Utilities Are Usually Hostile to Solar and Battery Systems, but Not for These Rural Customers

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

Michael Gillogly, manager of the Pepperwood Preserve, understands the wildfire risk that power lines pose firsthand. The 3,200-acre nature reserve in Sonoma County, California, burned in 2017 when a privately owned electrical system sparked a fire. It burned again in 2019 during a conflagration started by power lines operated by utility Pacific Gas & Electric.

So when PG&E approached Gillogly about installing a solar- and battery-powered microgrid to replace the single power line serving a guest house on the property, he was relieved. ​“We do a lot of wildfire research here,” he noted. Getting rid of ​“the line up to the Bechtel House is part of PG&E’s work on eliminating the risk of fire.”

PG&E covered the costs of building the microgrid, and so far, the solar and batteries have kept the light and heat on at the guest house, even when a dozen or so researchers spent several cloudy days there, Gillogly said.

Over the past few years, PG&E has increasingly opted for these ​“remote grids” as the costs of maintaining long power lines in wildfire-prone terrain skyrocket and the price of solar panels, batteries, and backup generators continues to decline. The utility has installed about a dozen systems in the Sierra Nevada high country, with the Pepperwood Preserve microgrid the first to be powered 100 percent by solar and batteries. The utility plans to complete more than 30 remote grids by the end of next year.

Until recently, utilities have rarely promoted solar-and-battery alternatives to power lines, particularly if they don’t own the solar and batteries in question. After all, utilities earn guaranteed profits on the money they spend on their grids.

But PG&E’s remote-grid initiative, launched with regulator approval in 2023, allows it to earn a rate of return on these projects that’s similar to what it would earn on the grid upgrades required to provide those customers with reliable power. The catch is that the costs of installing and operating the solar panels and batteries and maintaining and fueling the generators must be lower than what the utility would have spent on power lines.

“It all depends on what the alternative is,” said Abigail Tinker, senior manager of grid innovation delivery at PG&E. For the communities the utility has targeted, power lines can be quite expensive, largely due to the cost of ensuring that they won’t cause wildfires.

PG&E was forced into bankruptcy in 2019 after its power lines sparked California’s deadliest-ever wildfire, and the company is under state mandate to prevent more such disasters. PG&E and California’s other major utilities are spending tens of billions of dollars on burying key power lines, clearing trees and underbrush, and protecting overhead lines with hardened coverings, hair-trigger shutoff switches, and other equipment.

But these wildfire-prevention investments are driving up utility expenditures and customer rates. Solar and batteries are an increasingly cost-effective alternative, Tinker said, with the benefits outweighing the price tag of having to harden as little as a mile of power lines.

PG&E saves money either by getting rid of grid connections altogether or by delaying the construction of new lines. Microgrids can also improve reliability for customers when utilities must intentionally de-energize the lines that serve them during windstorms and other times of high wildfire risk—an increasingly common contingency in fire-prone areas.

Angelo Campus, CEO of BoxPower, which built most of PG&E’s remote microgrids, sees the strategy penciling out for more and more utilities for these same reasons. “We’re working with about a dozen utilities across the country on similar but distinct flavors of this,” he said. ​“Wildfire mitigation is a huge issue across the West,” and climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of the threat.

Utilities are responsible for about 10 percent of wildfires. But they’re bearing outsized financial risks from those they do cause. Portland, Oregon-based PacifiCorp is facing billions of dollars in costs and $30 billion in claims for wildfires sparked by its grid in 2020, and potentially more for another fire in 2022. Hawaiian Electric paid a $2 billion settlement to cover damages from the deadly 2023 Maui fires caused by its grid.

Microgrids can’t replace the majority of a utility’s system, of course. But they are being considered for increasingly large communities, Campus said.

Nevada utility NV Energy has proposed a solar and battery microgrid to replace a diesel generator system now providing backup power to customers in the mountain town of Mt. Charleston. Combining solar and batteries with ​“ruggedized” overhead lines should save about $21 million compared to burying power lines underground, while limiting impacts of wildfire-prevention power outages, according to the utility.

Some larger projects have already been built. San Diego Gas & Electric has been running a microgrid for the rural California town of Borrego Springs since 2013, offering about 3,000 residents backup solar, battery, and generator power to bolster the single line that connects them to the larger grid, which is susceptible to being shut off due to wildfire risk. Duke Energy built a microgrid in Hot Springs, North Carolina, a town of about 535 residents served by a single 10-mile power line prone to outages, on the grounds that it was cheaper than building a second line to improve reliability.

In each of these cases, utilities must weigh the costs of the alternatives, Tinker said. ​“It’s complicated and nuanced in terms of dollars per mile, because you have to be able to do the evaluation of individual circuits, and what can be done to mitigate the risk for each circuit,” she said.

Whether microgrids are connected to the larger grid or not, utilities need to maintain communications links with them to ensure the systems are operating reliably and safely. PG&E is working with New Sun Road, a company that provides remote monitoring and control technology, to keep its far-flung grids in working order.

It’s important to distinguish remote microgrids built and operated by utilities from other types of microgrids. Solar, batteries, backup generators, and on-site power controls are also being used by electric-truck charging depots and industrial facilities that don’t want to wait for utilities to expand their grids to serve them. Microgrids are also providing college campuses, military bases, municipal buildings, and churches and community centers with backup power when the grid goes down and with self-supplied power to offset utility bills when the grid is up and running.

Utilities have been far less friendly to customer-owned microgrids in general, however, seeing them as a threat to their core business model. Since 2018, California law has required the state Public Utilities Commission to develop rules to allow customers to build their own microgrids. But progress has been painfully slow, and only a handful of grant-funded projects have been completed.

Microgrid developers and advocates complain that the commission has put too many restrictions on how customers who own microgrids can earn money for the energy they generate when the grid remains up and running. Utilities contend that they need to maintain control over the portions of their grid that connect to microgrids to avoid creating more hazards.

“It is a very difficult balance that PG&E is constantly trying to strike, with the oversight of [utility regulators] and other stakeholders, between safety and reliability and affordability,” Tinker said. ​“That’s something we’re trying to thread the needle on.”

But as the costs of expanding and maintaining utility grids continue to climb, and solar and batteries become more affordable, utilities and their customers are likely to see more opportunities to make microgrids work, Campus said.

“The cost of building poles and wires and maintaining distribution infrastructure has grown substantially over the past 20 years,” he said. ​“Look at the cost of distributed generation and battery—it’s an inverse cost curve.”

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Being Black in America Almost Killed Me Part 2

When Trymaine Lee began writing his first book, he didn’t realize that the gun violence he was reporting on was such a central part of his own story. But then he began digging into his family history, only to fully learn about a series of racially motivated murders involving his ancestors. Lee’s book, A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America, soon became more personal than he’d planned. He realized he needed to “speak honestly about what I now know to be crushing down on me, which is the weight of this family history.”

On this week’s episode of More To The Story, Lee sits down with host Al Letson for part 2 of a conversation about generational trauma, the challenges of being a Black journalist in America, and how learning about his family’s history has changed how he writes and reports on Black Americans killed by violence. And if you haven’t listened to part 1, you can find that conversation here.

This following interview was edited for length and clarity. More To The Story transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors.

Al Letson: You have this book that you finished right before this massive heart attack and then you dive back in to make your edits and to polish it up, but your experience just changed the whole trajectory of the book. Talk to me about that

Trymaine Lee: Yeah, man. More than that, when I first turned that 90,000 word manuscript in it was really super rough. The book it is today is honestly about 25% of what it was into what it became. Initially, I was always going to hold the reader’s hand a little bit and speak to my own experiences. My grandfather’s murder in 1976 is this massive space in my life. It occupies a massive space in my family’s life. Two years before I was born, growing up seeing my family’s portraits of better days and people talking about his voice and his sense of humor and just how he moved through the world, I always knew that part. So part of the storytelling was even your friendly neighborhood journalists who you’ve come to know telling these stories has been touched by this thing, and here’s what it cost my family.

What I had less of an understanding of was that my grandfather’s was not the first murder in our family. Going back to the rural South, Jim Crow Georgia in the early 1920s to discover that my grandmother, who was a baby at the time, had a 12-year-old brother who was shot and killed in a sundown town where the men came together, and this is documented in the newspaper, came together in Fitzgerald, Georgia to outlaw Black labor and Black voting in this community in the late 1800s, ’cause that sparked my family’s journey into the migration to Philadelphia first and then South Jersey only to have a second of my grandmother’s brothers shot and killed by a state trooper, and to for the first time look at those headlines where it says, trooper’s gun kills youth, as if this gun just hopped up and shot a Black teenager under these weird circumstances.

Then 20+ years later, my grandfather’s murder. A prospective tenant. They owned an apartment in Camden, New Jersey and were going to rent it to a guy. He disappeared after leaving a deposit, wanted his money back, and my grandfather said, “No, I’ll see you in court.” He came back and murdered my grandfather. 20 years after that, my stepbrother’s shot and killed in Camden. A girl put a bullet in the back of his head. In the early 2000s, another cousin killed in Atlantic City.
So, the psychic residue of what’s been passed down and me grappling with telling these stories that Black families across the country experience in terms of the violence of police in the system and the violence of the community and the systemic violence, again, that binds us all, wraps us all up, this became so much more personal. As you know, for a long time I was trying to be somewhat arm’s length, even though I was very close to telling these stories. Now, was time to drop all of that and speak honestly about what I now know to be crushing down on me, which is the weight of this family history.

Yeah, as you were talking about it, it just made me think about my own family history and think our stories are so similar. My great-grandfather, the reason why my family ended up in New Jersey is because something happened to him in the South, and there are no records of it, but family lore is that he was lynched. I don’t have anything to prove that, but the family lore is that he was lynched and then that moved my family to New Jersey, and then all sorts of violent incidences happen there as well, and it just kind of seeps into you.

The funny thing for me is that I had no idea about any of that until I started reporting on a story and I thought, let me look into my genealogy and just think about … and when I saw it all, I was like, wow, I am reporting on the story of my family and didn’t even know it.

Time and again.

Time and again. Time and again you find yourself in these horrible stories, sad stories about people that look like you and then you find out they are you, and it’s a heavy weight to carry. At Reveal we worked on this series called Mississippi Goddam, and I get choked up when I talk about it. I remember … ooh, God, man, I’m so sorry, I’m getting choked up.

No, man.

I remember feeling like it was going to kill me. My blood pressure was ridiculous. I would check my blood pressure in the morning and I thought to myself … literally the blood pressure thing would tell me to go to the hospital, because it was that high, but I couldn’t stop, because I had to turn in this story. I had to turn in this story and I felt like I … and I did. I don’t think this was wrong, but I felt like I owed this family and I owed the young man that I was telling the story about like I had to finish it, but also when I look back, I owe my children to be around if I can. But I couldn’t see it then, I just was like-

Of course not.

… “You got to get through this thing.” Oof, man, I’m so sorry.

No, of course, man.

But every time I sat down at that computer or to write these episodes and listening to this tape and looking at autopsy reports and all of that type of stuff, and graphic photos of this young man’s death, I felt like I had to keep doing it. The more I did it, the higher my blood pressure went, the more I thought … I literally would think I’m going to stroke out, but I don’t have a choice, I have to finish this, I have to finish this.

I mean, just to be honest, Reveal, especially at that time, most of the people in that workplace were white, and I had worked so hard and championed the story for so long that I was finally getting a shot, and I knew I couldn’t drop it and just the amount of pressure and time it took. Then afterwards I realized like, bro, you acting crazy, so I went to a therapist that guided the therapy and I took three months off from Reveal. I just couldn’t do it, ’cause I thought it was going to kill me, and I think by the grace of God it didn’t, but carrying that, oh my God.

Brother, that same feeling. Again, I feel like I’m looking into a mirror and I’m hearing a echo bounce from me to you and back to me. Those early days especially, there’s nothing like arriving at a crime scene and seeing someone that looks just like you, dressed just like you, got some Air Force 1’s fresh just like you with their brain matter splattered across the pavement.

Yeah.

The family and that look in a mother’s eyes that could be your mother, there’s zero things in this universe like that pain, and that we are the burden bearers of that and we have to be and we have always had to be. Ida B. Wells did not like this season either.

Yeah.

Her blood pressure was probably through the roof-

Absolutely.

… but it’s a reminder that we cannot report our way out of the pain, we cannot educate our way out of the pain, we cannot drink our way out of the pain.

No.

When you’re a young man, you can’t run around and have sex. You can’t sex it away, we have to engage with it. Until we have those conversations about what it means to carry that weight when you have to carry the weight, because no one else will and no one will care when we die of a heart attack, because it happens every single day, right?

Yeah. No, absolutely.

What you got me doing here, bruh? What you got me doing here? You got me. That’s what we need though, that’s what we need. [inaudible 00:09:49]

Hey listen, I’m just mirroring you, bro, ’cause I’m sitting here talking to you with tears in my eyes trying to be like, “Brother, calm down. What are you doing, Mr. Letson?” So, to go back to trauma-

Yeah, let’s do more.

Yeah, let’s do more. One of the things in your book that I think about a lot, and again I’m giving so much personal information here. So my oldest son, I had no idea he was born. I didn’t find out about him until he was five years old and he lived all the way across the country. We had no communication or contact until I found out when he was five and I was 23. So I was 23, I was a kid when I flew out to get him, I was taking him home back to Florida and I didn’t know what to expect. I’d seen his picture, this was long before the days when we had video calls, so I talked to him on the phone a little bit.

Back then my thing was with him when I found out about him, I started writing postcards and sending him … ’cause he was a kid and getting mail’s a big thing, right? I was a flight attendant, so I’d be in different places and sending him stuff. Anyway, I go to get my kid, first time meeting him in-person, and the thing that tripped me out is that he was so much like me at that age. I mean, things that he would say were things that I … really specific things. I’m a little bit older than you, but when I was young, we had this saying, I think it went something like up your nose with a rubber hose or something like that, right?

I remember the first time I’m meeting my kid, he’s like, “Up your nose with a …” I was like, “What?” Then I brought him home to my mother and my mother who likes him more than me was like, “This is you as a kid.” He was so much like me. I tell that story to just say that I believe that DNA is way more powerful than we talk about.

Yes, yes.

That I believe that our family’s history is encoded in our DNA and we carry both the good, but also the trauma. You can’t get away from it, it is in you. It is in your blood, it is in your bones, it is who you are. I think especially for Black folks in this country whose ancestors have experienced a crazy amount of trauma, you carry it with you every day. So when you talk about going into your grandparents’ home and being at the spot where you know your grandfather died, can you talk to me about that?

Yeah, man, there’s the ways that these moments reshape the way we raise our children and the way we move through the world, how we teach them to survive in America and teach them to carry a bit of this trauma, that’s one thing in a practical way, right? This moment changes everything, there’s the emotional pain that we experience. When you think about those epigenetics and that post-traumatic slave disorder, that we’ve arrived at that moment after a long series of these cuts and slices. There’s one part of the book that I had to shrink down for the sake of the story, but it’s the guns for slave cycle and a psychic connection to the violence and the pain.

Not just a genetic one too, but there’s this other one, this ethereal psychic trauma that we carry from being bartered for guns, and that Europeans plied these regional African powers with guns and some would only trade in guns for enslaved people to create war instability. So this idea that we were forced out of Mother Africa with a muzzle of a gun at our back, and then we arrive at the hell of the Western world and experienced all this other violence and trauma that we then pass down for five, six, seven, eight generations to arrive on the South Side of Chicago, to arrive in Camden, New Jersey, to arrive in West Berlin, New Jersey where my grandfather was killed and stand in that spot, and then read in the newspaper about how the blood was smeared on my grandmother’s nightgown and what it means. How do we disrupt that? Is there any disrupting that?
I think acknowledging it, that it exists and it’s not some sort of fantasy of our Hoodoo, Voodoo imaginations that we’re carrying that, but I think it’s something that we have to acknowledge it, because it’s there, and we know it’s there. We know it’s there, and I just don’t know how we reconcile that.

Yeah, I mean, I think you’re right is that the key is talking about it, ’cause America will convince you it is not there. We’re I wouldn’t say the beginning, but maybe America has always been in the process of the great forgetting. America loves this idea of collective amnesia that it continually pushes on people, and so if you’re pushing the collective amnesia, we’re not engaging with all the things you just talked about.

That’s right.

If you don’t engage with it, it just gets bigger and it begins to guide your steps in the future, because you don’t know it’s there, so you have to talk about it.

That’s right. One of my guiding, and this is a guiding principle for my journalism, but also for this book in particular, because this is not a very prescriptive book, this is not a policy book, this is about how we’ve been shaped and our experience with the violence, but it’s that ain’t nothing wrong with us. Ain’t nothing wrong with us. If you want to understand what’s wrong with us, let’s look at this machinery around us.

Right.

Right? Let’s look at what we’ve carried in us, what was sparked by this white supremacist violence and a society bent on our breaking, that’s what’s wrong with us. So even though the gun is certainly the vehicle and that kind of violence is the vehicle, for me it’s like this is how we arrived at this moment, this is how we got here. But ultimately there is nothing wrong with us except for how we’ve experienced this country.

So, this country is moving. I’ve heard people say that this is unprecedented what we’re seeing right now. I would say that we saw all this at the end of reconstruction, and this is a rerun of reconstruction. Just the writers of America season five are pretty bad. This season-

They really jumping the shark, man. This is crazy.

This is like, what are you doing? We need new characters. But as we are living in this time period, and given all that you have reported on and gone through personally, where’s your work going to take you now that we’re here?

You know what? I’ve been having these conversations a lot lately with Black men in particular, but Black people in general. Not unlike those post-reconstruction days when the nadir or the nadir … I’m from New Jersey, I say nadir.

Yeah, right, right, right.

I might be wrong. Nadir just sounds right to me, so nadir. But beating back our efforts at nation building and institution building, and finding for the first time some fullness, some fullness of what it means to be an American and solidify this conditional citizenship that we’ve had. I think now is the time that we build and collaborate and double down on telling our stories and telling the truth. So for me, I think this book is an important bridge for me.

For more than 20 years, I’ve been a journalist in the newsroom, in print, in digital, in broadcast, in podcasting, now I have my first film coming out on the anniversary of Katrina on Peacock, I have the book coming out, I want to [inaudible 00:19:12] ways in which we speak to the Black American experience. This is not new or novel, but I think now is the time to continue to build in that catalog, because what’s going to happen is as they continue to try to erase us and erase our story, in 100 years when they’re on the fourth nadir, when they’re on the fourth burning down of any kind of reconstructive efforts, they have to understand that this is not unprecedented, that this is precedented, that this is the default position and this is how you survive it.

Yeah.

This is how you survive it is to look it square in it’s face and tell the truth as they’re renaming military bases after these fake Robert E. Lee. They’re so bent on making sure they honor-

It’s so ridiculous.

… the heroes of [inaudible 00:19:55]

Can we just talk about the ridiculousness of white-

That’s Robert Jenkins Lee.

Right, exactly.

Thing about this. We’ve been around long enough, we are just now comfortable enough to say white supremacist system, white supremacy.

Oh my God, absolutely.

We couldn’t say that-

No.

… we’re just there.

It’s just that America’s understanding of what it means to be Black and how we see the world and experience the world, we haven’t caught up and journalism absolutely hasn’t caught up.

Even among our friends and friends of the truth, there is an acceptable level of anti-Blackness in this country that is okay-

It’s okay.

… even among people who wish it would be different.

Yep, it’s okay.

But we’ve accepted it, it’s part of what this is, right? So that’s why you have to have an argument about whether the founders of this country, these transnational human traffickers are white supremacists or not.

But the idea that my ancestors’ lives didn’t matter. One of the things that our friend Nikole Hannah-Jones talks about a lot is that you can’t have this history and it matter, and suddenly this history doesn’t matter.

That’s right.

It doesn’t make sense.

That’s right.

It doesn’t make sense. You got to own the whole thing America, you just got to own it.

That’s right, that’s right, that’s right. Our friend Ta-Nehisi Coates, you can’t have the credits without the debits, right?

Exactly.

It has to be both, but also the idea that our existence and experience is kind of inconsequential when we are foundational in all of the ways. We were the economy-

Absolutely, exactly.

… we were our flesh.

Exactly.

But the fact that we’re still fighting to tell these stories.

Exactly.

You’d imagine a great nation would say, look how far we’ve come, and when we couldn’t do the right thing we did. Certainly this founding was A, B, C, or D, but we are such a great nation where look at the strides. The strides were made through bloodshed and sacrifice.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Come on. The truth, as we know, is so dangerous though, because the idea that … especially with Black people, this idea of liberation, but that America itself will be freed, finally freed, that’s a very dangerous proposition for those who don’t believe in our equality or humanity.

Yeah. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Trymaine, is there anything that you wanted to hit on the book before I let you go?

I don’t think so, just that this truly is my life’s work. I have joked that this book almost killed me, which it did, but it truly is my life’s work and it finally became what it was supposed to be. I hope people not only find an understanding about how guns have shaped us and the industry that profits while there’s so much pain here, but that there is a healing and power and strength in facing down the hardest parts of what we harbor within, right? Confronting the violence, the silent, quiet violence from within.

As men in particular, but in general, finding the strength and courage to face that down and live freely and live happily and find peace. That’s why this matters, because it hurts so bad what we’ve experienced, what we’ve carried in our genes, the psychic residue of the violence that we’ve experienced, the systemic violence and the actual violence. What it means to finally find peace within that, that to me I hope is the great strength and power of this book, and I hope it finds the audience that it deserves.

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

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Democratic Voters Want Their Leaders to Stop Running From Zohran Mamdani

Zohran Mamdani hadn’t been Regina Weiss’ first choice for mayor of New York City. She’d ranked city comptroller Brad Lander number-one on her primary ballot in June, and told me she wished that the 33-year-old Democratic Socialist state assemblymember brought a bit more experience to the job. But Weiss, who volunteers with Indivisible, was happily supporting the Democratic nominee now, and expected to begin canvassing for him soon. What she couldn’t understand, she told me, as she waited for the candidate to take the stage with Sen. Bernie Sanders at the “Fighting Oligarchy” town hall in Brooklyn on Saturday, was why some of the biggest names in her party weren’t doing the same.

“I’ve never seen this before—I’ve never seen the Democratic leadership not endorse the Democratic candidate,” she said. “It’s so ugly, it’s so cowardly, it’s so stupid. The Democrats are basically in the crapper when it comes to enthusiasm. You’ve got this guy—the Democratic candidate for the biggest city in the country—and they’re not endorsing him.”

Weiss put her hands to her face in frustration. She’d been reading happily before I came along.

“Sorry, I’m very angry about this,” she said. “What is it? Is it like they’re afraid? I mean, I guess they’re afraid, but my God!”

“One might think—one might think!—that if a candidate starting at 2 percent in the polls, gets 50,000 volunteers, creates enormous excitement, gets young people involved in the political process, gets non-traditional voters to vote, Democratic leaders will be jumping up and down! ‘This is our guy!’”

Two months out from one of the biggest elections since Trump won the presidency, most Democratic voters in New York City are on board with their party’s nominee. After defeating disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo by double digits in the primary, Mamdani leads him comfortably again in four-way general-election polls. Scandal-plagued mayor Eric Adams and Republican Curtis Sliwa are barely visible in the distance. Mamdani has raised the maximum amount allowable under the city’s matching-funds system, maintained a relentless schedule of campaign appearances and media hits, and even talked privately with Barack Obama. His support among elected officials is real. Four members of the city’s congressional delegation have publicly endorsed him—including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with whom he’d appeared a few hours before the town hall. Along the side wall of the packed auditorium at Brooklyn College, city council members and state legislators milled about, mingling with Mamdani’s top advisors and the omnipresent former Rep. Jamaal Bowman (who has cut an ad for the candidate, brought Mamdani to a Wu-Tang show, and co-hosted a community event for him in the South Bronx).

But it was hard to ignore who hadn’t gotten on board. Even as Trump threatened to unleash hell on New York City, and the president dangled an ambassadorship to lure Adams out of the race, some of the most powerful Democrats in the city and the state have been deafeningly quiet. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who helped force Cuomo’s resignation as governor, is publicly agnostic on whether Mamdani or Cuomo should run America’s largest city. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, after previously avoiding questions about the race by insisting that he does not endorse in primaries, has still not made an endorsement more than two months after the primary. House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries has thus far avoided backing Mamdani while egging on criticisms of his housing policy. Reps. Dan Goldman and Ritchie Torres, junior Democrats with outsized national profiles, have withheld thei support, while suggesting that the nominee has not done enough to condemn anti-semitism.

That Rep. Tom Suozzi, whose Long Island district includes parts of Queens, told a TV interviewer Mamdani should leave the party is not so surprising. That Rep. Greg Meeks—the chair of the Queens Democratic Party—is still holding out is a bit more glaring.

For the party’s left-wing, often accused by more moderate factions of hampering Democrats’ big-tent efforts, Mamdani’s nomination poses an obvious question: What kind of “big tent” party doesn’t have room for the party’s own candidate and the majority of its voters?

As Ocasio-Cortez recently put it, “Are we a party that rallies behind our nominee, or not?”

For the most part, the rally at Brooklyn College, a brisk walk away from Sanders’ childhood home in Midwood, was an upbeat affair. Sanders has been holding these “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies since February, and in always-unsaid ways they’ve sometimes felt like a passing of the torch. Mamdani told the crowd about gathering signatures for his first assembly campaign outside a Sanders rally in 2019, and of building out a volunteer base by inviting people to the senator’s debate watch parties. He spoke in some detail about Sanders’ tenure as mayor of Burlington, Vermont—evidence that a socialist can run a city pretty well, but also, that a socialist running a city still feels pretty banal much of the time. (He “took on a broken property tax system,” Mamdani said, and worked “to transform the Lake Champlain waterfront.”) A few protestors tried to spoil the fun, but never to much effect. At one point, a man with a Cuban flag on his shirt stood up to call the candidate a communist.

“Brother, I’m here with another Democratic Socialist,” said a smiling Mamdani, referring to Sanders.

But the lack of support from high-ranking Democrats was an unavoidable topic. During the Q&A portion of the event, a guy from Canarsie stood up to express his fear that history was repeating.

“I just look at this campaign and it reminds me a little bit of what happened a few years ago in Buffalo,” he said.

The man was referring to that city’s 2021 mayoral election, when India Walton, a 29-year-old nurse, defeated the incumbent mayor in the primary—only to lose to the same candidate in the general election. Billionaire donors’ support for Cuomo, and the party’s tepid response, was giving him “deja vu.” “How do we make sure that something like like this doesn’t happen again?” he asked.

Mamdani’s response was fairly diplomatic. “We have to beat Andrew Cuomo one more time,” he said, because, “This is a man who does not understand that no means no.” He urged the crowd to continue volunteering and organizing.

But Sanders sounded like he had been waiting for something like this. And like Weiss, the woman I spoke with before the town hall, he was fired up.

“I want to, if I might—I want to add a point to that very good question,” he said, standing up from his chair and walking toward the front of the stage. “It may be a little bit out of place here, but I want to do it. I find it a little bit strange that when we have a candidate who competed very hard, as did a number of other people in the Democratic primary—”

He turned to Mamdani.

“My understanding is you won that primary. Is that correct?” Sanders asked.

Mamdani nodded.

“My understanding is you are the Democratic Party candidate for mayor of the city of New York. Is that correct?”

Mamdani nodded again.

“Now, apropos that question: I find it hard to understand how the major Democratic leaders in New York State are not supporting the Democratic candidate,” Sanders continued. “One might think—one might think!—that if a candidate starting at 2 percent in the polls gets 50,000 volunteers, creates enormous excitement, gets young people involved in the political process, gets non-traditional voters to vote, Democratic leaders would be jumping up and down! ‘This is our guy!’”

The senator seemed to be saying what everyone else was thinking. The response from the crowd was surpassed, perhaps, only by Sanders’ earlier condemnation of American weapons sales in Israel. And the two sentiments are not really unrelated—in the case of both Israel and Mamdani, high-profile Democrats are substantially out of step with Democratic voters, and well-funded attempts to weaponize Mamdani’s criticism of Israel in the primary only served to underscore the qualities that made him appealing to voters.

That moment, and the two Democratic Socialists’ presence on stage together, was a reminder of both how much and how little had changed since I’d last checked in on the Fighting Oligarchy Tour last spring. At the time, it felt like a post-election low. While elected Democrats had, individually and in small groups, sought to demonstrate their opposition to Trump and Elon Musk’s rampage through Washington, the party had little to show from those first few months. Senate Democrats had just caved to approve a Republican funding measure and avert a government shutdown. Purportedly ambitious figures seemed to prefer litigating wokeness to putting out the fire in their house. And Democratic voters were watching this and going, what the hell? Covering Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez for two stops in Arizona, I had been struck by just how un-Bernie-like the crowds were; the normie Democrats were showing support for the Democratic Socialists, because the Democratic Socialists were showing up for them when so many powerful people and institutions were not.

Fast forward to today, and the party’s leaders in Washington seem ready to cave on another shutdown fight this month. A lot of people still sound more comfortable complaining about trans rights than fascism. It’s not too simplistic to say that the leadership that can’t unite behind Mamdani now is the leadership that made Mamdani possible—a cynical and bloodless and compromised liberalism that’s hovering tentatively by the focus groups while real popular movements takes shape on their own.

Sanders started holding these events, he explained earlier this year, because to his surprise, no one else was. For Trump’s opponents, this shift toward autocracy represents both a challenge and an opportunity—one that Sanders has laid the foundation for, and Mamdani and his movement have now seized. When no one else is coming to save you, you have to save yourselves.

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Nobody Wants This Dirty Gas Plant. Trump is Forcing It To Stay Open.

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

The Trump administration, citing an ongoing “energy emergency,” has once again saddled a community already overburdened by pollution with a dirty, obsolete power plant it doesn’t want or need. The decision has confounded residents and environmental justice advocates, who called the move an abuse of federal law and a lost opportunity to improve the area’s air quality.

The Department of Energy (DOE) issued what’s called an emergency “stay open” order for Constellation Energy’s gas-fired power plant in Eddystone, Pennsylvania, on August 27. It is the second time since May the agency has taken this step, and amounts to “an extraordinary and unprecedented” use of the Federal Power Act, said Robert Routh of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The NRDC, along with the Sierra Club, PennFuture, and several other environmental groups, is challenging the decision. Emergency stay open orders have previously been reserved for wartime conditions or natural disasters, said Routh, who is the Pennsylvania policy director for the organization. “This is an abuse of an extraordinary authority reserved for emergency situations,” he said, noting that the short-term need for increased electricity the administration cited in defending the move would not justify keeping the facility open. “They are concocting the emergency situation in order to justify keeping a dirty fossil plant online past its retirement date.”

Eddystone lies just outside Philadelphia, at the head of a 12-mile industrial corridor that stretches to the town of Marcus Hook and is generally considered one of the most toxic areas in the state. Today, it’s home to myriad hazardous industries, including the nation’s largest trash incinerator, chemical plants, and refineries. Childhood asthma rates in the region are four times the national average, and the rates of some forms of cancer are more than 1,000 times higher.

“We have not yet seen that demand that everyone is talking about from the data centers.”

Constellation Energy’s gas plant in Eddystone began operation in the early 1960s and currently provides about 782 megawatts to the surrounding region. It has run only sporadically in recent years, in large part because it simply was not economical to operate consistently. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, it emitted 23,102 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2022, 16 tons of methane, and 31 tons of nitrous oxide.

Grid operator PJM approved Constellation’s shutdown request for the plant in December of 2023 after finding that the closure would not adversely impact the grid, and the facility was scheduled to close May 31. But, one day before the closure, the DOE, ordered the plant to continue operating. The agency reissued that order when it expired last week.

Although environmental advocates argue the emergency order is a manufactured crisis, the DOE cited summer heat waves as the rationale for keeping the plant open, noting that the “Eddystone units were called on by PJM to generate electricity during heat waves that hit the region in June and July.”

The grid operator did not respond when asked if closing the plant would have caused blackouts—something that would not have been considered in its decision to approve the facility’s closure, because PJM cannot deny a closure solely on those grounds. But PJM said it supported extending the emergency order. Constellation Energy pointed to the rapid expansion of the data centers powering artificial intelligence, saying that it is “continuing to work with the Department of Energy and PJM in taking emergency measures to meet the need for power at this critical time when America must win the AI race.”

In July, Trump and Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick announced the private sector had promised $90 billion in funding to turn Pennsylvania into a hub for data centers. This has drawn concern from environmental advocates, who worry that the promise of corporate investment will provide a handy excuse to prolong the life of oil and liquid natural gas in order to generate electricity for hypothetical data centers.

“We have not yet seen that demand that everyone is talking about from the data centers,” said Jessica O’Neill, managing attorney at PennFuture, an environmental advocacy nonprofit. “In Pennsylvania, we just seem to fall over ourselves, again and again, to attract new industry.” Her concern, she explained, was that the state would build speculative gas plants or extend the life of aging plants in the service of an industry that might never materialize.

When Constellation’s shutdown request was approved almost two years ago, the grid operator noted that the plant’s closure would not cause “any reliability violations,” or leave the region at risk of blackouts. Both Routh and O’Neill noted that PJM’s interconnection crisis has left many renewable energy projects in limbo as they wait to be brought onto the grid. Despite the administration’s dire warnings of an energy emergency, it has moved aggressively to shut down renewable energy projects that would provide more electricity.

“I personally think it’s interesting that they’re justifying the stay open order on the grounds that there’s an energy emergency, because that has not been shown to be the case,” said Lauren Minsky, a medical historian and professor of environmental health at Haverford College. “And what there clearly is, is a public health emergency.” As part of her work, Minsky has been tracking community cancer rates in the industrial stretch between Eddystone and Marcus Hook. Pediatric Hodgkin’s Lymphoma rates in Eddystone are 1,051 percent higher than the national average; youth uterine cancer rates are 1,813 percent higher.

The emergency stay open order will likely increase costs for ratepayers, Routh explained. Because the order came down just a day before the plant was to retire, Constellation Energy had to abruptly order an enormous amount of fuel and tackle deferred maintenance it never expected to deal with. “Those costs are going to be shifted to ratepayers,” said Routh. “Whereas this plant otherwise would not have been operating. This is an unprecedented use of this authority, and it’s done in a way that doesn’t make sense even on its own face.”

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Supreme Court Blesses Racial Profiling by ICE

In greater Los Angeles, the Trump administration’s goal of deporting millions of people is being operationalized through often violent raids that target people who appear Latino while waiting for the bus or working in low-wage jobs. A shorter way to say this is racial profiling of low-income people. Today, the Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court blessed this approach.

“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino.”

The ruling, on the so-called shadow docket, is yet another in a long string of cases since the spring in which the GOP appointees have allowed the Trump administration’s power grabs. From firing federal workers and agency heads to deporting people to dangerous countries without due process, the court’s majority has waived aside precedent, clear statutory language, and even constitutional protections in order to give this president increasing power. This time, the pesky thing standing in the way was the Fourth Amendment.

“The Fourth Amendment protects every individual’s constitutional right to be ‘free from arbitrary interference by law officers,'” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “After today, that may no longer be true for those who happen to look a certain way, speak a certain way, and appear to work a certain type of legitimate job that pays very little.”

Among the administration’s long list of recent wins, this case is particularly foreboding. It allows the government to target people because of their appearance and how they speak, as well as where they were found and what kind of work they do—factors that the district court found likely violate the Fourth Amendment. To move freely in this country, it may become increasingly important to look white. As Sotomayor, the court’s only Latino justice, wrote in dissent, the majority has created a “a second-class citizenship status” of people who may be subject to harassment.Today’s decision sets a course for the United States to become a country where masked officers pluck people from streets and businesses because of how they look.

But to the court’s majority, the Latino citizen or visa holder who must now carry immigration documents or a passport every time they leave the house, and who might endure repeated harassment from federal agents anyway, is not the real victim. Instead, granting emergency relief to the Trump administration indicates the justices think the greatest harm is that the government might be forced to turn away from indiscriminate raids and put more effort into finding undocumented immigrants while this case challenging its tactics moves through the courts. As former prosecutor Ken White, a frequent media commenter, summed up the court’s holding: “Supreme Court Rules 6-3 That Fundamental Interests Of United States Of America Would Be Irreparably Harmed If It[s] Race-Based Harassment And Detention By Masked Thugs Were Even Temporarily Halted.”

It has become typical that even in extraordinary opinions granting the administration new powers, the GOP appointees provide little to no explanation. On Monday, the court’s majority once again declined to explain its rationale in a written decision—possibly because it doesn’t even have a cohesive argument. But Justice Brett Kavanaugh nonethelessprovided a concurrence, a kind of opinion that usually accompanies another justice’s fuller explanation. Perhaps Kavanaugh’s attempt to explain his reasoning in this case provides a partial explanation for why the majority so often remains silent: to show its reasoning would be to betray just how weak that reasoning is.

Kavanaugh’s words are all we have to understand the court’s decision. And while the explanation he provides is poor, that in itself is illuminating. The only way Kavanaugh can justify the government’s actions is to put on blinders, ignore the fact-finding performed by the district court, presume the Trump administration is acting in good faith, and even ignore the actual policy that the Trump administration is applying. You don’t need to be a lawyer to see the flaws, or read the counterpoints in Sotomayor’s dissent, to see that some of what Kavanaugh writes simply doesn’tmake sense.

Millions of people in Los Angeles now fear leaving their homes.

Kavanaugh, for instance, claims that the plaintiffs in this case, which include citizens who have been detained by ICE during its raids as well four groups that represent immigrant and worker rights, don’t have standing to challenge the administration’s immigration enforcement in Los Angeles because individuals and association members are unlikely to be detained again. “What matters is the ‘reality of the threat of repeated injury,'” he writes, before ludicrously concluding that the plaintiffs “have no good basis to believe that law enforcement will unlawfully stop them in the future based on the prohibited factors—and certainly no good basis for believing that any stop of the plaintiffs is imminent.” That must be news to the millions of people in Los Angeles who now fear leaving their homes, not because they have done anything illegal but because simply being at work, waiting for the bus, or going to Home Depot is enough to get slammed against a wall or taken to a warehouse for questioning.

If you are a Latino citizen who takes the bus to work in Los Angeles or frequents Home Depot, and ICE detains you once, what would insulate you from the same thing from happening again? Of course, the answer is nothing. Kavanaugh’s reasoning here seems to completely ignore how ICE is choosing its targets, even though that is literally the subject of the lawsuit.

Kavanaugh’s rejection of the facts continues when he brushes aside the often violent reality of ICE raids, as documented by the plaintiffs, and instead dismisses an ICE stop as a minor inconvenience. “As for stops of those individuals who are legally in the country, the questioning in those circumstances is typically brief, and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U. S. citizens or otherwise legally in the United States.” Sure, that’s possible.

But Kavanaugh’s chipper language is belied by recent images of hundreds of people being shackled at a Hyundai plant sitein Georgia, and bused 100 miles to a detention center, including reportedly people with valid work permits and citizens—even those with their immigration documents on them—where some were held for days. Evidence presented by the plaintiffs in this case demonstrated that citizens were pinned against walls and driven away for questioning. There is an indignity that goes along with always having to carry papers because of what you look like. But Kavanaugh doesn’t acknowledge any of that. To do that, he would have to acknowledge that the most-harmed party might not actually be Trump and his plans.

“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,” Sotomayor wrote. In LA now, that is the reality, at least as long as this case continues. And there’s no reason in this opinion to assume it won’t soon be the reality for the rest of us, too.

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Trump’s Birthday Letter to Epstein Is Out

In July, the Wall Street Journal reported on the existence of a birthday note from President Donald Trump to his one-time friend Jeffrey Epstein. The paper had claimed that the missive included a lewd image depicting the outline of a woman’s body and Trump’s signature, which was described as mimicking the appearance of pubic hair. Trump vehemently denied the letter and promptly sued the paper and its owner, Rupert Murdoch.

Now, in response to a subpoena from the House Oversight Committee, Trump’s lawyers have handed over the infamous birthday book. Here is the image, as first reported again by the Journal, and confirmed by the committee’s Democratic members.

Donald Trump wrote a personalized note in Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday book. He’s spent all summer lying about its existence.

We got a copy. Ranking Member @RepRobertGarcia explains what we know and how we got here: pic.twitter.com/PVbHaVWppw

— Oversight Dems (@OversightDems) September 8, 2025

For more on the Epstein scandal and how this could end for the president, read my colleague Anna Merlan.

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The One Crime Trump Doesn’t Seem to Have a Problem With? Domestic Violence.

Speaking at the Museum of the Bible on Monday, President Donald Trump repeated one of his favorite falsehoods as of late: That his deployment of the National Guard in Washington, DC, has virtually eliminated crime in the nation’s capital.

That is, of course, not true. But if that outright falsehood was not egregious enough, consider that Trump also complained that reports of domestic violence are inflating crime statistics and implied they should not be considered “crimes” at all.

“Things that take place in the home, they call crime,” Trump said. “They’ll do anything they can to find something. If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime, see? So now I can’t claim 100 percent.”

Trump minimizes domestic abuse during a talk at the Museum of the Bible: "Things that take place in the home, they call crime … If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime, see?"

— Phil Lewis (@phillewis.bsky.social) 2025-09-08T15:44:26.977Z

Dawn Dalton, executive director of the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence, told me on Monday: “We don’t agree with what the president is saying.” Nearly half of women in DC, and more than 40 percent of men, have experienced intimate partner violence or stalking in their lifetimes, according to statistics the coalition compiled last year. Nationwide, an average of two dozen people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

“There have been federal and local statutes in place for decades that do name domestic violence as a crime,” Dalton added, “and we know that domestic violence is often a precursor to other crimes, including domestic violence homicides as well as mass shootings.” Indeed,research has found that in nearly 70 percent of mass shootings, perpetrators had a history of domestic violence or had killed at least one partner or family member.

“The frequency and the harm [of domestic violence] is not paid enough attention to, and remarks such as the president’s certainly underscore that truth,” Dalton added.

Abigail Jackson, a spokesperson for the White House, said in a statement provided to Mother Jones: “Of course the President wasn’t talking about or downplaying domestic violence—and any Fake News hacks trying to use this as a political cudgel against the President are doing a great service to actual domestic abusers and criminals around the country.”

In fact, Trump has not only downplayed domestic violence through his speech, but also through his actions: His administration has cut millions of dollars in grants earmarked for victims of crime, including domestic violence, and has tried to force domestic violence service providers to agree to hand crime victims over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in order to receive federal dollars.

A statement like the one Trump made is also not surprising when you consider the man that uttered it has himself been accused of rape by his ex-wife, Ivana Trump. She later claimed she did not mean it “in a literal or criminal sense,” adding that she “felt violated.” (Trump denied the allegation.)

Trump has also stacked his Cabinet and surrounded himself with men who have faced similar accusations. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s own mother called him “an abuser of women,” in a 2018 email, though she told the New York Times last year that she subsequently recanted and apologized for it. Hegseth has also been accused of rape and sexually inappropriate behavior, charges which he denies. (Hegseth paid the woman who made the rape accusation, the Washington Post reported, but he alleges the interaction was consensual.) Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was accused of groping a babysitter in the late 1990s. While running for president last year, he texted her to apologize and said he had no memory of the incident. Ex-Department of Government Efficiency head and Trump frenemy Elon Musk was accused of sexual misconduct by a SpaceX flight attendant in 2016, but he denied the claim—after Business Insider reported that the company paid her $250,000 in 2018 to keep her from filing a lawsuit. And Rob Porter, a top White House aide, abruptly resigned during Trump’s first term after two of his ex-wives came forward with domestic abuse allegations, which Trump himself cast doubt on.

While there is ample evidence that the police do not always protect domestic violence victims or respond adequately to domestic abuse, it seems very unlikely that this is what Trump was referring to. The man is, after all, about the furthest thing from an abolitionist: His so-called One Big Beautiful Bill allocated more than $100 billion to ICE—the same agency that has created a chilling effect for immigrant survivors of domestic violence seeking help, as I previously reported. And the president has repeatedly threatened to send the National Guard to take over other cities after doing so in DC and Los Angeles.

Instead, his latest comments are a throwback to the infamous Access Hollywood tape. Trump seems to believe that, if you’re a man, “you can do anything” to women—and that you deserve to get away with it.

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Impeach RFK Jr.

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._

Of all the unqualified extremists Donald Trump has appointed to his Cabinet, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as of now, poses the most direct threat to the nation. The secretary of health and human services is devastating the United States’ public health system and promoting quack science that imperils the lives of Americans. In recent weeks, he has decapitated the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, canceled mRNA vaccination research that held the potential for amazing medical breakthroughs, and loaded an important vaccine advisory panel with vaccine critics.

Kennedy is a threat to the well-being of the American citizenry. That’s why House Democrats should move to impeach him.

His promotion of vaccination opposition—don’t call him a vaccine “skeptic”; he’s a vaccine foe—has fostered an environment in which Florida this week announced it was ending all vaccine mandates for schoolchildren, with the state’s surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, bizarrely declaring every vaccine mandate “is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.” It’s unlikely a state would have taken this risky and outrageous step if the federal government—led by the HHS secretary and the president—would have denounced the move. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has no such worries with Kennedy and Trump.

Kennedy is a threat to the well-being of the American citizenry. That’s why House Democrats should move to impeach him.

This week, in a column for the New York Times, nine former CDC directors—who collectively served under every president from Jimmy Carter to Trump—asserted that Kennedy has waged a war on public health. Here is their summation of the damage he has done:

Mr. Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he’s focused on unproven treatments while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill-prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements. And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage. Firing [CDC director] Dr. [Susan] Monarez — which led to the resignations of top CDC officials—adds considerable fuel to this raging fire.

He testified that he doesn’t know how many people died of Covid and whether the vaccines prevented Covid deaths: “The problem is they didn’t have the data.” But that data does exist.

More than 1,000 current and former HHS employees signed an open letter calling for Kennedy to resign or be fired. They noted he has appointed “political ideologues who pose as scientific experts and manipulate data to fit predetermined conclusions”; selected “David Geier, supporter of debunked theories linking vaccines to autism, to lead an HHS investigation on vaccines and autism”; refused to be “briefed by well-regarded CDC experts on vaccine-preventable diseases”; rescinded “the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency use authorizations for COVID-19 vaccines without providing the data or methods used to reach such a decision”; and insulted the HHS workforce by declaring, “Trusting experts is not a feature of either science or democracy.”

On Thursday, Kennedy, appearing before the Senate Finance Committee, repeatedly lied during a contentious hearing. He insisted he had not broken the vow he previously made to senators to not do anything to limit vaccines, though that’s exactly what he has done. He falsely claimed the CDC was overrun by financial conflicts and inaccurately said that was why he fired all 17 members of a vaccine advisory panel. (His new appointees have their own financial conflicts.) He testified that he doesn’t know how many people died of Covid and whether the vaccines prevented Covid deaths: “The problem is they didn’t have the data.” But that data does exist.

Kennedy demonstrated his slipperiness by agreeing that Trump ought to receive a Nobel prize for Operation Warp Speed, which developed the Covid vaccines, though he has previously said the Covid vaccine killed many people and was a “crime against humanity.” He told the senators that “there are no cuts to Medicaid.” But the Congressional Budget Office says that Medicaid provisions in Trump’s tax-and-spending bill would increase the number of people without health insurance by 7.8 million in 2034. And RFK Jr. hurled other falsehoods.

None of this is new. Kennedy has long been shown to be a deranged liar and conspiracy theorist. He lied during his confirmation hearings to hide his not-secret agenda to annihilate the nation’s vaccine regimen. And now we can see what happens when a disingenuous crusader obsessed with crackpot notions is put in charge of the US public health system.

Medical and scientific organizations—including the American Public Health Association, the American Society for Virology, and the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society—have called for his dismissal. And numerous Democratic senators have done the same. House Democrats ought to do them one better and introduce articles of impeachment.

Do Americans want to Make Measles Great Again? Do they desire a wrecked public health system and severe cuts in research for cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other diseases? Do they want to be unprepared for the next pandemic?

Cabinet members can be impeached. This has happened twice in US history. William Belknap, who served as secretary of war for President Ulysses Grant, was impeached in 1876 for his involvement in what was called the trader post scandal (in which he was accused of receiving kickbacks on federal contracts). He was acquitted by the Senate. In 2024, House Republicans impeached Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas for supposedly not complying with federal immigration law. The Democratic-controlled Senate dismissed the articles of impeachment, contending they did not “allege conduct that rises to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor.”

Yes, there’s not much chance that articles of impeachment filed against Kennedy in the House, which is ruled by Trump’s cult, will get too far. But as Trump continues his authoritarian rampage and his administration implements profoundly harmful policies, the Ds need to acknowledge they are not in a conventional political battle and, most important, show some fight. Do Americans want to Make Measles Great Again? Do they desire a wrecked public health system and severe cuts in research for cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other diseases? Do they want to be unprepared for the next pandemic?

These are extreme times. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries a few days ago stated that he’d like to work with Trump on affordable housing legislation. (See Dumbass Comment of the Week below.) The desire for bipartisanship is a tough craving for some of these guys and gals to kick. But to earn the trust and votes of concerned Americans, Democrats must show that they understand the multiple crises at hand and that they are willing and able to engage in the trench warfare that the Trump threat demands. Targeting Trump’s worst henchmen (and henchwomen) is just one way they can do that.

This can be a piece of the party’s 2026 strategy. The Democrats are aiming to regain the House and have hopes—though not as high—for the Senate. The most likely positive outcome for them at this point is a win in only the lower chamber. (I’m assuming nothing exceptional occurs to prevent or hinder the midterm elections—which is not an unsubstantial assumption.) Were the Democrats to triumph only in the House, their ability to thwart Trump’s assault on American democracy would increase but still be limited. They could mount investigations and issue subpoenas, but they could not pass legislation. And it’s important to keep in mind that much of what Trump has done in the past seven months to grab and consolidate power has not involved legislation. But the Democrats would hold the power of impeachment. And laying down a marker now for a Kennedy impeachment would be a serious flex.

What’s his impeachable offense? Endangering citizens ought to count, and lying to Congress is indeed a felony. His lies are life-and-death matters.

Why not move to impeach Trump? you ask. His authoritarian, unconstitutional abuses of power and arguably illegal moves could justify that. But the country has been through this before (twice!), and impeachment of a president is a direct defiance of the electorate’s will. Another Trump impeachment would allow an unpopular Trump to rally his supporters to oppose what he will call a new Democratic “hoax.” And his brown-nosing GOP lickspittles in the Senate would have his back. Also, a Democratic attempt to impeach Trump might make it seem the Democrats are as bent on revenge as Trump.

Impeaching Kennedy would cast the spotlight on his policies—which are not supported by the public—and place pressure on the handful of Republicans in the House and Senate who still have some connection to reality and who realize that Kennedy is a menace. What’s his impeachable offense? Endangering citizens ought to count, and lying to Congress is indeed a felony. His lies are life-and-death matters.

A handful of Republicans have begun to challenge Kennedy—or, that is, express concern about his perfidy. Talking about Kennedy’s recent decisions on vaccines, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a medical doctor who has long championed vaccination, said, “This is about children’s health. This is about how we protect the children of the United States of America. There’s allegations that that that health is being endangered. We need to try not presupposing anybody’s right or wrong. We got to get to the bottom of it.”

For a Republican in the Trump era, that weaselly statement counts as criticism. The bottom is already evident. Kennedy is undermining vaccinations for children and for adults. Cassidy had the chance to stop this during Kennedy’s confirmation process, when he was a key vote. After much pondering, he chickened out, backed Kennedy, and assumed a huge chunk of responsibility for the mess Kennedy is creating.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) also was grousing about Kennedy this week. She asserted that the firing of Monarez and the departure of other high-level disease experts at the CDC raise “considerable questions about what is happening within the agency. Americans must be able to fully trust that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rigorously adheres to science-based and data-driven principles when issuing policy directives. The removal of the director after such a short tenure appears to be evidence that politics are taking precedence over policy. I fully support…Cassidy’s call for congressional oversight and look forward to participating in the committee’s work.”

She, too, voted to place Kennedy at HHS. No point in crying for the barn door to be closed now. The mad horseman of the apocalypse is on a breakneck gallop.

Kennedy presents a clear and present danger. He is Exhibit No. 1 that the Trump regime is a fever swamp of fringe views, grift, extremism, and conspiracism. As the House Democrats prepare for the coming electoral battle against the forces of Trumpism, they will have to do more than highlight their gazillion policy proposals and proclaim their ideas for health care, the economy, retirement security, and you-name-it are the best. They must display fierceness—over and over. Moving to impeach Kennedy is one way to do this. And it has the benefit of being fully warranted.

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We Can Remove Toxic Forever Chemicals From Drinking Water. Why Aren’t We?

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

A new study finds that technologies installed to remove “forever chemicals” from drinking water are also doing double-duty by removing harmful other materials—including some substances that have been linked to certain types of cancer.

The study, published Thursday in the journal ACS ES&T Water, comes as the Trump administration is overhauling a rule mandating that water systems take action to clean up forever chemicals in drinking water.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), colloquially referred to as forever chemicals, are a class of thousands of chemicals that do not degrade in the environment and have been linked to a slew of worrying health outcomes, including various cancers, hormonal disorders, and developmental delays. Because they do not degrade, they are uniquely pervasive: a 2023 study from the US Geological Survey estimated that 45 percent of tap water in the US could contain at least one PFAS chemical.

Last year, the Biden administration finalized a rule establishing the first-ever legal limits of PFAS in drinking water, setting strict limits for six kinds of PFAS chemicals and mandating that water utilities needed to clean up drinking water under these limits by 2029. But in May, the Environmental Protection Agency said it would be reconsidering regulations on four of the six chemicals in the original rule and extend the deadline by two years. The changes come after widespread outcry from water utilities, who say that the costs of installing PFAS filtration systems would be far beyond what the agency originally estimated.

“There’s this gray area in between what is safe and what is legal where there’s still some risk, which is why we’re so concerned about all of these contaminants.”

“Building on the historic actions to address PFAS during the first Trump Administration, EPA is tackling PFAS from all of our program offices, advancing research and testing, stopping PFAS from getting into drinking water systems, holding polluters accountable, and more,” Brigit Hirsch, EPA press secretary, told WIRED in a statement. “This is just a fraction of the work the agency is doing on PFAS during President Trump’s second term to ensure Americans have the cleanest air, land, and water.”

Hirsch also emphasized that as EPA reconsiders standards for the four chemicals in question, “it is possible that the result could be more stringent requirements.”

Experts say the costs of cleaning up PFAS could have other benefits beyond just getting forever chemicals out of Americans’ water supply. The authors of the new study—all employees of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a nonprofit that does research on chemical safety—say that technology that gets rid of PFAS can also filter out a number of other harmful substances, including some that are created as byproducts of the water treatment process itself.

The study looks at three types of water filtration technologies that have been proven to remove PFAS. These technologies “are really widespread, they’ve been in use for a really long time, and they’re well-documented to remove a large number of contaminants,” says Sydney Evans, a senior analyst at EWG and coauthor of the report.

Most routine water disinfection processes in the US entail adding a chemical—usually chlorine—to the water. While this process removes harmful pathogens, it can’t leach out PFAS or other types of contaminants, including heavy metals and elements like arsenic.

This method of disinfection can also, paradoxically, create some harmful byproducts as chlorine reacts to organic compounds present in water or in infrastructure like pipes. Long-term exposure to some of these byproducts has been linked to specific types of cancer. While there are some federal guidelines for water utilities to follow, experts say that a growing body of research illustrates that there’s a gap between what is legal and what is safe. (It’s also not uncommon for utilities to find water samples that exceed legal limits: Officials in Springfield, Massachusetts, and Akron, Ohio, have notified residents this year that their water was polluted with disinfection byproducts.)

“There’s this gray area in between what is safe and what is legal where there’s still some risk, which is why we’re so concerned about all of these contaminants,” says Evans, some of whose past work has focused on the links between disinfection byproducts and cancer.

“It’s really an interesting first effort to try to diagnose ancillary benefits—and perhaps unintended benefits—from installing advanced water treatment systems intended to remove PFAS,” says P. Lee Ferguson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Duke University. “This gets at a question many of us have asked, and that I’ve thought about quite a bit: [with] the very act of installing advanced treatment intended to remove really recalcitrant contaminants like PFAS, you really do have the potential to get a lot of other benefits.”

While putting together the study’s methodology, the researchers also demonstrated how large the gap in advanced technology is between smaller water systems and bigger ones. Just 7 percent of water systems serving fewer than 500 customers had some kind of advanced water filtration system, as opposed to nearly 30 percent of water systems serving more than 100,000 people. These smaller systems, the EWG researchers say, overwhelmingly serve rural and under-resourced populations. Cost explains a lot here: These types of technologies are much more expensive than treating water with chlorine. (In May, the EPA said it would launch an initiative called PFAS OUT, which will connect with water utilities that need to make upgrades and provide “tools, funding, and technical assistance.”)

The relatively small sample size of 19 water systems, and the lack of detail in the data, means there are some wide discrepancies in the results, says Bridger Ruyle, an assistant professor of environmental engineering at NYU who studies PFAS and water systems. Some of the systems in the study saw a nearly complete reduction in disinfection byproducts after they installed advanced filtration; at the other extreme, some water systems actually showed a gain in byproducts after they installed the filtration systems.

This, Ruyle says, doesn’t mean that the technology isn’t effective. Rather, it calls for more research into how variables like new exposure sources and seasonality might be affecting specific plants.

“In the lab, you can do all of these controlled studies, and you can say, ‘Oh yes, we eliminate all of the PFAS, and that also takes care of some other contaminant issues of concern,’” he says. “But when you’re talking about the real operation of a water facility, the environmental behavior of PFAS and these other chemicals are not the same. You could have different seasonal patterns, you could have different sources, you could have climate change impacting different components. And so, just because we’re treating a certain inflow of PFAS, a lot of other things could be happening to these other chemicals kind of independently.”

The question of cost comes back to who, exactly, needs to be on the hook to pay to clean up water. In communities across the country, water utilities are folding new PFAS testing and remediation measures into other needed upgrades, and some consumers are seeing their bills skyrocket. But understanding the full benefits of some of these fixes can help scientists and policymakers better grasp the path forward.

“This is an enormous financial challenge,” Ruyle says. “And at the same time, it’s a financial need. There’s a big focus now in the Trump administration from the MAHA movement [around] what are these causes of all of these health and well-being ills. If you’re not willing to put up the money to upgrade infrastructure, to actually address proven causes of environmental harm, then what are we going to do?”

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Trump Has Turned the National Guard Into Mall Cops. Cost? $1 Million a Day.

When I went out to fetch lunch last Wednesday, three Louisiana Guard members were lounging outside the Mother Jones building, enjoying the perfect weather and watching dialysis patients spilling out of Metro access vans. The soldiers wore handcuffs on their belts and handguns strapped to their thighs, unaware that they were protecting some enemies of the people inside.

Later that afternoon, even more soldiers flocked to our building after a fire truck and ambulance pulled up to deal with a medical emergency. The Guard members stomped around, barking into walkie-talkies, but they contributed little more to the operation than the reporter and other rubberneckers on the sidewalk. They were back on Friday, clustered near the parking garage like smokers sheltering from the wind.

President Donald Trump has deployed more than 2,200 of these National Guard members to DC to execute his “historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse,” as he described it during an August 11 news conference. “This is liberation day in DC, and we’re going to take our capital back.”

City officials protested that crime in DC had fallen to near-historic lows. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser called the presence of the military in the city “un-American.”

American soldiers and airmen policing American citizens on American soil is #UnAmerican.

— Muriel Bowser (@MurielBowser) August 17, 2025

Nonetheless, armored vehicles rolled in the next day and lined up in front of the Washington Monument. The initial optics of an occupied city were terrifying,the fever dream of a budding authoritarian. Several weeks later, however, the military “liberation” of DC looks a lot different from the war on crime that Trump had promised to bring to our city.

National Guard members here aren’t actually doing much. Groups of bored soldiers seem to wander aimlessly around the city like tourists, taking selfies at national monuments and enjoying our varied dining offerings. On Tuesday, when I was walking my dog, I ran into a few Guard members patrolling my local coffee shop. The regulars were chatting them up, while expressing polite outrage at the militarization of this quiet, historic, gayborhood.

The soldiers were from Louisiana, a state whose capital city boasts a crime rate twice as high as DC’s. In their civilian lives, one was a cop, another an “assistant chiropractor.” They seemed oblivious to the pressing local crime wave: cyclists in the nearby bike lane blowing through the stop light, a scourge endlessly decried by the café denizens.

Groups of bored soldiers seem to wander aimlessly around the city like tourists, taking selfies at national monuments and enjoying our local dining offering

The presence of all these soldiers in my orbit this week left me pondering something that had nagged me since they first arrived in DC last month: If I got mugged in broad daylight, what could those National Guard members really, legally, do?

I put the question to John Dehn, a West Point grad and professor in the national security and civil rights program at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. The answer, he explained, depends on the mission and “the specific operational plans that have been put in place.” These guidelines, he said, are spelled out in the “Rules for the Use of Force,” which Guard members are supposed to carry with them. Two weeks ago, a HuffPost reporter got one from a local Guard member and posted it online.

Had a chance to stop a member of the Guard and ask whether they carried any guidance on their person about Posse Comitatus Act (and/or a list of "exceptions" like the troops in LA were given per DOJ). He didn't seem sure what PCA is but did show me this doc he had in his pocket on rules of force.

— Brandi Buchman (@brandibuchman.bsky.social) 2025-08-23T15:51:43.825Z

The RUF and Rules of Conduct statethat “This is a civilian SUPPORT mission.” The document emphasizes that the National Guard can’t arrest people. Nor can soldiersinvestigate anything or conduct searches and seizures, hostage negotiations, or extract a suspect from a barricade. Trump made a big deal recently about allowing Guard members to carry weapons, but the RUF says they are strictly prohibited from using those weapons except for self-defense and defense of others. No pulling a gun on a fleeing suspect. (“Warning shots are NOT authorized.”)

A JTF-DC spokesperson later confirmed that the National Guard “will not be conducting law enforcement.” However, the Department of Justice recently deputized many Guard members as US Marshals. The DC Attorney General has argued in a lawsuit that deputizing them does, in fact, empower National Guard members to make searches, seizures, and arrests, and as such, violates the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which bans the military from participating in domestic law enforcement.

Given all the mixed messages, the Guard members I spoke with appeared somewhat confused about what the rules of engagement were. But they seemed to agree that if they witness a crime, they are mainly supposed to detain a suspect if possible, call for help, and wait for real cops to show up. “If there’s any concerns, we notify Metropolitan Police Department or the right personnel to make sure that the situation is taken care of,” US Air Force Maj. Jay Green, a chaplain with the 113th Wing, District of Columbia Air National Guard, explained in one recent Defense Department website posting.

That seems to be what they’re doing in DC. The Washington Post recently sent out a team of reporters to observe troops during rush hour in the Metro system. Fanning out across various stations, Post reporters witnessed National Guard members standing around watching Metro police arrest a woman with an outstanding warrant. They did not assist.

In another station, a Metro rider mistakenly assumed the soldiers could help and told them someone was selling drugs on a stalled train. What did they do with that information? “One of the Guard members passed the details about the alleged drug dealer to Metro police,” the Post reported.

The Defense Department has published several puff pieces on military websites touting the National Guard’s work in DC. But even those official accounts indicate that when Guard members witness a crime, their main job is to call for help and wait for the local cops to arrive. Last month, for instance, Joint Task Force-DC proudly announced in an online release that two Guard members had “alerted local law enforcement to a potentially life-threatening situation involving a man brandishing a knife and threatening another man at the Waterfront Metro Station.”

“We showed our presence and then made sure that citizens around that area were safe,” said US Army Capt. Giho Yang, with the District of Columbia Army National Guard. “To do that, we had to partner up and communicate with the law enforcement officers that were nearby, making sure that we had eyes and ears on the situation to keep everyone safe.”

They didn’t mention whether any ordinary citizens also communicated with the nearby law enforcement officers or called 911, as they are wont to do when they see someone brandishing a knife in a subway station.

It’s probably a good thing that the National Guard isn’t doing more to fight crime in DC. They’re not trained for domestic law enforcement. Besides, DC has seen plenty of enhanced federal policing since Trump declared his crime emergency. Most of the action is driven by the city’s multitude of federal law enforcement agencies, suchas the US Park Police, plus the stepped-up presence of ICE and Border Patrol. They’re the ones kidnapping and beating up DoorDash drivers, chasing drivers with fake tags and causing car crashes, and arresting people for drinking in public.

But using soldiers as props in Trump’s fake crime emergency seems insulting to people serving the country honorably. Indeed, deployed to a city whose crime rate was already plummeting, the National Guard has been filling the time by picking up trash and spreading mulch in federal parks. Social media wags have dubbed them “National Gardeners.” (“Fighting crime one weed at a time,” the local joke goes.)

National Guard doing landscaping right now in McPherson Square.
byu/sillychillly ineconomy

As humiliating as this might be for the troops, they are providing DC with a useful service. Some 200 US Park Service employees once helped maintain the city’s parks and gardens. But soon after taking office this year, Trump got rid of all but 20 of them, leaving the city’s lovely green spaces seriously neglected. Of course, at the cost of $1 million a day, the military troops make very expensive landscapers.

The pointlessness of sending the National Guard to pretend to fight crime in DC isn’t deterring Trump from planning to repeat the operation in other cities, even though a federal judge just ruled that it’s blatantly illegal. Trump appears intent on “creating a national police force with the President as its chief,” US District Judge Charles Breyer warned in a September 2 decision, finding that Trump’s use of the military in LA earlier this summer violated the Posse Comitatus Act.

Because the District of Columbia is not a state, Trump has had more leeway in deploying the National Guard here. Nonetheless, on Thursday, the city sued the administration, arguing that the National Guard deployment in DC is illegal and runs “roughshod over a fundamental tenet of American democracy—that the military should not be involved in domestic law enforcement.”

Trump has claimed that DC “is very safe right now” since he sent in the troops, and that crime has plummeted. Even if that’s true, and it’s not clear that it is, the ceasefire is likely to be short-lived.

“You can have a massive police presence that you put in the communities,” Elliott Currie, professor of criminology at the University of California, Irvine, told me recently. “They can really show some impressive optics when they do this… But history tells us you can never sustain this for very long.”

The DC National Guard recently announced that its deployment to the city will be extended through December. But eventually, the local criminal class seems likely to realize that the soldiers are no more of a threat to their activity than CVS security guards. And when that happens, Trump’s vaunted crime reduction may prove as ephemeral as his plan to end the war in Ukraine.

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Let’s Review Trump’s Week of Massive Legal Losses, Shall We?

It was a week of so much losing.

Over the past week, President Donald Trump and his authoritarian agenda have sustained one loss after another in the courts. Putting all of them together reveals a stunning legal rebuke, and unsurprisingly, Trump World has been erupting with anger and petulance. Let’s review:

• Last Friday, a federal appeals court ruled that Trump’s reciprocal tariffs were basically illegal, as my colleague Inae Oh covered. (On Truth Social, Trump alleged the court was “Highly Partisan,” adding, “If these Tariffs ever went away, it would be a total disaster for the Country.”)
• The same day, a federal judge ruled that the administration could not fast-track deportations of people detained far from the southern border. (White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller called the ruling a “judicial coup.”)
• Last Sunday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the administration from deporting hundreds of unaccompanied Guatemalan children. (Miller alleged the “Biden judge” was “effectively kidnapping these migrant children.”)
• On Tuesday, an appeals court upheld a lower court’s ruling requiring Trump to rehire fired Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter. That prompted the administration to ask the Supreme Court to allow the firing to proceed.
• The same day, a federal judge ruled that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles was illegal, alleging that the president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are “creating a national police force with the President as its chief.” (White House spokesperson Anna Kelly characterized the ruling as “a rogue judge…trying to usurp the authority of the commander in chief to protect American cities from violence and destruction.”)
• On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that the administration broke the law when it froze billions of dollars in research funds to Harvard. (White House spokesperson Liz Huston called the decision “egregious.”)
• On Thursday, an appeals court ruled that Trump could not cancel billions of dollars in foreign aid without getting approval from Congress. (The administration already appealed the decision.)
• And on Friday, a federal judge blocked Trump from revoking the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants. (A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said the ruling “delays justice,” adding, “unelected activist judges cannot stop the will of the American people for a safe and secure homeland.”)

On top of all this, as my colleague James West covered, a new NBC poll out today shows that the majority of Americans—57 percent—disapprove of the job Trump is doing.

We may not be able to rely on the Supreme Court to keep Trump in check, but based on the last week or so, it seems we can trust the lower courts to step in where the high court will not.

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Florida Surgeon General Admits He Banned Vaccine Mandates Based on Vibes

After his announcement this week that he would seek to eliminate “all vaccine mandates,” Florida’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, made one thing clear: This decision was based on no science, just vibes.

In an interview on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning, Ladapo told host Jake Tapper that officials did not undertake any analysis to determine how many new cases of hepatitis A, whooping cough, and chickenpox would arise after the ending of vaccine mandates. “There’s this conflation of the science and sort of, what is the right and wrong thing to do?” Ladapo said, before proceeding to claim that the whooping cough vaccine is ineffective at preventing transmission. (Research has shown the whooping cough vaccine is safe and effective; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the protection they provide “decreases over time.”)

He continued: “This is an issue very clearly of parents’ rights. So do I need to analyze whether it’s appropriate for parents to be able to decide what goes into their children’s bodies?”

"Absolutely not." @FLSurgeonGen admits he didn't study impact before calling to lift vaccine mandate pic.twitter.com/bJCo0aNvk0

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) September 7, 2025

In fact, as my colleague Kiera Butler explained when Ladapo announced his decision this week it is an issue of public health—not “parents’ rights”:

If successful, such a move could have broad implications for workers across state government sectors. Most significantly, it could allow many more unvaccinated children to attend school, putting others at risk of acquiring highly contagious and potentially deadly diseases such as measles and polio.

Under Ladapo’s leadership, Florida’s rates of routine childhood vaccination—shots that protect against catastrophic diseases like polio and tetanus—have already declined. Today, the immunization rate for kindergartners is 90 percent, the lowest it’s been in a decade, and below the threshold required to prevent the spread of some serious illnesses. The rate of families seeking religious exemptions to school vaccine requirements has increased over the past few years.

All this is part of why, as Tapper mentioned, experts ranging from Ladapo’s predecessor, Scott Rivkees, to major medical groups including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have voiced their opposition to the plan.

A Washington Post-KFF poll conducted in July also found that more than 80 percent of Florida parents said public schools should require vaccines for measles and polio, with some health and religious exceptions. A new NBC News poll out today shows that nearly 80 percent of Americans strongly or somewhat support vaccines. Even President Donald Trump seems skeptical of Ladapo’s decision, telling reporters in the Oval Office this week: “I think we have to be very careful. We have some vaccines that are so amazing… I think you have to be very careful when you say that some people don’t have to be vaccinated.”

Even President Trump gets it right once in awhile.

Vaccines are safe and effective. They have saved millions of lives.

Sadly, Sec. Kennedy disagrees.

We need an HHS Secretary who believes in science, not conspiracy theories.pic.twitter.com/14D0Gnet11

— Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) September 6, 2025

Later in the CNN interview, Ladapo seemed to slightly revise his argument, claiming that officials did not do any projections ahead of killing off vaccine mandates because they already recognized that outbreaks would, in fact, be inevitable: “We don’t need to do any projections. We handle outbreaks all the time. So there’s nothing special that we would need to do. And, secondly, again, there are countries that don’t have vaccine mandates, and the sky isn’t falling over there.”

So, buckle up, Florida. Your surgeon general just admitted that outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease are coming.

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Americans Continue to Really Dislike Trump and the Things He Does

NBC is out with a new poll this morning showing Americans continue to dislike Trump and the things he’s doing—including the things he said he was really good at, like fixing the economy. Respondents to the NBC News Decision Desk Poll reported weak approval across a range of signature issues, including tariffs, and mass deportations, while expressing overwhelming support for vaccines—a sharp contrast to the turmoil inside the administration over vaccine policy.

The topline approval rating remains in negative territory, with 57 percent saying they disapprove of the president’s job and 43 percent saying they approve—a similar result to the previous poll in June, NBC says. The results largely follow other polling tracked by The Economist, which uses a weekly YouGov survey to put Trump’s approval ratings significantly lower than both Biden’s and Obama’s at similar points in their presidencies, revealing it only took two months for his ratings to fall below zero, where they have remained. He’s currently languishing with a net approval rating of -14, according to The Economist. The average of a set of polls tracked by Nate Silver also puts him in negative territory at -6.9 net approval.

As my colleague Julianne McShane previously reported, Trump registered the lowest 100-day approval rating of any president in the past 80 years.

The headline in NBC’s poll today is that Americans of all political stripes really like vaccines—78 percent of all respondents said they support their use. Large majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents agree. That comes as turmoil has erupted under Robert F. Kennedy’s leadership of the country’s top health agencies, including the decapitation of leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—a conflict that came to a boil during a heated marathon hearing on Thursday before the Senate Finance Committee. As my colleague Kiera Butler documented, Kennedy appeared to promote flat-out lies. In recent weeks, he has canceled mRNA vaccination research and stocked an important vaccine advisory panel with vaccine critics. A letter released this week and signed by 1,000 former HHS employees called for his resignation.

Americans are giving Trump poor marks on other issues too, with just 43 percent approving of his mass deportation regime (though he scores slightly higher on the broader issue of border security, at 47 percent). On trade (41 percent) and inflation (39 percent), Americans continue to view Trump dimly.

Meanwhile, the survey took the nation’s emotional temperature as well, showing nearly 70 percent of Democrats are either “furious” or “angry” at Trump’s actions. A smaller proportion of Republicans—45 percent—say they are either “thrilled” or “happy.”

Read the full results of the poll here.

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This Rock Bassist Is Remixing Climate Activism

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

Imagine if every climate policy rollback was met with the same unshakable loyalty Swifties show when Taylor drops a breakup song. What if climate action had the same unstoppable energy as Beyoncé’s BeyHive, marching full speed ahead toward a green economy?

According to Adam Met, the climate movement could learn a thing or two from fan-building tactics deployed by today’s pop stars. After all, he is one.

Met, 35, is the bassist of the multi-platinum indie-rock band AJR, which he started with his two brothers in 2005. Thirteen years later, after the band began selling out stadiums and amphitheaters, Met founded a climate focused nonprofit organization called Planet Reimagined—a climate research, advocacy, and storytelling hub—with his colleague Mila Rosenthal.

From plastic-free concessions to farm-to-stage initiatives, many musicians have worked hard to shrink the environmental footprint of their national tours. But for Met, carbon-neutral concerts and low-impact festivals are just the opening act. He sees bigger potential for the music industry: serving as a climate movement incubator.

Met is now juggling his work as an activist, author, musician, and adjunct professor at Columbia University. In June, he released his first book, Amplify: How to Use the Power of Connection to Engage, Take Action, and Build a Better World, which shows how fan-building strategies can be applied to social movements.

Between his book tour and AJR’s music tour, “Somewhere in the Sky,” Met sat down with Inside Climate News for an interview to discuss the connections between climate, music, and fan building.

When and why did you become interested in climate activism?

When I was in high school, I took a class on human rights, and we went on a class trip to see Mary Robinson speak. For me, it just took that one moment of hearing her speak about the connections between climate change and human rights that set me on this path. Since then, she and I have become friendly.

Then, over time, I started to see the impact of climate change firsthand on my work as a musician and on the fans who came to our shows. We would pull into San Francisco, and we would literally have to wear gas masks from the tour bus into the venue because the smoke from wildfires was so bad. When we pulled into Athens, Greece, the entire city flooded in minutes, and we had to drive through the floods to make it to the venue.

But we would experience these climate impacts and then move onto the next city in our tour, while our fans had to stay and clean up the mess. Seeing climate change directly, and studying it so deeply in undergrad and for my PhD, made me realize that this is the thing I need to dedicate my life to.

You recently came out with your first book that explores the connections between fan building and movement building. Can you tell me more about what those connections are?

Over the past 20 years AJR has built a fanbase, a unique fanbase. What I realized was that the same strategies we used to build our fanbase—and the strategies that a lot of other artists use—are all really relevant for how to build communities that can do good in the world.

Almost every day when I am on tour, I get asked by fans: What can I do? How can I help? The book answers those questions. It gives people creative, out-of-the-box ideas to build collective action. At the same time, the book gives people who have spent years working in this space fresh and different ideas. Ideas that work really well in music and entertainment, and how they can be applied to the climate space.

What are some of those fan-building ideas that can be applied to the climate movement?

Traditionally, the model of building a fan base and a social movement can be seen through the metaphor of a ladder. When you’re on the first rung of the ladder, that may mean you have heard a song or heard of a social movement. You go up a rung, and maybe you follow the band on social media or an organization connected to a social movement. Then you go up another rung; maybe you attend the band’s show or attend an organizing meeting. And you keep going up and up the ladder.

“People are much more likely to take action…if they have the opportunity to do it in person.”

This model doesn’t work in 2025, because it implies that this work is done as an individual. The actual model that I believe works looks more like a hurricane. At the beginning, you need to bring fans and followers really close to you, towards the center of the movement. Give them all the tools and skills they need to go out in the world to bring other people into the movement. Then those new people come close to the center, where we can again give them the skills and knowledge they need. By bringing them close to the center, they become really dedicated. They become evangelizers of the movement.

You can bring them to the center through gamification, building a bigger tent, effective storytelling, or featuring—where, just like bands, social movements can collaborate with each other. There are a lot of really effective fan-building methods that use the model of the hurricane rather than the ladder.

How does this understanding shape AJR’s practices as both a band and an advocacy group?

On our tours we try to limit our emissions as much as possible. We green the backstage areas by eliminating single-use plastics, donating extra food when possible, making sure energy from the show is coming from renewables, and whatever else we can do.

And that’s great, but at the same time we built in an advocacy strategy to our tours itself. At every stop on our last tour there was an opportunity for fans to take political or civil action on site. There were booths set up to call their representatives, flyers about volunteering at local nonprofits, or tables to sign petitions. And every action was hyperlocalized. In each city the actions are customized to the things impacting or relating to their local communities.

On our last tour we had 35,000 people take some sort of climate action.

What is the current state of the climate movement within the music industry? Are other artists speaking out?

Well, right now the climate movement seems to be a mess. It is leaderless and rudderless. The climate movement has a communications problem and is too large and existential of an issue to discuss easily. So how are you supposed to write a song that includes climate?

The way we are seeing the climate movement manifest itself into the music industry is not through the art itself, but through online advocacy and tours. Touring is not only the biggest emitter within the industry but is the place where you bring people together in person. All our research at Planet Reimagined shows that people are much more likely to take action—and see the impact of their action—if they have the opportunity to do it in person.

The best climate advocacy shows their fans the impact of climate locally and gives them an opportunity to engage in action. And by action, I do not mean switching the type of straws they’re using or taking shorter showers. By action, I mean civil and political participation.

For example, Billie Eilish did a great job implementing climate advocacy into her United Kingdom tour, and Planet Reimagined helped install those advocacy tactics into her tour. Artists like Jack Johnson and Dave Mathews are doing a great job as well.

What advice would you give to other artists who may want to speak out about climate change but are hesitant to?

Planet Reimagined just did a big study with Ticketmaster to figure out from fans what they want to hear from their favorite artists. And we found that fans want artists to speak about the issues they care about. If it’s manufactured or inauthentic, then don’t talk about it. Climate change is not an issue artists should pretend to care about. But if the artist actually does care about climate change and is talking about it online, then have real-world opportunities for fans to participate at your shows.

Planet Reimagined, AJR and Inside Climate News all focus a lot on storytelling. What is the importance of storytelling within the climate movement?

Stories are the only way to drive meaningful change. A lot of articles about climate change that are filled with statistics are so dry that they turn people away—1.5°C means nothing to anyone other than scientists. Plus it is Celsius, so it really means nothing to Americans. Good stories are a way for people to feel something and connect issues to their real life.

When we are building a show or tour for the band, it’s all about how we can get people to be happy, sad, angry, frustrated, and hopeful, because feeling all these emotions will connect them to the band. It’s the same thing with climate storytelling. We need to get people to have an emotional connection to climate issues, because that drives them to be a part of the movement.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Washington Turns Out to Protest Trump’s Occupation

Thousands of people took to the streets of Washington, DC, on Saturday to voice opposition to Donald Trump’s armed federal intervention in the city.

This is what democracy looks like! A people united will never be defeated. We want federal forces out of DC NOW! #WeAreAllDC #FreeDC

— Free DC (@freedcproject.bsky.social) 2025-09-06T17:16:02.898Z

The demonstration, organized by a coalition of local activist groups and unions, demands the “immediate withdrawal” of federal troops from Washington and an end to Trump’s federalization of the city’s own police department.

Thousands march to the White House united in our demand. We want federal forces out of DC Now!! Free DC! Free DC! #WeAreAllDC #FreeDC

— Free DC (@freedcproject.bsky.social) 2025-09-06T17:07:34.462Z

Ever since Trump claimed a “crime emergency” in Washington on August 8, he has flooded the city with federal assets. When it comes to the National Guard, according to my colleague Schuyler Mitchell, experts “estimate that the DC deployment is costing roughly $1 million a day.”

“So far,” she wrote on Tuesday, “their work has not gone exactly as planned. Last week, soldiers deployed to fight a ‘crime emergency‘ instead found themselves completing ‘beautification’ duties on Capitol Hill and patrolling Krispy Kremes. Users on the r/NationalGuard subreddit were quick to give their colleagues a new nickname: National Guardeners.”

One guard member complained to Mitchell that the administration “see us as little toy soldiers to put on the street,” and that domestic deployments were damaging recruiting efforts. “We are losing candidates left and right,” the soldier said. “Certainly, people are watching this and making decisions—not only to not join, but plenty of people within our ranks who are pushing toward retirement are deciding they’re done, and they are leaving before it gets too bad.”

FREE DC Right now, DC is rising. Thousands are in Malcolm X Park and marching through the streets against Trump’s occupation. National Guard patrols, ICE raids, FBI harassment — our communities refuse to live under fear. DC belongs to the people. #WeAreAllDC #FightOligarchy

— Our Revolution (@our-revolution.bsky.social) 2025-09-06T16:39:52.054Z

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Trump’s Mortgage Fraud Smears Backfire on His Administration

When New York Attorney General Letitia James accused Donald Trump of committing fraud by lying to banks and insurance companies about the value of his properties, he never really denied it. Everyone does things like this, his lawyers argued, and no bank ever lost money—so what’s the big deal?

All three Trump cabinet members denied any wrongdoing.

But now that he’s in back office, Trump seems to have decided that telling banks things that aren’t true while seeking loans is a very big deal after all. His administration has launched investigations into James herself and Lisa Cook, a Biden-appointee on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, alleging both women improperly told banks that two different properties each owned were both their primary residences. He’s previously made similar accusations against one of his main Democratic antagonists in Congress, California Sen. Adam Schiff.

The investigations were launched with the help of Bill Pulte, the Trump appointee leading the Federal Housing Finance Agency. On Friday, Reuters reported that relatives of Pulte appear to have done the very thing Trump and Pulte are targeting James and Cook over. Reuters says that Pulte’s father and stepmother had simultaneously requested “homestead exemptions”—a discount on property taxes for a primary residence—on two different properties, one in Michigan and one in Florida. It’s not clear if it is illegal to do so, and in some cases, tax experts told Reuters, it is permissible—for example if a married couple live separately. But after being asked about the Pultes’ situation, local tax officials promptly revoked the exemption on the Michigan house, Reuters reported.

The news about Pulte’s relatives comes after a Thursday report from ProPublica revealed that three different members of Trump’s cabinet appear to have simultaneously claimed multiple properties as their primary residence. ProPublica found records showing Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin all claimed two different homes as primary residences. Chavez-DeRemer made the claims about her two homes (one in the Oregon Congressional district she previously represented, and one in Arizona, where she is known to vacation) within two months of each other. All three cabinet members denied any wrongdoing and accused ProPublica of liberal bias.

According to ProPublica, it is not necessarily illegal to claim multiple homes as your primary residence at the same time—and in some cases, it may be encouraged by bank employees—but it is generally frowned upon. Banks typically offer reduced mortgage rates for primary residences, and higher rates for second homes; the practice stems from a belief that people are more likely to diligently repay the mortgage on a property if they live in it full-time.

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Trump Invites World Leaders to Put Money in His Pocket

Donald Trump famously doesn’t pay much attention to critics who complain about his many conflicts of interests and attempts to use the presidency to enrich himself. But in 2019, his attempt to host the G-7 summit at his Doral golf course outside of Miami was a rare example of the critics winning out. Asking a half-dozen of the world’s most powerful leaders and their large entourages to pay to stay in his hotel rooms was a step too far. Trump relented and said the summit would be staged elsewhere; it was ultimately cancelled due to COVID.

When Trump suggested Doral for a 2019 summit, the idea went over like a lead balloon.

But Trump never really backs down, and he’s come back with an even bigger plan for Doral, announcing on Friday that it would host next year’s G-20 summit—which features an additional 13 global leaders and entourages in need of hotel rooms and room service.

In his Friday announcement of his plan to stage the major international event at his Doral property, Trump said that “everybody wants it there because it’s right next to the airport. It’s the best location. It’s beautiful.” Trump even told reporters that G-20 officials had asked that it be at the resort.

Trump insisted the decision to have the giant summit at his own property wasn’t about making money. “We’re doing a deal where it’s not going to be money. There’s no money in it,” he said. “I just want it to go well.”

Of course someone will have to pay for the cost of shutting down the giant resort and moving in the world’s leaders for the three-day conference—not to mention time needed before and after for logistical and security purposes.

Doral was built in the early 1960s and for decades hosted PGA tournaments, but in recent years had become known for being increasingly shabby. Trump borrowed $125 million from Deutsche Bank to buy the property out of bankruptcy in 2012 and has been working on it ever since. He has refinanced the loan with Axos Bank, a California bank owned by a supporter who has helped Trump shore up mortgages at his other resorts.

In 2019, revenue at the Doral property had dropped significantly, but in his most recent personal financial disclosures, it seems to have picked up. It is unclear if the property is profitable.

When Trump suggested Doral as a location for the G-7 conference in 2019, the idea went over like a lead balloon. European leaders made it clear they were not interested in paying to stay at his resort, and both Congressional Republicans and Democrats quickly threw cold water on the scheme.

At the time, Republican Sen. Mike Simpson of Idaho told reporters he couldn’t get behind the idea. “You have to go out and try to defend him. Well, I don’t know if I can do that!” Simpson said at the time. “I have no doubt that Doral is a really good place—I’ve been there, I know. But it is politically insensitive. They should have known what the kickback is going to be on this, that politically he’s doing it for his own benefit.”

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that Simpson has seen the light, with a spokesperson telling the paper said the senator now supports holding the summit at Trump’s resort.

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Trump Plans to Deport Millions. Here’s How ICE Is Making it Happen.

A young woman clings to a tree as masked men try to peel her off. The men wrench one of the woman’s arms behind her back, then stuff her into the back of an unmarked SUV as bystanders film and shout. She was selling food outside a Home Depot in West Los Angeles when federal agents chased her down and arrested her.

Videos of aggressive immigration raids like this have become commonplace as the Trump administration pursues its goal of deporting millions of people over the next four years.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is arresting people in front of their kids during school dropoffs, on the way to church, and at routine check-ins at immigration offices. Communities are pushing back, leading to clashes with police and protests. These raids are remaking the country.

“Being forced apart like this is tearing through the heart of our home and community,” says Cecelia Lizotte, the sister of a Nigerian man in ICE detention.

This week on Reveal, producers Katie Mingle and Steven Rascón and reporter Julia Lurie tell stories about the people swept up in President Donald Trump’s mass deportations and the families that are left behind.

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A Tornado Destroyed Their Home. Then the “Vultures” Showed Up.

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

When a mile-wide tornado hit St. Louis on May 16, DeAmon White hopped in his car and rushed home. As he navigated downed trees and power lines, turning his 10-minute commute into a three-hour slog, he worried whether his family, neighbors, and home made it through unscathed.

When he turned the corner onto his block, White’s heart sank. The entire back wall of his house had been blown off. Chunks of ceiling plaster littered the floor, windows were shattered, and much of his property was damaged beyond repair.

Next, White checked on his mother, Bobbie, who lives a five-minute walk away. The third floor of her home was gone. But miraculously, her front yard flower garden made it through the 150 mph winds unscathed.

The St. Louis storm, an EF-3, was just one of 60 tornadoes that tore through Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Carolinas over 48 hours in May, killing at least 26 people and injuring 168. DeAmon and Bobbie considered themselves lucky: A neighbor of theirs had his leg impaled by a pole that flew through his window. Bobbie went to her sister’s house to get some sleep; DeAmon spent the night in his truck, trading shifts with neighbors to fend off looters.

The next morning, at 8 a.m., the phone calls started: Would he be interested in selling his home? “They were aggressively going at it,” he said. This continued for the next two weeks, with half a dozen calls every single day.

Damage to DeAmon White’s home in St. Louis from an EF-3 tornado on May 16.Courtesy of DeAmon White

They’re “vultures,” Bobbie and DeAmon both called the speculators. Some walked down the street with flyers, some texted, and some called.

In White’s West End neighborhood, an estimated 63 percent of renters and 49 percent of homeowners are uninsured. For many North St. Louis residents, their homes are their only major asset, meaning they don’t have the cash on hand necessary to rebuild without insurance. And when federal aid is slow to arrive, quick offers to buy a home in cash can look like a lifeline.

“You end up with this system where people are exploiting the misfortunes of others.”

“Hi, this is Paul with H.B. LLC,” read one text sent to a homeowner just north of the tornado’s path on August 4. “Touching base with you … is this Steven?”

Grist tried contacting several of these numbers, but most were not set up to receive call- or text-backs. One, however, did pick up. A woman, sounding like she was in a call center, asked if there was a property to sell. “We’re a ‘we buy homes’ company,” she said, but repeatedly refused to give Grist the company name.

Eight months earlier and 600 miles away, Gina Miceli’s community in Fairview, North Carolina, was devastated by Hurricane Helene, which triggered hundreds of landslides. The rushing earth swallowed up homes and cars and killed 15 of her neighbors. In the months following, she received near-constant texts asking if she’d be open to selling her family’s two plots of land. “They text really chummy, so they sound like they already know you,” Miceli said. “‘Hey, Gina, it’s so-and-so!’ It’s very, very creepy.”

“Let me know your price,” said one text on July 9, signed simply, “Bella.”

“Hi there Gina, hope you’re having a great day,” said another exactly two weeks later. “My name is Christine, I am a land buyer. I’m reaching out to see if you have any plans to sell the lot.” The text was signed by “Twin Acres.” Twin Acres is not a registered real estate broker. Grist’s attempt to text the number back went unanswered.

Screenshots of text messages from real estate investors looking to buy homes in the wake of natural disasters, as shared with Grist. Homeowners’ personal information has been removed to protect privacy.Grist

Sometimes, Miceli said, she answers the texts. “It depends on my mood. I think there’s been a time or two I’ve said, ‘Go to hell.’” She has no plans to leave. She’s raising her family in the home her husband’s grandparents bought, and she owns a local brewery.

Some theorists call this phenomenon “disaster gentrification,” when real estate investors flood a disaster zone to buy up damaged properties for cheap.

Samantha Montano, a professor of emergency management and author of the book Disasterology, spent years living and working in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and saw it happen with her own eyes. In areas like the Lower Ninth Ward, some people displaced by the storm didn’t have the resources to return. Speculators rushed in. Some landowners became instant millionaires, selling their properties to out-of-state developers hoping to rebuild and flip their property.

“The issue of gentrification in New Orleans was there from the beginning,” Montano said. “There were many groups who were warning about that, advocating for housing policy and other recovery policies to account for gentrification. [They] tried to prevent it.” Twenty years later, the demographics of New Orleans have shifted: Lower-income and Black residents have been displaced, and whiter, wealthier new residents took their place. “Certainly that is all very much intertwined in the recovery and in who had access to the resources to return and rebuild—and who didn’t,” she said.

In the wake of the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California, earlier this year, half of home purchases were by limited liability corporations, according to Dwell, the home design news site. That’s nearly double what they typically represent compared to individuals buying homes. Just six companies—among them Ocean Development Inc. and Black Lion Properties LLC—dominated those transactions in Altadena, spending millions of dollars to purchase destroyed properties in historically Black neighborhoods. It’s difficult to find out who these companies are: Often, they contact potential sellers through fake phone numbers or under names that aren’t necessarily attached to real corporations.

Damage to DeAmon White’s home in St. Louis from an EF-3 tornado on May 16. Courtesy of DeAmon White

The value of disaster-struck land consistently bounces back fast, meaning that buyers can flip the land or homes—sometimes even without making repairs. As climate change fuels more frequent severe natural disasters across the United States, “disaster investors” seem set to make greater profits than ever—and communities like North St. Louis stand to bear the burden.

Justin Stoler, a University of Miami researcher working on urban health disparities, recently published a paper on hazard gentrification. This phenomenon, Stoler told Grist, diverges from our standard understanding of gentrification in its speed. “It’s typically happening in a very punctuated, short-term manner. It doesn’t necessarily take years and decades to roll out.”

“People’s lives are completely upended, and they’ve got to make difficult choices,” Stoler said. “And opportunistic entities, companies, investors try to step in and get a good deal. You end up with this system where people are exploiting the misfortunes of others.”

In DeAmon White’s neighborhood, he saw the signs of gentrification long before the tornado: A community barbershop replaced by a trendy new restaurant; a former school turned into an upscale apartment building inhabited by law students; and “just a lot of white folks moving into what they used to call ‘the hood,’ you know?” he said. And investors were already circling. Signs with “WE BUY UGLY HOUSES” could be found on utility poles and in mailboxes before the May storm. These are markers of real estate wholesalers and house-flippers looking for a quick sale. But they increased in frequency and aggressiveness after the neighborhood was turned to rubble, he said.

It’s a little too soon to say whether the St. Louis tornado will lead to big land buys. But signs—and Zillow search results—are pointing in that direction.

At least 10 severely damaged homes in the tornado’s path have gone up for sale on the real estate platform Zillow in recent weeks. Each one is labeled not as a home for locals to move into, but as an investment opportunity: 4641 Maffit Avenue “offers investment potential” for rehab or brick salvage, with a starting bid of $20,000; 4236 East Sacramento Avenue—“Investor Special!! Tornado damaged property”—in the historic Ville neighborhood is going for $30,000.

“They find people in vulnerable situations that maybe don’t have equal access to information.”

One hundred days after the storm, many St. Louis neighborhoods remain as damaged as they were the day of the tornado in May. Debris still litters streets and yards, blue tarps still stand in for caved-in roofs, and windows are still boarded up—even as the weather cools. Community activist organizations are providing aid where they can. One group, The People’s Response, which mobilized some 10,000 volunteers, estimates that over 2,000 St. Louis households still require housing and shelter assistance.

But even with a robust volunteer network, $30 million from an NFL settlement redirected toward tornado relief, and FEMA aid (slowly) arriving, homeowners have been left in the lurch for months, facing a difficult decision about how—or even whether—to rebuild.

Deserai Anderson Crow, who researches community resilience at the University of Colorado-Boulder, says what is happening in St. Louis follows a pattern similar to other extreme weather disasters: Those who rebuild are more often than not landlords looking for renters, rather than people who intend to live in the homes they’re rebuilding.

“It’s a predatory renting cycle,” Crow said. “These huge industrial-rental landlords are trying to snap up disaster-affected homes because they assume, correctly, that a lot of people want to get out from under those mortgages as quickly as possible, and that they just don’t have the emotional bandwidth or financial bandwidth to deal with rebuilding.”

Bobbie White’s damaged home was built in 1901, back when St. Louis was a thriving Mississippi River transit hub. One of the industries that built St. Louis was brickmaking, with the materials renowned worldwide for their strength and quality. Bobbie’s home, and others on her block, are made of those bricks. “A lot of these houses are 100-year-old structures,” DeAmon said. What is built in their stead likely won’t be as unique or sturdy, and yet will cost far more, he lamented—prices out of reach for many in the neighborhood today.

Stacey Sanders, president of the St. Louis Association of Realtors, says she’s been inundated with reports of speedy post-disaster sale offers. But they often come with red flags: For one thing, multigenerational homes may not have access to a title, or the title might be in the name of a deceased family member. Sometimes, resolving title issues can take years.

Many of the storm-impacted multigenerational homes are in that legal category. Those “heirs’ property” homeowners are stuck, Sanders said. Without a title, it can be harder to access FEMA benefits, filing an insurance claim is extremely difficult, and sales without a title are legally dubious at best.

Damage to DeAmon White’s home in St. Louis from an EF-3 tornado on May 16. Courtesy of DeAmon White

When Sanders’ own home and car were hit by a tornado this March, “we had letters, door hangers, people knocking on the door, doing everything.” They were either selling her on repairs or selling her on a home purchase. She was, as a professional real estate agent, able to access resources and recover her damaged property. But she worries others may have a harder time.

“It might be the easiest and the quickest way,” Sanders said, “ but it’s not always the best way to go.”

“A lot of the people that are out making these offers on houses are not doing it because they’re like, ‘Oh, these poor people, let’s give them a fair shake,’” she said. Instead, they’re seeing “desperate people” and chasing an opportunity to buy property for far less than it is worth.

There are options to curb this mass sell-off. One tactic, Crow, of the University of Colorado, said, is providing a few months of bridge funding so residents can stay and navigate the rebuilding process. Another is to stymie buyers: This June, the Ohio Senate passed a bill requiring real estate wholesalers to tell homeowners when they may be selling their homes for less than market value. Pennsylvania passed a similar law in January. The market in Missouri, however, remains unregulated at both the local and state level, according to attorney Peter Hoffman of Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, a nonprofit that has been providing pro bono services to tornado victims.

“They find people in vulnerable situations that maybe don’t have equal access to information,” Hoffman said. Those issues—redlining, displacement, exploitation—existed before the tornado. But the storm, he said, brought them to the light.

Talking on the phone between orders of fish, fried okra, and potato salad while at his restaurant, Ozell’s Kitchen and Food Mart, DeAmon White reflected on the last few months. Rebuilding his home has been hard. Though he does have insurance, he expects his home won’t be livable until February or March, the better part of a year after the tornado. Because he’s disabled, with a partially amputated foot, he stays mostly on the first floor of his mother’s house. A neighbor of his is still living in a camper on her lot. Others, he said, took the offer to sell. Right now, there are only four families left on his block. On August 21, White said, his mother received an offer in the mail: A man named Chris wanted to buy her home for about two-thirds of what it was worth.

“I really would like the people who are in the line of gentrification to realize what it is they have, and if they can, don’t sell out,” White said. “I know money talks, and when you’re in a stressful situation you got to do what you got to do, but resist, you know?”

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Baltimore’s Mayor Slams Trump Troop Threat: “What We Want from the President Is Very Simple.”

President Trump is planning to ramp up his federal reach into local enforcement after first flooding the streets of DC with National Guard troops, and this week he promised to send troops to more cities—including Baltimore.

Despite a federal judge ruling that Trump broke the law when deploying the National Guard in Los Angeles earlier this summer, Trump insisted during a press conference on Tuesday that his administration had “a right to do it because I have an obligation to do it to protect this country… and that includes Baltimore.”

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott has been speaking out in defense of his city, including in a sit-down interview this week with me. Scott pushed back against Trump’s claims, saying that this year, his city has witnessed “the fewest amount of homicides through this date on record. That’s a 50-year low, and that’s still not good enough for me.” The Washington Post recently reported that homicide rates in Baltimore have plummeted nearly 23 percent compared with the first half of 2024, while non-fatal shootings fell by nearly 20 percent.

Scott also decried federal cuts to the very programs he says have been instrumental in reducing crime in Baltimore.

“Community violence intervention, victim services, all of those kinds of services that have been cut,” he said. “What we want from the president is very simple — reinstating all the cuts that they’ve made to federal grants to programs that have been working to reduce violence.”

Watch the full video here:

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DeSantis Celebrates as Appeals Court Blocks Dismantling of Alligator Alcatraz

An appeals court has temporarily blocked a federal judge’s decision ordering Florida and federal officials to begin winding down operations at Alligator Alcatraz, the controversial immigration detention center in the Everglades that opened in July.

As I reported last month, in response to a lawsuit filed in June by environmental groups, US District Judge Kathleen Williams had ordered the dismantling of equipment at the detention camp, such as fencing, lighting, generators, and other infrastructure, as well as a pause on the transfer of detainees to the site. The groups had argued that the construction of the camp proceeded without an environmental review or opportunity for public comment, in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act. But the state of Florida argued that the facility was a state-run operation, and, therefore, federal environmental protection laws did not apply.

Hastily erected in late June on a remote airfield by Big Cypress National Preserve, Alligator Alcatraz has been fraught with reports of malfunctioning air conditioners, scarce food, and rampant mosquitoes. Detainees are held in large white tents, each containing multiple fenced areas with 32 beds and three toilets. State and federal officials running the center have previously stated that the camp would be for immigrants with criminal records, but as the Miami Herald reported in July, many detainees have no prior arrests. In July, nearly 1,000 detainees were being held at Alligator Alcatraz. This week, The New York Times reported that between 120 to 125 detainees are currently at the center.

In her ruling, Williams had sided with the environmentalists. “The project was requested by the federal government; built with a promise of full federal funding; constructed in compliance with ICE standards; staffed by deputized ICE Task Force Officers acting under color of federal authority and at the direction and supervision of ICE officials,” she wrote, “and exists for the sole purpose of detaining and deporting those subject to federal immigration enforcement.” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier promptly filed a notice indicating the state would appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

In a 2-3 decision on Thursday, the three-judge panel in Atlanta granted the defendants’ request to pause Williams’ ruling pending a future decision on the appeal. The judges found that the detention center did not violate NEPA because it was funded by the state and not the federal government. “Obtaining funding from the federal government for a state project requires completing a formal and technical application process,” the ruling states, which has not yet occurred. Alligator Alcatraz is predicted to cost $450 million a year, and the DeSantis administration has previously stated it would seek FEMA funds to cover those expenses.

“Alligator Alcatraz is in fact, like we always said, open for business.”

Florida officials celebrated the ruling on social media. “Alligator Alcatraz is in fact, like we always said, open for business,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a video posted to his X account. “We are going to continue leading the way when it comes to immigration enforcement.”

Meanwhile, Friends of the Everglades, one of the plaintiffs in the case, issued a statement saying that “the case is far from over.”

“While disappointing, we never expected ultimate success to be easy,” Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, said in the statement. “We’re hopeful the preliminary injunction will be affirmed when it’s reviewed on its merits during the appeal.” Talbert Cypress, chairman of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians, which later joined the lawsuit as a plaintiff due to the detention center’s close proximity to their communities in the Everglades, told the Miami Herald they were “disappointed in the majority’s decision to stay the injunction. We were prepared for this result and will continue to litigate this matter.”

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Beleaguered Workers at Yosemite and Sequoia & Kings Canyon Flock to Unionize

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

Hundreds of staff at two of California’s most popular national parks have voted to unionize, a move that comes during a troubled summer for the National Park Service, which has seen the Trump administration enact unprecedented staff and budget cuts.

In an election held in July and August, more than 97 percent of workers at Yosemite and Sequoia & Kings Canyon national parks voted in support of organizing a union, according to a statement from the National Federation of Federal Employees. The Federal Labor Relations Authority certified the results last week.

“I am honored to welcome the Interpretive Park Rangers, scientists, biologists, photographers, geographers, and so many other federal employees in essential roles at both Yosemite and Sequoia & Kings Canyon to our union,” said Randy Erwin, the NFFE national president.

“By unionizing, hundreds of previously unrepresented employees have obtained a critical voice in their workplace and now have the power to make significant changes to benefit themselves and their colleagues.”

“You have no idea what is going to happen next. It’s like we are all being subjected to psychological warfare.”

The vote means 600 workers at the parks, including park rangers, researchers, educators, fee collectors, and first responders, among others, will be represented by the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE).

Labor organizers have been trying to form a union at the parks for years but did not have the necessary support until this year when the Trump administration’s mass firings left the parks service in turmoil, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“It comes as no surprise workers in the National Park Service are overwhelmingly in favor of unionizing, as federal employees across the country have been faced with reductions in force, threats to workplace protections, and slashed agency budgets under this administration,” Erwin said.

Since Trump took office this year the National Park Service, which manages 85 million acres of America’s public lands, has lost a quarter of its permanent staff, seasonal hiring is down and the administration is seeking to slash more than $1 billion from the NPS budget.

The US interior secretary, Doug Burgum, has said the cuts were “clearing out the barn.” Despite the upheaval, the federal government has ordered parks to stay open to the public. That has left staffers scrambling to manage the parks amid the peak summer season, and, as the Guardian reported last month, archeologists are managing ticket booths while park superintendents have cleaned bathrooms.

At Yosemite, scientists were also cleaning public bathrooms because there were no other workers to do it. Amid the turmoil this year, NPS employees told the Guardian earlier this summer they had received unsigned emails from the office of personnel management urging them to resign and find a job in the private sector.

“Every day you come to work and you have no idea what is going to happen next. It’s like we are all being subjected to psychological warfare,” a staffer said this spring.

Earlier this year at Yosemite, laid-off employees hung a US flag upside down, a symbol of distress, at the park’s El Capitan to bring attention to the cuts.

Erwin with the NFFE said the union would take “every step possible” to increase staffing and resources, and defend employees.

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RFK Jr. Is Living in a Pretend Anti-Vax World

In a marathon hearing on Thursday before the Senate Finance Committee, US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced a barrage of questions from senators who were outraged by his recent actions, especially those concerning vaccine policy and recent shake-ups at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kennedy vigorously defended himself, often making statements that contradicted his previous assertions.

In some cases, Kennedy appeared to promote flat-out lies. He said any American who wants a Covid vaccine can get one. In many states, that’s now not true because of a recent ruling by his agency. He claimed that it was impossible to say how many Americans have died of Covid, despite widespread agreement among epidemiologists and modelers that the figure is well over a million. He accused the CDC of allowing “the teachers union to write the order closing our schools” during the pandemic; a Politifact fact check clarified that the agency had actually “consulted multiple stakeholders.” He suggested that widely used antidepressants could cause violent behavior including school shootings, despite the fact that there is no evidence to suggest that such a causal relationship exists.

“This is crazy talk—you’re just making stuff up,” he snarled at Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) when she suggested that he had restricted Americans’ access to Covid vaccines.

It’s possible that Kennedy was comfortable stretching the truth because he didn’t swear an oath at the beginning of the hearing, but it’s more likely that he simply suspected it didn’t matter what he said. He appeared utterly confident in the president’s estimation of him—and for good measure, he lavished praise on his boss. During the hearing, he told Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) that he thought Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for his Operation Warp Speed Covid vaccine initiative—an apparent about-face from his previous assertion in a since-deleted 2022 tweet that the vaccines were a “crime against humanity.” Kennedy’s tone during the hearing was, at times, downright Trumpian—he mocked his questioners and challenged them more belligerently than he had during previous hearings. “This is crazy talk—you’re just making stuff up,” he snarled at Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) when she suggested that he had restricted Americans’ access to Covid vaccines. As the New York Times reported, toward the end of the hearing, Kennedy appeared to lose interest, instead opting to scroll on his phone.

It’s also possible that Kennedy’s false statements were a reflection of the fact that he lives in a kind of a parallel MAHA universe, one defined by alternative “facts” and “data.” It’s important to keep in mind that Kennedy has no medical or scientific training—rather, he is a lawyer who has spent the last decade of his career working for the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense—and his worldview has been shaped by the activists he now considers to be experts and friends.

For example, in Kennedy’s circles, it is accepted wisdom that the drugs ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are effective Covid treatments, and that public health officials have deliberately restricted access to them. During the hearing, Kennedy praised Trump for promoting “therapeutics like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.” Kennedy’s alternative health universe is populated by people who claimed that those drugs worked—sometimes profiting by doing so—despite resounding evidence that they are ineffective. For example, Dr. Meryl Nass, a Maine physician who served on the scientific advisory board of Children’s Health Defense and lobbied for the FDA to remove Covid vaccines from the market, temporarily lost her license in 2022 for prescribing ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to Covid patients.

In Kennedy’s world, claims of vaccine injuries are backed up by a robust database: the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS). In today’s hearing, he claimed that more than 30,000 deaths from the Covid vaccine had been reported in VAERS. What he didn’t say was that mainstream scientists don’t consider VAERS an accurate source for vaccine safety data, because it isn’t designed that way: Rather, it’s a repository for reports of adverse events—to be included in the database, you only have to claim a vaccine injury or death, you don’t have to actually prove it. In its “Vaccine Curriculum,” Children’s Health Defense warns that “The public health establishment claims vaccine injuries are extremely rare, and the benefits of vaccination far exceed the risks. However, the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) tells another story.”

Another accepted truth in the antivaccine universe is that the jury is still out on whether vaccines cause autism. In Thursday’s hearing, Kennedy accused public health officials of hiding the results from a study that showed that “that study showed that black boys who got the vaccine on time had a 260 percent greater chance of getting an autism diagnosis than children who waited.” In the real world, the idea of a link between vaccines and autism has been both exhaustively studied and roundly disproven. The study that Kennedy mentioned, meanwhile, was debunked and retracted. Guess where its author works now? Children’s Health Defense.

From the tense exchanges during the hearing, it was apparent that senators from both parties have realized that Kennedy is living in a world defined by activists who crusade against vaccines and, for that matter, the entire enterprise of public health science. So far, however, they seem unwilling to take any action—unmoved even by a letter this week in which 1,000 former HHS employees called for his resignation. If he didn’t resign, they urged President Trump and Congress to “appoint a new Secretary of Health and Human Services, one whose qualifications and experience ensure that health policy is informed by independent and unbiased peer-reviewed science,” the letter read. “We expect those in leadership to act when the health of Americans is at stake.”

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Texas Lawsuit Over Cocoa “Laced” With Abortion Drug Gets Even Wilder

This article was republished from Autonomy News, a worker-owned publication covering reproductive rights and justice. Sign up for a free or paid subscription, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky.

A Texas man accused of putting abortion pills in his partner’s drink has countersued for $100 million, claiming she made the whole thing up.

Last month, Autonomy News reported on a lawsuit filed by Liana Davis, a Texas woman who alleged that Christopher Cooprider, a 34-year-old Marine pilot, had given her abortion-inducing medication without her knowledge or consent, causing her to lose her pregnancy. On Wednesday, Cooprider countersued Davis in the same federal court in Corpus Christi, Texas, alleging that Davis’ suit was malicious and intended to cause him emotional distress.

When covering the initial complaint, Autonomy News did not name either party, but is doing so now because Cooprider alleges the suit was fraudulent and initiated for retribution and political purposes. Davis is represented by anti-abortion legal activist and former Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell, and the case is thought to be the first instance of a woman suing for wrongful death from abortion pills.

When reached for comment, Mitchell said Thursday, “These are abject lies and we will disprove every one of them in court. Cooprider is guilty as sin and will be held to account for what he did, both in this civil suit and in the upcoming criminal proceedings.” He did not immediately respond to questions about a possible criminal case.

In his countersuit, Cooprider says he had a brief sexual relationship with Davis, a 37-year-old who was going through a divorce, and that her behavior escalated to harassment when he expressed that he didn’t want the relationship to continue. After that, Cooprider claims Davis faked multiple pregnancies and miscarriages, and that after she actually became pregnant, she failed to treat medical conditions which themselves could have triggered a miscarriage.

Cooprider alleges that Davis concocted her suit after the Corpus Christi Police Department declined to recommend charges based on her allegations against him.

He further alleges that Davis’ lawsuit was filed early on August 11 “so it could be immediately and widely disseminated to national and Texas media outlets that morning” prior to a Texas Senate committee hearing on legislation that would supercharge the state’s existing “bounty hunter” abortion ban, inviting citizens to sue manufacturers and providers of abortion pills and win $100,000 bounties. Davis’ suit was cited in the hearing by Jana Pinson, executive director of Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend, a small crisis pregnancy center chain with locations in and around Corpus Christi.

Cooprider alleges that Davis concocted her suit after the Corpus Christi Police Department declined to recommend charges based on her allegations against him.

“Just this morning, a lawsuit was filed for wrongful death where a military guy got a next-door neighbor pregnant, tried to force an abortion,” Pinson said during the August 11 hearing. “He ordered in his own name from Aid Access, and then when she wouldn’t take them, he … put 10 pills in her chocolate and she doubled over in pain about 30 minutes later. Then he left her to bleed out while she had to get help to get to the ER.”

“This is another avenue of men being able to force abuse on women,” Pinson continued. She mentioned the case again in a hearing on August 22, this time before a House committee.

Davis’ suit also named online abortion provider Aid Access and its founder, Rebecca Gomperts, as defendants. In addition to alleging that they violated wrongful death laws in Texas, the complaint accused them of violating the Comstock Act, a dormant 1873 law that Mitchell and other anti-abortion leaders argue outlaws the mailing of abortion pills. In 2025, the anti-abortion movement has made it a major priority to attack “shield” laws, which protect abortion providers like Aid Access who prescribe abortion pills via telehealth to patients in states where abortion is illegal.

Mark Lee Dickson, a prominent anti-abortion activist who was first to announce Davis’ case on social media, also mentioned the case in the August 22 hearing. In his initial social media posts about Davis’ lawsuit, Dickson connected it directly to anti-abortion legislation: “I hope these stories drive us to see more protections pass.” At the time, Dickson said he first heard Davis’ story from a CPC director in Corpus Christi. If Pinson was the person who told Dickson about the story, it’s unclear how she came in contact with Davis in the first place. According to Dickson, he put Davis in touch with “my attorney”—meaning Mitchell, who has recently filed a spate of wrongful death suits related to the use of abortion pills, usually on behalf of men upset about their partners’ abortions.

Versions of the abortion pill bounty bill have passed in both chambers of the Texas legislature in recent days. It appears poised to become law.

In his suit, Cooprider claims he didn’t coerce Davis, and that she was the one threatening him. He said Davis asked him to order abortion pills for her in February 2025, which he alleges that she never took, and that she began harassing him after he expressed that he didn’t want her to join him at his next military post in North Carolina. One night in early March, he claims, Davis stood outside his house and implied she’d accuse him of sexual assault if he didn’t speak to her. He called 911 for police to do a wellness check and told operators that she’d called him 40 times that day, according to a transcript provided in the counterclaim. He told the operators he took video of her outside his home and added: “And she’s also threatening… she’s saying that I coerced her into taking the abortion pills against her will, and that’s illegal in Texas.”

Later on the call, he said Davis told him that she was miscarrying and was sitting “in a pile of her blood in the bathtub.” Cooprider’s filing then notes that “Law enforcement checked on [her] and she was not sitting in blood. She said that she was fine.”

However, she was actually pregnant at this time, per an ultrasound on March 21, where a physician said that she had conceived about four weeks earlier. Cooprider claims that Davis invited him over on April 5, at which point she tried to frame him for a coerced abortion by alleging that he slipped abortion pills into her hot chocolate. She claimed she was bleeding profusely, and got a neighbor to drive her to the hospital, where she told staff that Cooprider “drugged” her.

Officers from Corpus Christi Police Department came to the emergency department and opened an investigation. CCPD told the New York Times in August that it shared results with Nueces County District Attorney’s Office, but that, “after careful review, both agencies concluded that the elements of a crime could not be established, and the investigation was subsequently closed as unfounded.”

According to Cooprider’s admittedly melodramatic suit, Davis’ “lethal lies in the malicious allegations now embedded in her made-up complaint read like the screenplay written for Glenn Close in the movie “Fatal Attraction.” Other salacious allegations featured in the complaint include that Davis failed to properly treat a sexually transmitted infection and typhoid fever, either of which could have led to natural miscarriage. Cooprider also alleges that Davis failed to take progesterone prescribed in late March due to a low embryonic heart rate, which his complaint presents as evidence that she did not want to continue the pregnancy. (However, while progesterone is commonly prescribed in an attempt to prevent first trimester miscarriage, evidence doesn’t support the practice except in people with a history of three or more miscarriages.) He also claims she was a heavy drinker and that she continued to drink when her children were in her home despite being ordered not to by family court.

Cooprider’s lead attorney is Mikal Watts, a puzzling figure who frequently donates to Democratic politicians, per Federal Election Commission records, but is also listed as a Federalist Society contributor. Watts faced a federal trial in 2016 on 96 counts of wire fraud, mail fraud, and identity theft after he was accused of inventing 40,000 victims of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in order to file a class action suit that would have earned him an estimated $40 million. Watts fired his attorney on the eve of trial and chose to represent himself. A jury acquitted him.

Cooprider is seeking $100 million in damages, but pledges in his counterclaim to donate any proceeds to the Wounded Warrior Project. Watts and two other attorneys said they are working on the case pro bono.

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Laura Loomer Is “Basically a Cabinet Member at This Point”

Conspiracy theorist and self-described “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer continues to wield a jarring amount of power in the Trump administration. The latest example: She appears to have had a Democratic senator’s classified visit to a military spy agency canceled.

On Wednesday, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that his visit to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)’s Virginia headquarters had been cancelled after Loomer launched what Warner called “a campaign of baseless attacks” on social media against him and the NGA’s director, Vice Admiral Frank Whitworth, who is also known as “Trey.” The classified visit, planned for Friday, had not been publicized. It was intended to be an oversight visit to the agency, which works within the Department of Defense (DOD) to provide intelligence through maps and satellites. But in a series of X posts on Sunday, Loomer called Warner a “Russia Hoaxer” and alleged the NGA “is infested with Trump haters” because Whitworth was appointed under former President Joe Biden.

“Why are the Pentagon and [intelligence community] allowing for the Director of an Intel agency to host a rabid ANTI-TRUMP DEMOCRAT SENATOR at NGA under the Trump administration?” Loomer asked.

On X, Warner said that Loomer “is basically a Cabinet member at this point.” And in a YouTube video discussing the news, Warner said it appears that Loomer “actually has more power and sway than [Defense Secretary] Pete Hegseth or [National Intelligence Director] Tulsi Gabbard.” Then he ticked off several recent examples of Loomer’s apparent power in the defense and intelligence sectors. After an Oval Office meeting earlier this year in which Loomer alleged some members of the National Security Council were disloyal to Trump, the president fired six of them. In May, she claimed credit for Trump’s firing of National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. Warner also said Loomer also appears to have had a role in Trump revoking the national security clearances of 37 current and former officials last month, and in the firing of the Defense Intelligence Agency Director Jeffrey Kruse. Spokespeople for the White House and Defense Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones.

Loomer told the New York Times that she learned of the classified meeting from someone inside the intelligence community, and claimed that Warner should “be removed from office and tried for treason.” On X, she said that Whitworth should be fired.

In a meeting with reporters on Wednesday, Warner said Loomer’s influence “is the kind of thing that happens in authoritarian regimes,” according to the New York Times. “You purge your independent intelligence community and make them loyal not to a constitution but something else.”

Warner also told the Times he is concerned about what the cancellation of the visit means for congressional oversight. “Is congressional oversight dead?” he asked. “If we are not doing oversight, if the intelligence is potentially being cooked or being bent to meet the administration’s needs, and we end up in a conflict—the American people have the right to say, ‘How the hell did this happen?”” Several Democrat members of Congress have reported being denied oversight visits to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in recent months.

When you consider Loomer’s politics, her sway in the White House seems even more jarring. And as former Mother Jones reporter Ali Breland explained in a piece when Loomer lost her 2022 congressional primary in Florida, her politics pretty much boil down to one word: racism.

She has a years-long history of raw, unfiltered Islamophobia that possibly reached its zenith when she said, after 50 people were killed in a New Zealand mosque, that: “Nobody cares about [the] Christchurch [shooting]. I especially don’t. I care about my social media accounts and the fact that Americans are being silenced.” (Loomer was bemoaning those kicked off websites like Twitter for being racist.)

She did not change her rhetoric to make herself more palatable for Congress during the campaign. Loomer recently shared an article that lamented the “accelerating” of the “erasing” of “America’s white history.” She’s also kept up a public dialogue with Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist, who endorsed her. In March, Loomer went on white nationalist Jared Taylor’s podcast. Right Wing Watch has documented her saying things like “I’m a really big supporter of the Christian nationalist movement,” and “I’m going to fight for Christians, I’m going to fight for white people, I’m going to fight for nationalist movements.”

Despite—or maybe because of—this, Loomer’s influence continues to grow. As I reported last month, Loomer managed to convince the State Department to halt visitor visas to people from Gaza, including humanitarian medical visas for injured children. This weekend, when she wasn’t trashing Warner or Whitworth on X, she celebrated a new development: The State Department went further, suspending almost all visitor visas for Palestinian passport holders, as she had called for. “Thank you, @SecRubio!” Loomer wrote.

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Has Trump Ended Staten Island’s Wind Power Dreams?

For over a decade, New York has worked to bring wind power jobs to Staten Island as part of an ambitious plan to establish the state as the biggest hub of offshore wind. A centerpiece of the effort, situated in the southwest of the island, is the Arthur Kill Terminal (AKT), an envisioned staging and assembly port.

But on Friday, the Trump administration’s Department of Transportation rescinded a 2022 $48 million grant supporting the project that had been funded by President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The news comes after President Trump’s first day memorandum dismantling federal backing for wind energy had already placed the project in permit purgatory, halting the Republican-leaning borough’s push into the offshore wind industry.

“There’s a lot of money invested in this industry already, and these companies can’t take the hit.”

Boone Davis, president of AKT, began planning for the assembly plant in 2018. He’s no stranger to regulatory barriers hindering wind power; while he worked as a consultant on the Block Island Wind Farm, which opened in Rhode Island waters in 2016 as the country’s first offshore commercial windfarm, he also helped manage the Cape Wind Project in Massachusetts, which, after years of permitting and lease issues, was never built.

Davis spotted this plot of shoreline on the Arthur Kill strait—the phrase is an English version of the Dutch words for back channel—that splits Staten Island from New Jersey. This slice of New York’s harbor has been used for industrial purposes as far back as the 18th century. Today, a major part of its appeal is that it sits on the ocean side of the road spanning Outerbridge Crossing, allowing the site’s users to assemble tall turbines and get them out to sea.

The construction of the facility would create 600 jobs, according to Charles Dougherty, AKT’s chief commercial officer, and once up and running, manufacturing work would sustain 100 to 150 jobs, all union. The project would also add nearly $400 billion in “direct economic impact” according to Empire State Development.

When Trump reentered the White House, the project faced just one final federal hurdle, a public notice period on the terminal’s Army Corps of Engineers permits, to inch closer to breaking ground on AKT’s manufacturing and assembly plant. But Trump’s memorandum promptly halted all off-shore wind energy efforts, pausing the facility’s development.

Arthur Kill Terminal is not alone. Across the nation, wind energy is in a bardo state—stuck between alive and dead—as industry players navigate Trump’s memorandum that withdrew most federal support for any project with “the purposes of generation of electricity or any other such use derived from the use of wind.”

In May, New York, alongside 16 other states and D.C., went to a Massachusetts federal court to argue Trump’s memorandum was illegal. Their complaint cites the holdup at Arthur Kill Terminal as an example of how the memorandum has damaged the supply chain supporting offshore wind. So far, the administration has avoided providing the court basic information about how the Interior Department and other relevant agencies operationalized Trump’s memo. The next hearing is later today.

The case docket includes filings from community groups in waterfront areas claiming wind projects will cause harm. According to research from Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab, many of the groups have financial or organizational links to climate denying think tanks backed by the fossil fuel industry. Save Long Beach Island, a group based on New Jersey’s Atlantic Coast, told the court that rising offshore wind energy activity is killing whales, an assertion refuted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but one that was nonetheless put forward last week by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during a televised cabinet meeting. The Brown report found over $72 million in donations from the Koch brothers and other pro-fossil fuel donors had helped fund this misinformation campaign.

Bringing wind power to Staten Island used to be a bipartisan project.

In late July, the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management placed a new hurdle ahead of developing offshore wind energy, rescinding designated wind energy areas on the outer continental shelf—including on the New York Bight, where AKT was anticipated to support windmill installations.

The Biden administration’s clean energy efforts had called for the country to get 30 gigawatts from offshore wind by 2030. New York state planned to produce over 10 percent of that figure, or enough to power 6 million homes by 2035. Its own state-level climate goals call for sourcing 70 percent of energy from renewables by the end of this decade.

Bringing wind power to Staten Island, which has only voted for a Democrat presidential candidate four times in history, used to be a bipartisan project. Staten Island’s GOP representative, Nicole Malliotakis, has supported AKT, while boasting of the economic and environmental benefits of expanding wind power facilities in her district. She voted for Biden’s infrastructure package, and on Earth Day 2022 introduced legislation to create a program to share federal offshore wind revenue with states. In April, despite Trump’s order halting offshore wind development, Rep. Malliotakis petitioned the Army Corp of Engineers to nonetheless expedite the remaining federal permit for AKT. Her office did not respond to a request for comment, but after the Department of Transportation announced on Friday that it would pull its financial support of the terminal, Malliotakis told the Staten Island Advance she would push the agency “to get the funding repurposed to another maritime, port infrastructure or economic development project that would benefit Staten Island.”

Beyond investments in infrastructure, local officials also worked to build the island’s workforce.Beginning in 2023, New York City’s Economic Development Corporation gave over half a million to the College of Staten Island to “train the next generation of professionals for offshore wind careers.” The day before the 2024 election, AKT provided the college another $1 million to develop a future offshore wind industry workforce.

In the past, Staten Island has been left behind from growth opportunities that benefited other parts of New York City, says Nadia Adam, president of the Staten Island Industrial Alliance. She attributes this to the GOP-voting borough being “isolated physically and ideologically” from the rest of the city. That context has made some residents hesitant to wholeheartedly welcome offshore wind.

“People are unsure where Staten Island fits in, and they want to make sure we’re not being a dumping ground, because that’s what we have been historically for the rest of New York City,” says Adam, in a nod to the borough’s infamous Fresh Kills landfill, now being converted into a park.

But Staten Island’s maritime history has primed the borough for offshore wind, says Adam, who is also a co-founder of EcoWind Solutions, which offers legal and regulatory guidance to wind power companies. For decades, the island has served as both an industrial and maritime corridor, and already hosts a high volume cargo port.

Other wind power projects in New York have seen some movement. In May, the Trump administration reversed a stop work order it had issued for Empire Wind, a project off Long Island and tied into Brooklyn, following several calls with New York Governor Kathy Hochul and additional advocacy from environmental groups.

One such organization, the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, joined the 17-state plaintiff team in May, claiming Trump’s anti-wind memorandum is causing “irreparable harm” to their members.

“It’s impacting not only the state of New York for our own policy goals, but also there’s a lot of money invested in this industry already, and these companies can’t take the hit,” says Alicia Gené Artessa, the alliance’s offshore wind director. “The state of New York has also invested a lot of time and money, and then everyone else connected to it” has too.

If Trump gets his way, she explains, “It would just be totally squandered.”

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Epstein Survivors Begged Trump to Release Their Files. He Called It a “Hoax.”

There’s one issue that is gaining rare bipartisan support in a very divided DC: Outrage over the continued stonewalling of the full release of the Epstein files.

On Wednesday, a group of Democrat and Republican lawmakers—including Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)—held a press conference on Capitol Hill featuring survivors of the late financier and sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein. The purpose: Push Republicans to help force a vote on a House bill that Massie introduced in July, dubbed the “Epstein Files Transparency Act,” that would force Attorney General Pam Bondi to publicly release, within 30 days, all of the unclassified materials related to their investigations into Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. This would include flight logs, names of people and entities with ties to Epstein, sealed settlements, and any internal Department of Justice (DOJ) communications about declining to charge or investigate his associates. The bill would also prohibit the withholding of any files based on “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.”

President Donald Trump’s DOJ has repeatedly purported to release new batches of the files, including on Tuesday night, when the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee [released][4] more than 33,000 pages of documents that it secured through a subpoena from the DOJ. But Democrats and those present at the Wednesday press conference said those documents had already been made public through prior court cases.

At the news conference, Massie alleged the House Oversight Committee was “allowing the DOJ to curate all of the information that the DOJ is giving them” and said that 97 percent of the documents released were “already in the public domain.”

“This is a litmus test: Can we drain the swamp?” he asked. “Are there people who are outside of the reach of the law? I don’t think there should be.”

GOP Rep. Massie: I hope my Republican colleagues are watching. The Washington establishment is asking you to believe 2 people created hundreds of victims, and no one else was involved. They are allowing the DOJ to curate all the information. The pages are heavily redacted, and… [pic.twitter.com/W3r3MlS7B4][5]

— FactPost (@factpostnews) [September 3, 2025][6]

The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones. Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) [said][7] Wednesday that its investigation into Epstein was “the most comprehensive…to date” and that more documents will be forthcoming, including from Epstein’s estate.

The survivors spoke at length and in detail about the abuse they suffered at the hands of Epstein and Maxwell, who was recently moved from a Florida prison to a minimum-security federal prison camp in Texas [after a two-day interview][8] with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. For one survivor, Marina Lacerda, an immigrant from Brazil, Wednesday was the first time she spoke out publicly about her abuse, she said. Lacerda recounted entering Epstein’s orbit while working three jobs to support her mother and sister as a high school student, and a friend offered her $300 to give a man, presumably Epstein, a massage. “It went from a dream job,” she said, “to the worst nightmare.”

Lacerda said she started getting called upon to go to Epstein’s house so frequently that she dropped out of ninth grade and never returned. Her only way out, she said, came when Epstein told her she had gotten too old to work for him.

Lacerda said she struggles to remember some of the details of her abuse, which she believes the government documents could help her fill in. “[The government] have documents with my name on them that were confiscated from Jeffrey Epstein’s house and could help me put the pieces of my own life back together,” she said, “but I don’t have any of it, and I know the same is true for many of these women.”

Epstein survivor Marina Lacerda: It's so hard to heal knowing that there are people out there who know more about my abuse than I do. The government is still in possession right now of the documents with my name on them that were confiscated from Jeffrey Epstein's house, and… [pic.twitter.com/f0pcqePARw][9]

— FactPost (@factpostnews) [September 3, 2025][10]

The survivors appealed to Republicans for their support in backing the bill that would require the full release of the files. Massie is trying to force a vote on his bill through a discharge petition, which compels the release of legislation from committee for a floor vote once 218 members sign on. With all 212 House Democrats reportedly signing onto the petition, plus four Republicans—Massie, Greene, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)—officials at the Wednesday press conference called for two more Republicans to join their colleagues to get it done. Meanwhile, a White House official [told][11] NBC News they viewed voting for the petition as “a very hostile act to the administration.”

“The only motive for opposing this bill would be to conceal wrongdoing,” said survivor Anouska De Georgiou. “You have a choice: Stand with the truth or with the lies that protected predators for decades.”

Epstein survivor Anouska de Georgiou: To be clear, the only motive for opposing this bill would be to conceal wrongdoing. You have a choice. Stand with the truth or with the lies that have protected predators for decades. [pic.twitter.com/7eVnfmsKb4][12]

— FactPost (@factpostnews) [September 3, 2025][13]

The survivors also appealed directly to Trump, begging him to back the bill that would force greater transparency from the DOJ. “President Trump: You have so much influence and power in this situation,” De Georgiou added. “Please use that influence and power to help us, because we need it now, and this country needs it now.”

Trump, though, did not appear to be moved. In response to a question from a reporter during a concurrent Oval Office meeting, the president alleged the effort to release the files “is a Democrat hoax that never ends.”

“Nobody’s ever satisfied,” he added. “They’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president.”

President Trump on Jeffrey Epstein Files: "This is a Democrat hoax that never ends…I think it's enough because I think we should talk about the greatness of our country and the success that we're having…that's what I want to talk about…not the Epstein hoax." [pic.twitter.com/0CowxRnOVk][14]

— CSPAN (@cspan) [September 3, 2025][15]

Word soon got back to the survivors on the Hill that the president had, [again][16], dismissed their pleas. “This is not a hoax. We are real human beings. This is real trauma,” said survivor Haley Robson, in response to a question from a reporter about Trump’s comments.

“To say that it’s a hoax—it’s just not. Please humanize us,” she said, adding that she is a registered Republican. “I would like Donald J. Trump and every person in America and around the world to humanize us, to see us for who we are, and to hear us for what we have to say.”

In the meantime, the survivors are pursuing their own justice in the absence of government action: They said they are discussing creating their own list of people who they allege participated in Epstein’s abuse. “We know the names. Many of us were abused by them,” said survivor Lisa Phillips. “Now, together as survivors, we will confidentially compile the names we all know who were regularly in the Epstein world, and it will be done by survivors and for survivors, no one else is involved. Stay tuned for more.”

Epstein survivor Lisa Phillips: I stand here today for every woman who has been silenced, exploited, and dismissed. We are not asking for pity. We are here demanding accountability, and I'm demanding justice. Congress must choose. Will you continue to protect predators, or will… [pic.twitter.com/78QKtaQUxF][17]

— FactPost (@factpostnews) [September 3, 2025][18]

Later, Greene said that if the survivors asked her to read the names from the House floor, she would. “I’m not afraid to name names, and so if they want to give me a list, I will walk in that Capitol on the House floor, and I’ll say every damn name that abused these women,” Greene said. “I can do that for them, and I’d be proud to do it.” If she did, she would presumably be protected from legal retaliation or questioning by the [Speech and Debate Clause][19] of the Constitution—the same one that Mace invoked when she [accused][20] four men of sexual abuse in a speech on the House floor earlier this year.

[4]: http://House Oversight and Government Reform Committee [5]: https://t.co/W3r3MlS7B4 [6]: https://twitter.com/factpostnews/status/1963256239644688893?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw [7]: https://x.com/GOPoversight/status/1963266752558600315 [8]: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/08/ghislaine-maxwell-absolves-trump-and-everyone-else-in-doj-interviews/ [9]: https://t.co/f0pcqePARw [10]: https://twitter.com/factpostnews/status/1963260815718383672?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw [11]: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/epstein-accusers-put-pressure-congress-release-files-rcna228762 [12]: https://t.co/7eVnfmsKb4 [13]: https://twitter.com/factpostnews/status/1963259675568181602?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw [14]: https://t.co/0CowxRnOVk [15]: https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1963271648414425599?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw [16]: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/trump-epstein-republican-supporters-maga/ [17]: https://t.co/78QKtaQUxF [18]: https://twitter.com/factpostnews/status/1963266577110851886?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw [19]: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S6-C1-3-1/ALDE%5F00013300/ [20]: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/please-dont-use-nancy-maces-so-called-victim-hotline-advocates-say/

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Trump and Adams Might Soon Go Official

The grand arc of Eric Adams’ political evolution, which kicked off in 2021 with a bombastic claim that the former NYPD officer was the “future of the Democratic Party,” only for him to find salvation in Donald Trump’s return to office, appears to be reaching its logical endpoint: a prominent gig with the Trump administration.

The New York Times reports that advisers to the president, who has been drumming up ways to meddle in the politics of a hometown that hates him, are weighing potential positions for Adams in the Trump administration. (The other guy, in the red beret? He’s also reportedly being considered for a job.) The president’s advisers believe that the move could put an end to the game of chicken between Adams and Andrew Cuomo, helping the latter out of a virtually nonviable path to defeat Zohran Mamdani, the mayoral race’s overwhelming frontrunner.

If true, the plan would be the logical next step in Trump and Adams’ increasing alliance: a scandal-plagued mayor, in the most official capacity, answering to the guy whose Justice Department dropped criminal charges against him. Yet, it’s difficult to see how a wide-open contest between Cuomo and Mamdani, the 33-year-old frontrunner and democratic socialist, would work the way Trump apparently thinks: that defeating the Republican Party’s biggest bogeyman would be good for him politically. Even Cuomo seems skeptical. He told the Times that Mamdani’s victory “would be a political gift to the Republican Party, which would then use him to characterize the Democrats across the country going into the midterms.”

Of course, Trump’s decision-making is rarely governed by logic. Here, the president appears to relish the opportunity of meddling in New York’s mayoral race, flexing real political muscle with imagined, even potentially self-destructive, results. As for Adams, it would merely make official what we already know.

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House Dems Blast Labor Department For Abandoning Disabled Workers

On Wednesday, a group of six Democratic members of Congress, led by Rep. Lateefah Simon (D-Calif.), raised concerns that the federal government is “failing to protect federal contractor workers with disabilities” in a letter sent to Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer.

“The Trump administration is waging a war on disabled people and working to undo the hard-won rights our elders secured,” Simon said in a statement. “They want to roll back protections, weaken enforcement, and make our communities invisible again.”

Under Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act, landmark disability rights legislation which has been in effect since 1973, the federal government is supposed to take proactive steps to hire contractors with disabilities, provide accommodations, and not discriminate against them. As I reported in July, Chavez-DeRemer’s Labor Department is in the process of rulemaking to end goals for companies with federal contracts to have at least seven percent of their employees have a disability.

“When you strip those…provisions away, what is left of [Section] 503, and what are they actually enforcing?” Anupa Iyer Geevarghese, a former deputy director of policy in the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contractor Compliance Programs, asked in July. “Anything that gives you a strong basis for enforcement is sort of whittled away.”

According to the letter, “undue delays in investigating complaints of discrimination, abandonment of compliance reviews and stalled affirmative action plan monitoring call into question the agency’s commitment to enforcing protections for federal contract workers with disabilities.”

“The agency is abandoning review of employment practices for 2,000 companies,” the letter continues, including “technology companies such as Google and Meta, airlines such as American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and consulting firms including Deloitte and Boston Consulting Group,” also noting that the Labor Department, apparently throughout Trump’s second term, “was not processing and investigating complaints.”

The letter asks Chavez-DeRemer a series of questions, including how many disability discrimination complaints the office has received since January, how it has responded, and the impact of the delay on workers with disabilities. It requests a response by October 1—the first day of National Disability Employment Awareness Month.

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RFK Jr.’s Enemies List Just Got a Lot Longer

It hasn’t been a great week for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

On Saturday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, authored an op-edin the New York Times calling for Kennedy to resign, as my colleague Inae Oh wrote. The next day, nine former directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) joined in, alleging in another Times op-ed that Kennedy “is endangering every American’s health.”

More calls for his ouster came Wednesday, when more than 1,000 current and former HHS staffers published a letter demanding Kennedy’s resignation. “We believe health policy should be based on strong, evidence-based principles rather than partisan politics,” the letter states. “But under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, HHS policies are placing the health of all Americans at risk, regardless of their politics.”

The letter cites several of the same examples as the New York Times op-ed written by the former CDC directors: Kennedy has fired thousands of HHS workers, boosted unproven treatments for measles while undermining vaccines, backed Medicaid cuts, and, of course, fired former CDC Director Susan Monarez, which led to the resignations of other top CDC officials.

The letter from the former HHS staffers also mentions additional issues, like Kennedy’s habit of “appointing political ideologues who pose as scientific experts”—such as vaccine skeptic David Geier to investigate long debunked links between vaccines and autism—and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s recent decision to limit access to the Covid vaccines. If Kennedy declines to resign, they write, President Donald Trump and Congress should replace him with someone “whose qualifications and experience ensure that health policy is informed by independent and unbiased peer-reviewed science.”

The signatories, part of a group called Save HHS, addressed the letter to members of Congress. Their names were reportedly provided to lawmakers but are not listed publicly “in order to safeguard the privacy and security” of the signatories, according to the group. Those who signed on worked at sub-agencies including the FDA, the CDC, and the National Institutes of Health.

In a statement provided to Mother Jones, Andrew Nixon, communications director for HHS, claimed that “[Kennedy] and the HHS team have accomplished more than any health secretary in history in the fight to end the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.” Spokespeople for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Kennedy and administration officials won’t be able to ignore the growing calls for his resignation or firing for long.

On Thursday, he’s due to testify before the Senate Finance Committee, Politico first reported last week. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the committee’s top Democrat, wrote to Kennedy last week alleging that “transparency and communication from HHS has been selective at best and deceptive and deeply harmful at worst” and demanding that Kennedy “correct course and deliver on the promise of ‘radical transparency'” at the Thursday hearing.

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