How the Two-State Solution Became a “Big, Expedient Lie”

Former government officials rarely write good books. Whatever insights they may have acquired tend to be buried by self-justifying recriminations, personal loyalties, and the fear that unsolicited candor will prove disqualifying in some future administration.

Tomorrow Is Yesterday, a new book by the veteran peace negotiators Robert Malley and Hussein Agha, is an exception. The book tells the timely story of how the two-state solution in Israel-Palestine failed, despite its authors spending much of their careers trying to make it a reality.

Both are uniquely positioned to tell that story. Agha, a confidant of the late Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat, was involved at the highest levels of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks for decades. Malley advised President Bill Clinton at the Camp David summit that brought together Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Malley went on to be the lead negotiator for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal struck by Barack Obama’s administration.

“Over time, [the two-state solution] did become something that people greeted with a yawn—and then as a joke, or a lie.”

Agha has roots throughout the Middle East: Lebanon, Iraq, Iran. Despite his acceptance into the inner circle of the PLO, he is described in Tomorrow Is Yesterday as being Palestinian “by conviction,” rather than blood. After growing up in Beirut, he attended Oxford.

Malley was born with radical bonafides, but went on to obtain degrees from Yale, Oxford, and Harvard Law School. His mother is a Jewish woman from the Bronx who worked for the Algerian National Liberation Front at the United Nations in New York. He is the son of the late left-wing journalist Simon Malley, an iconoclastic Egyptian-born Jew whose devotion to anti-colonial liberation movements was combined with an intense anti-Zionism.

The older Malley, who was granted honorary Palestinian citizenship, decided never to set foot in Israel. His ties to revolutionary movements shaped his son’s initial exposure to the conflict; Arafat was the first person from Israel or Palestine that Robert Malley met in his youth. (The former government official spoke about his father’s influence—and their many differences—in a 2008 lecture later published by Jewish Currents.)

Malley and Agha have now been collaborating for decades. In 2001, they attracted international attention with a New York Review of Books essay that eviscerated the American conventional wisdom that Palestinians were to blame for the failure of the 2000 Camp David summit. Two decades later, they argue it is well past time to move beyond the binary of continued Israeli occupation, or an eventual and still vaguely defined Palestinian state. They resist specificprescriptions in favor of a broader call to go back to an earlier time when partition was not considered the only possible resolution.

I spoke with Malley—who is now a senior fellow at at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs—last Friday about the book, his skepticism about recent decisions to recognize Palestine by Western nations, and the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza.

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

In one of the more damning passages in the book, you and Hussein write that the two-state solution over the years has “evolved from abstract idea to colonial-inspired policy to seemingly viable diplomatic venture to ambivalent hope to joke and finally big, expedient lie.” How did you come to that conclusion?

That sentence reflects the tension at the core of the book, which is that we don’t say that the two-state solution was never possible. We question whether it really would have resolved the core of the conflict, but you may have been able to have both sides agree to partition at some point. But, over time, it did become something that people greeted with a yawn—and then as a joke, or a lie.

Why do we use the word lie? Because there did come a point where a number of people—particularly Americans—would invoke the two-state solution not because they thought it was going to happen.

Let me give one example: when the Biden administration spoke of two states and an irreversible pathway to Palestinian statehood, I think if you gave them a lie detector test, they would say, Yeah, we know we’re not there. But they used it because they felt that it was an important element of a different strategy, which was to get normalization between Israelis and Saudis, or at least to placate American public opinion over their enabling and support for Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. It was a convenient instrument to trot out when you needed it.

You and Hussein argue that a “two-state solution is not the natural resting place for either Israelis or Palestinians.” What do you mean by that?

I think particularly to Palestinian ears—but Israeli ears as well—both of them heard things that didn’t really resonate with them when Americans spoke about a two-state solution. Beyond whatever tactical mistakes or lack of leverage that was exercised, there’s a strong sense that the two-state solution was not an idea that either Palestinians or the Zionist movement came up with.

For the Palestinians, the notion was that all the land belongs to them, and that they had been deprived of their land during the Nakba, the War of 1948, what they call the catastrophe. The Palestinian movement was not born out of a desire to get a state on the borders of 1967. The borders of ’67 meant nothing to them in 1948. If Palestinians concede that this was just about the borders of ’67, then are they conceding that the struggle they were waging before was a tragic mistake?

By the same token, many Israelis today would say Hebron [in the West Bank] is far more significant to them than Tel Aviv. For them, what matters is full supremacy, basically. The Zionist movement and its origins—and many of those who are speaking today—their attachment is to all of the land. It’s not just to the land they had before 1967. So, partition doesn’t naturally respond to the deep-seated yearnings of both sides. Both have higher aspirations. Both have deeper historical attachment.

The most dynamic elements on both sides, the ones that have generally been excluded from the peace negotiations—the Islamists, the Palestinian refugees, the settlers, the religious Zionists; those who feel most strongly and therefore have the greatest ability to undo any effort—were sort of viewed as alien because they were not really in tune with what the peace process was trying to do. But, in some ways, they reflected the core of the conflict more accurately than those with whom, I admit, I felt more comfortable talking to.

What would you say to those who look at the efforts to achieve a two-state solution via Oslo and Camp David and conclude: That was the moment. If things had just gone a little differently, we could have solved this once and for all? What are the costs of seeing it through that lens?

The cost is where we are today. This may not be a straight line, but there certainly is a line that links the peace process and the failed efforts of the peace process to the absolute, unspeakable horrors that we’re witnessing today.

It’s not as if one is completely detached from the other, and that the government of Israel landed from Mars, or that Hamas landed from Mars. And that what happened on October 7 and what happened afterwards are completely disconnected from everything that’s happened beforehand.

“At the end of the day, on this issue, the US is not prepared to put its foot down.”

No, as we say in the book, and it’s a painful thing for people to hear, October 7 was welcomed by a large swath of Palestinian public opinion as Israel having a taste of its own medicine. There was really a sense of, Finally, we get to do to them what they’ve been doing to us. As we say, this is nothing new. Way before Hamas existed, there were attempts by Fatah, or by other movements, to do something like this, which is to sow fear in the minds of Israelis.

And by the same token, and I know it’s painful to hear, but it is a fact that a vast majority of Israelis are absolutely comfortable with and supportive of a war that an increasing number of organizations are calling a genocide.

Neither one of those appeared out of nowhere. They are the product of years of a failed effort to chase what has ended up being an illusory goal.

If we just go back and say, Okay, we didn’t try hard enough. We’re going to try again. Whoever embarks on that effort is going to create new illusions, which is going to lead to new disillusionment, which is going to lead to frustration and violence.

The book is quite critical of Joe Biden’s response to October 7. What do you think led to the decisions he took?

As we try to explain—and that’s why we call the book _Tomorrow Is Yesterday—_so much of what we’re seeing today is reminiscent of what we’ve seen in the past.

When it comes to the US, the reaction to October 7 and the war that followed was an exacerbated microcosm of American habits: To say things that either they don’t believe, or they shouldn’t believe, or that they should know that others won’t believe.

So, [the US says]: We are working tirelessly for a ceasefire. A ceasefire is around the corner. We care equally about Israeli and Palestinian lives. We’re on the verge of normalization between Israelis and Palestinians. We’re going to put forward an irreversible pathway to a Palestinian state.

Not one of those sentences really bore any resemblance to truth.

Now, why did the administration say those things? But also why did the administration take the stance that it took?

One is just that it’s born of an American foreign policy culture, an establishment culture, about how you look at Israel and how you look at the Palestinians. It’s sort of the playbook of how the United States reacts, in general, for the last few decades to instances of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Added to that, you had a president who has been around for some time, who also has a fierce loyalty to Israel and to the Jewish people. He felt it very much in his guts. And the fact that he comes from a generation where an American politician, as a rule, could not pay a price for backing every Israeli policy, and always risked paying a price by taking his or her distance from Israeli policy.

I think it was very hard for the team to get out of that mentality, which is that we need to stick to Israel even if we have deep reservations about what they’re doing. If we’re going to deal with those reservations, it’s better to “bear hug” them because that’s the best way to get them to do what we want them to do—even though history has proven time and time again that the “hug” allows Israel to continue what they’re doing and then to dismiss the criticism that comes with it.

There has been a lot of news about recent moves to recognize a Palestinian state by Western nations. How does your understanding of the two-state solution—and the role the idea of it plays—impact how you see that?

It’s a little bit awkward because I feel more comfortable in the company of many who support recognition of a Palestinian state than those who oppose it. And I certainly don’t buy the argument that it’s a reward for Hamas, but I question the motivation and the end result of recognition.

It’s pretty clear that recognizing a Palestinian state today is not going to change the lives of a single Israeli or Palestinian. It’s not going to change what’s happening in Gaza. It’s not going to change what’s happening in the West Bank. And so it’s hard to see how it’s the adequate response to what we’re seeing today, when there are other responses in terms of putting real pressure on Israel and making them face the consequences of their actions.

Some countries are doing both, but many are choosing one rather than the other, which raises the question of the motivation. Is it to show that they’re doing something, even if it’s not something that’s going to make a difference? Is it to say, _Look, we’ve done our part_s?

Right now, it does look far more like a symbolic gesture that’s designed to make those who are under criticism for not having done enough to end what’s happening in Gaza feel like they’ve done something. And that’s the tendency that we described in the book: To use a two-state solution for purposes that have very little to do with its achievement.

You’ve talked about Vietnam being a watershed moment for your generation. For younger Americans, the war in Gaza may be playing a similar role. What possibilities do you think might open up in a world in which public opinion allows, or compels, the US government to use its leverage over Israel in the service of trying to resolve this conflict?

There has been a sea change in public attitudes. The polling reflects it. The position taken by growing numbers of members of Congress reflects it. Even the fact that you’re hearing former members of the Biden administration coming out in favor of conditioning or withholding aid to Israel. It comes in different shades, but all of that is a marker of those changes that have taken place.

I teach now, and I hear it in my students. This war—not just the war but also the US enabling of it, the hypocrisy, the moral indignation combined with, at best, feckless action, at worst, active complicity in the war. I think all of that is going to leave its imprint on a generation of future American policymakers. But, also, soon to be, if not already, voters.

And so what does it do to the composition of Congress? What does it do to the primaries for the next presidential election? Again, I don’t know. And there’ve been too many cases where I had hope in the past, and that hope didn’t quite pan out. But I do think we may be witnessing a different attitude.

I’m not saying that the US can impose a solution and dictate how Israelis and Palestinians are going to live. I think that would be another fallacy if we believe that we could just snap our fingers and either Israelis or Palestinians will do as we wish. But if Israel, in particular, didn’t feel the sense of impunity that it has felt, I think that starts changing something.

President Obama said in conversations with us when I was serving him, It’s hard to see why Israel will change course if it doesn’t incur the price of the policies it’s pursuing. It wouldn’t even make rational sense. So, that’s not condemning the Israeli government. If continuing with the status quo and continuing what they’re doing doesn’t cost them, then why wouldn’t they continue?

If there’s been a constant for the decades since I started working in the US government, it’s been: At the end of the day, on this issue, the US is not prepared to put its foot down. Does that begin to change? And if it changes, does it change the behavior on the ground in Israel-Palestine? I think there’s at least some reason to hope.

But again, I think that shouldn’t spare us—but mainly Israelis and Palestinians—the need to think about what are the most achievable and sustainable ways for Israelis and Palestinians to coexist. That’s a difficult conversation to have, but it needs to be had. Because even with a different US policy, you still need to have an outcome that most Israelis and most Palestinians are prepared to live with.

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The Joke’s On You at the Riyadh Comedy Festival

Any writer worth a damn will tell you that writing short is often a lot harder than writing long. You have to get the pacing, the structure, and the tone just right, but when it hits, it really hits. Capturing something essential about the modern world in 80,000 words is an accomplishment. The Riyadh Comedy Festival manages to do it in four.

The first-of-its-kind event, which is happening this week in Saudi Arabia, has brought some of America’s most famous comics to the autocratic Gulf State. Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart, and Pete Davidson are there, as is Bill Burr, who once swore off the idea of “going over there and getting kidnapped and getting my head sawed off on fucking YouTube.” But Burr will have to keep those kinds of comments to himself while he’s in Riyadh. An offer shared by the comedian Atsuko Okatsuka (who is not attending), stipulated that participants would not perform perform “any material that may be considered to degrade, defame, or bring into public disrepute, contempt, scandal, embarrassment, or ridicule…The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, including its leadership, public figures, culture, or people” and “The Saudi royal family, legal system, or government.” The whole thing feels like a bit: Did you hear what the anti-censorship guys said to the dictator? Nope.

As a glimpse of the state of mid-career comedians with Netflix specials, it’s quite grim. But the festival tells a story that goes well beyond this particular industry. It’s a stand-in for a broader capitulation to autocracy abroad that mirrors the acquiescence to autocracy here at home.

The whole thing feels like a bit: Did you hear what the anti-censorship guys said to the dictator? Nope.

Saudi Arabia’s strategy for accruing political and economic power under crown prince Muhammad bin Salman is pretty straightforward. It is not just a petro-state anymore. In just the last few years, the kingdom has launched a competitor to the PGA Tour; blown up the finances of European soccer and effectively taken control of FIFA; and cemented itself as a destination for boxing, UFC, and Formula 1. Its annual investor conference, known as “Davos in the Desert,” is a marquee event for that sort of crowd. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the PIF, is a player in everything from alfalfa to video games to Jared Kushner. For a brief moment, in 2018, it seemed as if the state-sanctioned dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul might cause people to keep their distance, but the assassination turned out to be little more than a blip for many American entertainers and businessmen.

This kind of mass capitulation marks a moral erosion in its own right. But you can also see, in the ways these deals and big events are often discussed, a kind of anti-politics at work. Influential Americans are not just willing to put up with bad state actors, but are genuinely dismissive of the idea that you shouldn’t. Self-respect and standards are weak and woke. It is virtue-signaling to care about dismemberment, or 9/11. This broad acquiescence to the Saudi rebrand reflects an avowed shamelessness couched in a right-wing moral relativism; acknowledging the complexity of the world becomes a way to never have to really believe in anything.

I’m not going to go so far as to say that the Riyadh Comedy Festival or LIV Golf—“Golf, but louder”—explains how Donald Trump got a second term, but I do think these things are on the same continuum. (For one thing, Trump did literally host LIV Golf tournaments.) The lesson is: A lot of Americans just aren’t as opposed to vengeful monarchs as you might have thought. Trump didn’t just rebrand himself via many of the same spectacles MBS embraced—fights, races, football, and “edgy” comedians. Like MBS and the oppressive state over which he presides, his ascent was the product of a lot of powerful people who once denounced him forsaking their purported ideals for an inside shot at a windfall. His movement is powered by a willingness to sell out. In Washington, as in Riyadh, it turns out that persuading people to make peace with an oppressive, anti-democratic regime dominated by an unspeakably wealthy ruling family is not as hard as you might think. All you have to do is make them rich.

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Team Trump Will Spend $625 Million and Open Public Lands to Revive a Dying Industry

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

The White House will open 13.1 million acres of public land to coal mining while providing $625 million for coal-fired power plants, the Trump administration has announced.

The efforts came as part of a suite of initiatives from the Department of the Interior, Department of Energy, and Environmental Protection Agency, aimed at reviving the flagging coal sector. Coal, the most polluting and costly fossil fuel, has been on a rapid decline over the past 30 years, with the US halving its production between 2008 and 2023, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

“This is an industry that matters to our country,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a livestreamed press conference on Monday morning, alongside representatives from the other two departments. “It matters to the world, and it’s going to continue to matter for a long time.”

“This is a colossal waste of our money at a time when the federal government should be spurring along the new energy sources.”

Coal plants provided about 15 percent of US electricity in 2024—a steep fall from 50 percent in 2000—the EIA found, with the growth of gas and green power displacing its use. Last year, wind and solar produced more electricity than coal in the US for the first time in history, according to the International Energy Agency, which predicts that could happen at the global level by the end of 2026.

Despite its dwindling role, Trump has made the reviving the coal sector a priority of his second term amid increasing energy demand due to the proliferation of artificial intelligence data centers.

“The Trump administration is hell-bent on supporting the oldest, dirtiest energy source. It’s handing our hard-earned tax dollars over to the owners of coal plants that cost more to run than new, clean energy,” said Amanda Levin, director of policy analysis at the national environmental nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council. “This is a colossal waste of our money at a time when the federal government should be spurring along the new energy sources that can power the AI boom and help bring down electricity bills for struggling families.”

The administration’s new $625 million investment includes $350 million to “modernize” coal plants, $175 million for coal projects it claims will provide affordable and reliable energy to rural communities, and $50 million to upgrade wastewater management systems to extend the lifespan of coal plants.

The efforts follow previous coal-focused initiatives from the Trump administration, which has greenlit mining leases while fast-tracking mining permits. It has also prolonged the life of some coal plants, exempted some coal plants from EPA rules, and falsely claimed that emissions from those plants are “not significant.”

The moves have sparked outrage from environmental advocates who note that coal pollution has been linked to hundreds of thousands of deaths across the past two decades. One study estimated that emissions from coal costs Americans $13-$26 billion a year in additional ER visits, strokes and cardiac events, and a greater prevalence and severity of childhood asthma events.

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So You Don’t Understand Crypto. Buckle Up.

The growth of crypto—decentralized digital currency that doesn’t rely on the backing of a bank or government—is one of the most transformative financial developments of the 21st century. And yet cryptocurrencies still baffle so many. How risky of an investment is it? Where do I buy it? And, wait, what is crypto again?

On this week’s More To The Story, host Al Letson sits down with independent journalist Molly White for some answers. She examines the growth of cryptocurrency in the US, how digital currencies have begun permeating American politics, and the extreme risks and rewards of investing in crypto as the Trump administration is deregulating the industry.

“We see these crypto bubbles happen over and over again, where crypto companies get very high, cryptocurrency companies proliferate, and everyday people are being increasingly brought into crypto,” White says. “And then things get out of hand because there’s very little oversight and bad behavior is very common. And at a certain point, things get untenable.”

White also recounts the epic rise and fall of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange started by Sam Bankman-Fried, who was convicted of fraud in 2023. FTX’s collapse and ensuing bankruptcy is the focus of Reveal’s new two-part series, The Secret Story of FTX’s Rise and Ruin.

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.

So before we get too deep, I’d love to start off with the fundamentals, so what exactly is cryptocurrency and Bitcoin?

So cryptocurrency is a digital asset, meaning that it exists entirely in the digital world, there’s no physical representation of the asset, and people trade these assets, like Bitcoin or various other crypto assets, to try to speculate on the price, hoping that these very volatile assets will increase in price. They were created in 2009 or so with the advent of Bitcoin, which was the first cryptocurrency, but now there are thousands and thousands of them that people trade back and forth in hopes of earning a profit typically.

And so, what exactly is a blockchain and how does that relate to cryptocurrency?

The blockchain is the ledger on which all of these transactions are recorded. So this is basically a distributed, decentralized record of every transaction that happens, say, with a Bitcoin. And so, there is this system in which anyone can run one of these computers and contribute to maintaining this digital ledger, without, say, a centralized entity, like a bank, keeping track of every transaction or acting as a middleman in those transactions.

Okay, I think I grasp all of that. It’s a way of keeping big institutions, banks, out of the mix, so to speak.

Right. The idea is that a ton of different people will all contribute to maintaining this ledger, but no single person or entity controls that ledger, and so there is no bank telling you, “Oh, sorry, you can’t make that transaction,” for whatever reason, that was the original design of cryptocurrencies. Since then, it has evolved quite a lot, and so now there actually are a lot of intermediaries in the crypto world, but the fundamental design was to cut them out of the mix.

So right now, we’re in the middle of reporting on the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which at one time was valued at more than $30 billion. You’ve also done a lot of reporting about FTX, including about the way customers were paid out as part of the bankruptcy. Can you talk some about that?

Yeah. So this has been a bone of contention in a number of crypto bankruptcies, where instead of having their assets returned to them in the form that they had been holding them, people are being repaid with the dollar equivalent of those assets based on the time at which the company went bankrupt, and for FTX, this was an all-time low in crypto prices, there had been a very tumultuous year in the crypto industry, and so Bitcoin prices were low, other crypto asset prices were low. And now, years later, as creditors are being repaid, they would much rather get their Bitcoin back because those Bitcoins are worth many times what they were worth at the time of bankruptcy, but instead they’re being repaid in dollars, which means that they’ve lost a significant amount of value than if they had managed to hold onto their crypto assets for that time. But this is the risk that people take when they get involved in crypto, when they store assets on exchanges like FTX, is that there really aren’t protections that are ensuring that people get the outcome that they wish when catastrophes happen.

If the US had a better system in place, could that have prevented things like FTX crumbling?

Yeah. I think that there were regulatory failures that contributed to both FTX’s business operations, that were extremely high risk, that were very much out of the norm for a traditional financial institution, and issues that led to creditors not being repaid in ways that they maybe expected.

There has been very limited oversight of crypto firms like FTX, in part because FTX was based offshore, and so although they did have a branch of the company that was serving US customers, much of the company and its operations were not necessarily subject to US oversight, and there were very little regulations, like you see in traditional finance, that would aim to prevent the types of conflicts of interest that happened with FTX and its sister trading firm, which was called Alameda Research. Typically, you wouldn’t want a company that is holding customer funds to also be engaging in trading activities that could potentially be trading against those very same customers, you would want a very significant firewall around customer assets so that a company could not misuse those assets for their own expenditures or trading purposes, and those types of protections really were not in place, they did not prevent FTX from doing exactly that, which I think contributed to its downfall.

Since the collapse of FTX, how has crypto entered the bloodstream of American finance and investment?

Well, it’s been a pretty remarkable turnaround, I think, in the crypto world. After FTX, I think people were very disillusioned with cryptocurrency, especially the everyday person rather than the crypto enthusiast, they saw crypto as very high risk, not worth getting involved in, they saw FTX as a cautionary tale. But over the couple of years since then, crypto has really re-emerged in the American system as a major portion of the financial world, where we’re seeing big companies, traditional financial companies, embracing crypto. There are companies like Fidelity that have issued crypto ETFs, which are a way for people to essentially gain exposure to crypto assets through a traditional brokerage. We’ve seen a massive embrace of cryptocurrency from the President and the President’s administration, where the crypto industry has become very, very close with not only the President, but also the regulatory structure, and has exerted quite a lot of influence over upcoming legislation over the regulatory approach. And so, crypto has really reinserted itself, I would say, into the American consciousness as crypto prices have come back up and there has been this embrace of cryptocurrency from the political administration.

So if I wanted to buy crypto today, how risky of an investment is it?

Well, crypto is still a very risky investment for a couple of reasons. For one, it’s risky in the sense that crypto is extremely volatile, and so there are these huge swings in price, even in some of the most established cryptocurrencies. We see Bitcoin, for example, dramatically changing in price, both up and down. And so, there is risk in that sense, that you might put a lot of money into Bitcoin, and then the price goes down and you lose a considerable portion of your original investment.

But there are also risks in the crypto worlds that people are maybe not as used to from more traditional institutions, where you can actually lose all of your crypto assets, they can be stolen from you, or companies can go under and your assets may not be returned to you ever, or if they are returned, it can be much, much later or in a different form, and those risks, I think, are still fairly significant, even as companies try to present themselves as more legitimate versions of exchanges, like FTX.

When FTX was still doing business, they very much branded themselves as the safe and easy place to trade crypto. They tried to portray themselves as a place where you didn’t have to worry about the custody of your crypto assets, you could just log on to the exchange and they’d be right there. They tried to create trust among their customers that they were the legitimate, above board way of trading crypto, because FTX was not the first catastrophe in the crypto world, people had grown concerned about the legitimacy of these exchanges even prior to FTX.
And so nowadays, we’re seeing other cryptocurrency exchanges doing the same thing, where they claim that, “Okay, for real this time, we’re the place where we will actually take care of your assets and protect you,” but without much oversight still, and as the crypto industry is actually being deregulated rather than regulated, I remain very skeptical and cautious about those types of companies, because we see these catastrophes happening again and again and again, and without some sort of external force or oversight to stop that pattern, I think it will just repeat.

So Molly, another part of your research and reporting is the influence of cryptocurrency in politics, how did crypto affect the 2024 elections?

The crypto industry became incredibly politically active in 2024, and this had been happening over a period of a couple of years, where crypto firms, including FTX, actually, were becoming very politically active and trying to influence legislation and regulators so that they would have a more friendly environment under which to operate. But they really went into overdrive in 2024, where a coalition of cryptocurrency companies and executives raised over $100 million, they spent something like $130 million on congressional elections in the United States to either support candidates that they believed would be pro-crypto and who would support the legislation that the crypto industry wanted to see put into place.

But also to oppose candidates that they saw as threats to the crypto industry, people like Katie Porter in California, who lost her primary race for the California Senate seat, she was viewed as a ally of Elizabeth Warren, as someone who was maybe going to be skeptical of the crypto industry’s promises and its plans for a much looser regulatory regime. And so, they spent millions of dollars to unseat people like her, or Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and instead replace them with politicians who would be much friendlier to the crypto industry and would vote for legislation that they essentially drafted.

What kind of influence is crypto having on the upcoming midterms?

Well, we saw an incredible degree of crypto spending in the 2024 elections, and I think we are poised to see that again in 2026. The cryptocurrency Super PACs have already raised a significant amount of money, rivaling what they raised in 2024, and they’re continuing to accumulate funds to spend in the midterms. There’s already been some spending happening in special elections and other races that have happened a little bit earlier, and I think we will continue to see that even more so into the midterms as the crypto industry continues to exert influence.

The strategy last time was essentially to show force against candidates who might be skeptical of cryptocurrency or even just unwilling to sign on to the crypto industry agenda and essentially threaten them and say, “We will spend you out of office. We will support your opponents, and we will make sure that they are elected rather than you, unless get on board with our agenda.” And so, some people decided to acquiesce, they embraced cryptocurrency. Others were indeed up against huge spending, where their opponents were backed by the crypto industry because the industry didn’t want to see a skeptic or someone who is more focused on consumer protection put into office. So I think we’re going to see that pattern again, where candidates are being strong armed into at least going along with the crypto industry’s agenda, if not outwardly embracing it, in hopes of earning potentially millions and millions of dollars in campaign support.

Yeah. When you’ve got a candidate like Trump, who I think it’s fair to say has made a lot of money off of crypto, versus a candidate who maybe is not doing as much for the cryptocurrency, it’s clear where their alliance is going to go.

I think so. There was this perception from the crypto industry that the Biden administration was very anti-crypto, that it was because of Biden that we saw more enforcement in the crypto world, and there was this belief, or certainly the crypto industry contributed to this belief, that Kamala Harris would be an extension of that, and so if you supported her, you would essentially be putting your crypto assets at risk. Whereas Trump very much positioned himself as an ally to the crypto industry, he was describing himself as the pro-crypto president, he was launching his own tokens, he was building businesses where he was personally profiting from cryptocurrency. And so, I think many executives in the crypto world saw him as the obvious choice, because he wants to get rich from cryptocurrency, and so he will support policies that will allow anyone to get rich from running a cryptocurrency business, and they very much threw their lot in with Donald Trump as a result of that.

What’s Trump’s involvement with World Liberty Financial? It seems like he and his family have made large investments and have their own family token.

Right. So the Trump family has a whole portfolio of cryptocurrency companies and crypto-related investments at this point. World Liberty Financial was one of the first ones, and this was a project that was launched by the Trump sons, in collaboration with a couple of other crypto entrepreneurs, and the whole selling point was that they were going to create their own cryptocurrency trading platform that would address what they describe as debanking that they’ve experienced personally.

So the Trump sons have said that in the past, they were denied banking services due to their political beliefs, due to their family associations, and they see crypto as the way to answer that, where no bank can deny you service because it’s decentralized and you can just set up an account and go about your business, and that was the ideology behind World Liberty Financial. Although, the company so far has not actually launched anything besides a token called WLFI, from which the Trump family has made hundreds of millions of dollars. They’ve also launched a stablecoin called USD1, which is, again, a crypto asset that is pegged to the US dollar, that has also been very lucrative for them. But so far, the actual promises of the platform have yet to be realized.

Before we move on, I’m still having a hard time understanding exactly what a meme coin is. So a meme coin is just digital currency that somebody creates based around a meme, and those can have dramatic swings in how much they’re worth, is that correct?

Yes, that’s absolutely correct. Meme coins often start at extremely low prices, and then as interest is drawn to them, people are always looking for the next new meme coin, and so if someone is able to get some attention on a meme coin, it can spike in price, even if we’re talking about many, many fractions of a penny to a penny, and because of that, people try to make huge returns on them, even though often those spikes are very short-lived and people often lose a substantial amount of money trying to speculate on the next big meme coin. That is the model of meme coins is to pick the right one early and then hopefully make a profit.

So it’s like pick the right one, get in early and get out early as well, make the money in balance?

Right. And the people who are a little bit late to that party are the people who lose a lot of money, because they allow those early purchasers to get out with their profits.

So is this the same type of thing that the Hawk Tuah girl, I have no idea what her real name is, the Hawk Tuah woman did, she created her own meme coin, is that what it was?

Yep, that’s exactly right.

So she created a meme coin, and everybody got mad at her because she made a lot of money, or the people that were working with her made a lot of money, but everybody that came later to it kind of got screwed?

Right. And that is actually the most common trajectory for a meme coin, is the insiders who launch the token are the ones who make money, and everyone who comes in later tends to lose money. And there’s very little oversight or regulations around how meme coins are supposed to work, but people still get very angry when they perceive that the person who launched or endorsed a meme coin did it in the wrong way that caused them to lose money.

So let me ask you a really basic question then, if that’s the way it goes, why invest in a meme coin? I don’t understand. If you know that it’s an inside job, why invest in it? I’m really truly trying to understand.

Yeah. I think a lot of crypto investing is really not terribly rational. There is a lot of hope that they’re going to be one of those early buyers and they’re going to be the ones who make the money and not the ones who are allowing the insiders to make the money. In reality, it’s often not the case, and oftentimes, especially with meme coins, they are set up in such a way that you could never make money off of them, because the insiders just have a structural advantage that is not available to everyday people who are coming in later to purchase these tokens. But I think people get really hopeful. They see stories about a person just picking the right token and suddenly they’re a millionaire overnight, and they think that could be me, I just have to pick the right one. And sometimes they lose over and over and over again, and they get very upset when that is not happening for them, even if it’s not an entirely rational behavior.

Is there a safe strategy with crypto in general? I’m pulling out from meme coins, because it seems like what we’re saying with meme coins is it seems like it is the extreme Wild West, you’re almost playing the lottery, hoping that something will work out. Is there a crypto strategy that is a little bit more stable?

Well, staying out of it is certainly the safest option, I think.

That’s what I’m planning to do, I’ll just-

Yeah, that’s been my strategy as well.

My kid though is very much into crypto, so I’m just curious, is there another path?

Yeah, I think there are ways that people work to minimize risk. I think that some people view cryptocurrency as what it is, which is an extremely high risk investment choice, and they see that maybe there is some room in their portfolio for that type of asset, and so they allocate a small percentage of their investment strategy towards crypto, maybe they stick to some of the more mainstream coins, maybe they take custody of their assets personally so that they don’t have to worry about an exchange going under.

But ultimately, anyone who is involved in crypto speculation is taking on a significant amount of risk, both in the sense that it’s very volatile and it’s high risk in the sense that maybe high risk investments outside of crypto can be high risk. But there is also this additional layer of risk in crypto that people I think often don’t recognize, which is that, typically, if you buy a high risk stock, you can at least be sure that that stock is going to be in your brokerage account the next time you check, whereas in the crypto world, it is actually very common for companies to go under or for crypto exchanges to be hacked and have assets stolen. And so, that amount of risk is also a factor, and people maybe don’t recognize that quite as much.

You, like me, sound very skeptical about crypto. I would say I’m skeptical about crypto out of ignorance, I don’t know enough about this stuff, so I’m just like, yeah, I’ll keep my money. You sound skeptical about crypto with an abundance of knowledge. I’m curious though, what’s the flip side of it, why are there crypto enthusiasts, people who absolutely believe that this is the way of the future?

I would say it’s a mix of different ideologies that abound in crypto enthusiasts. Some of it is very ideological, and so it ties back to the early goals of crypto, which was to remove banks from the equation or make sure that governments were not even involved in issuing the asset. There are a lot of people who are digital equivalents of gold bugs, who think that we should have never left the gold standard, and they see Bitcoin as a similar asset class to gold because it has a limited supply, and so they think that it is a superior currency from a structural level.

There are a lot of people who love cryptocurrency because they think it’s their ticket to getting rich quick. There have been people who have made their fortunes in Bitcoin or other crypto assets because they got in early and they made a lot of money, and so people see those stories and they think, that could be me. And so, they get involved in crypto speculation, hoping for the same results. And then, I think there are people who have really bought into the idea that blockchains are a superior technology to the banking rails that we use today. That one, I think, I find the least convincing, just because the technological promises of blockchains have been fairly limited, and we’ve seen how little progress there has been towards making Bitcoin or some other crypto asset the currency of the future. But there are people who still believe that we just need a couple more years and it’ll be right around the corner.

What do you think is the future of regulation for cryptocurrency? Is it going to always be this lawless place?

Well, I think that remains to be seen. But we’ve certainly seen a lot of pressure in the United States to avoid regulations for the crypto industry, to even remove regulations that were in place, the few regulations that were being enforced prior to the Trump administration. And so, I think at least for the next couple of years, we’re going to see very little in the way of regulations, at least in the sense of regulations that protect consumers or prevent these businesses from engaging in abusive behaviors.

I think the regulations that are being put in place and that are coming out of the cryptocurrency industry, which often claims that it actually wants regulation, are solely regulations that benefit the cryptocurrency industry and the wealthy executives running these companies. They are not the types of protections that you would hope to see in financial institutions to ensure that they’re being fair and that customers are being protected. And so, I think that will be the trend, at least in the near future.

But I think we’ve also seen throughout history that what happens in the cryptocurrency world is that things get very, very inflated, we see these crypto bubbles happen over and over again, where crypto prices get very high, cryptocurrency companies proliferate and everyday people are being increasingly brought into crypto, and then things get out of hand, because there’s very little oversight and bad behavior is very common, and at a certain point, things get untenable. And so, we see catastrophes like we saw in 2022, when many, many, many companies collapsed, not just FTX, FTX was certainly the most high profile, but there were tons and tons of crypto companies that went under because they were engaging in very risky lending or they were outright frauds that eventually reached the end of their line. And so, a lot of people lost a ton of money, crypto prices came crashing back down. That is a cycle that we’ve seen over and over again in the cryptocurrency world, and I worry that it will only continue and become more dramatic as the sector continues to expand.

And so, I do think, unfortunately, there may be this natural boundary to the extent to which the crypto industry can grow under such a deregulated administration, and at some point, it will unfortunately self-correct in a way that is very, very painful for everyday people.

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A Reagan-Appointed Judge Just Wrote a Blistering Anti-Trump Decision

On Tuesday, William G. Young—a federal district court judge in Massachusetts and a Reagan appointee—issued a decision filled with obvious contempt for the unconstitutional actions of the current president of the United States.

The ruling comes in a case brought by academic associations seeking to block the Trump administration’s policy of targeting and arresting noncitizens protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza. Judge Young’s decision makes it absolutely clear that the First Amendment rights of students like Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk were violated when federal agents detained them and sent them to faraway immigration detention centers.

“ICE goes masked for a single reason—to terrorize Americans into quiescence,” the Reagan appointed judge wrote.

The legal conclusions of the decision, which come after a nine-day trial involving 15 witnesses and hundreds of exhibits, are significant. As is the evidence uncovered in the case. It was revealed that the Trump administration was relying on information from shadowy websites like Canary Mission to determine who to target.

The judge wrote that a hearing on how the government can remedy its unconstitutional conduct will be scheduled “promptly.”

But what sets the ruling apart is its mix of unapologetic evisceration of Trump and admiration for the rights he has trampled on. That it is no ordinary ruling is apparent from the first words of the 161-page decision.

Young, who is 85 years old and was appointed to the bench four decades ago, begins by quoting a postcard he received on June 19 that reads: “TRUMP HAS PARDONS AND TANKS …. WHAT DO YOU HAVE?” Young replies in the ruling:

Dear Mr. or Ms. Anonymous,

Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People of the United States—you and me—have our magnificent Constitution. Here’s how that works out in a specific case—

The judge goes on to write that the case he is deciding is “perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court.” He concludes that there was not an “ideological deportation policy” targeting pro-Palestine speech. Instead, there was something more sinister:

[T]he intent of the Secretaries was more invidious—to target a few for speaking out and then use the full rigor of the Immigration and Nationality Act (in ways it had never been used before) to have them publicly deported with the goal of tamping down pro-Palestinian student protests and terrorizing similarly situated non-citizen (and other) pro-Palestinians into silence because their views were unwelcome.

By defending that policy, Young writes, the president has violated his “sacred oath” to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That Trump is “for all practical purposes, totally immune from any consequences for this conduct,” Young adds, citing the Supreme Court’s 2024 immunity decision, “does not relieve this Court of its duty to find the facts.”

The Reagan appointee is similarly disdainful of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s conduct under Trump. As he puts it:

Despite the meaningless but effective “worst of the worst” rhetoric, however, ICE has nothing whatever to do with criminal law enforcement and seeks to avoid the actual criminal courts at all costs. It is carrying a civil law mandate passed by our Congress and pressed to its furthest reach by the President. Even so, it drapes itself in the public’s understanding of the criminal law though its “warrants” are but unreviewed orders from an ICE superior and its “immigration courts” are not true courts at all but hearings before officers who cannot challenge the legal interpretations they are given. Under the unitary President theory they must speak with his voice. The People’s presence as jurors is unthinkable.

Young is particularly disturbed by ICE agents’ use of masks while detaining Öztürk and others—calling the government’s defense of the practice “disingenuous, squalid and dishonorable.” He explains:

ICE goes masked for a single reason—to terrorize Americans into quiescence. Small wonder ICE often seems to need our respected military to guard them as they go about implementing our immigration laws. It should be noted that our troops do not ordinarily wear masks. Can you imagine a masked marine? It is a matter of honor—and honor still matters. To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police.

Elsewhere in the decision, Young quotes an almost surreal defense mounted by the government at trial. While cross-examining Bernhard Nickel—a German citizen and Harvard philosophy professor who censored himself and abandoned a trip to visit a terminally ill brother abroad following Öztürk’s arrest—a government lawyer seemed to imply that Nickel was simply imagining things. Specifically, the lawyer quoted the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s maxim that “anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” As Young notes dryly, “It is an odd kind of freedom that compels one to leave writing unpublished, leadership positions unpursued, and terminally ill relatives unvisited.”

It is apparent throughout the decision that Young’s horror is born out of patriotism. He laments that the blatant First Amendment violations so carefully catalogued in the case are unlikely to inspire all that much outrage, but calls for a return to what he considers America’s ideals:

The United States is a great nation, not because any of us say so. It is great because we still practice our frontier tradition of selflessness for the good of us all. Strangers go out of their way to help strangers when they see a need. In times of fire, flood, and national disaster, everyone pitches in to help people we’ve never met and first responders selflessly risk their lives for others. Hundreds of firefighters rushed into the Twin Towers on 9/11 without hesitation desperate to find and save survivors. That’s who we are. And on distant battlefields our military “fought and died for the men [they] marched among.”

The final pages of the decision are as unorthodox as its first. They begin with a quote about how “[Trump] seems to be winning. He ignores everything and keeps bullying ahead.” The line, Young explains, comes from a “very wise woman.” Specifically, his wife.

Young then dissects its meaning and its consequences: “The Constitution, our civil laws, regulations, mores, customs, practices, courtesies—all of it; the President simply ignores it all when he takes it into his head to act.”

Young wraps up by quoting Reagan’s lines about how freedom is a “fragile thing” that is “never more than one generation away from extinction,” and that, as a result, it must be “fought for and defended constantly.”

Pulling out all the stops, the veteran judge writes:

As I’ve read and re-read the record in this case, listened widely, and reflected extensively, I’ve come to believe that President Trump truly understands and appreciates the full import of President Reagan’s inspiring message—yet I fear he has drawn from it a darker, more cynical message. I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected.

Is he correct?

Finally, on page 161, there is a coda addressed to the anonymous letter writer who boasted about Trump’s pardons and tanks. “I hope you found this helpful. Thanks for writing. It shows you care. You should. Sincerely & respectfully, Bill Young.”

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Hegseth Uses Extraordinary Meeting to Fat-Shame Generals

More than 800 members of the US military’s top brass, including hundreds of generals and admirals, gathered for an extraordinary meeting in Quantico, Virginia, on Tuesday, where they were greeted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s order to return to “the highest male standard” in military fitness tests and training exercises.

In the same breath, Hegseth disparaged women serving in the military, claiming they were physically incapable of meeting the same physical standards.

“I don’t want my son serving alongside troops who are out of shape or in combat units with females who can’t meet the same combat arms physical standards as men,” Hegseth said as the crowd remained virtually silent throughout the meeting. The former Fox weekend host included references to “woke garbage” and fat-shaming—”It’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals”—before all but announcing an end to formal processes that allow military personnel to register complaints of abuse.

“We are overhauling an inspector general process that has been weaponized, putting complainers and poor performers in the driver’s seat,” he said. “We are doing the same with the equal opportunity policies. No more frivolous complaints, no more anonymous complaints.”

A similar silence greeted President Donald Trump as he aired a characteristically discursive speech that at turns featured self-praise for his decision to send the National Guard to Portland, Orgeon, suggesting that such cities be used as “training grounds” for the military, misguided claims that he ended eight world wars, love for his own signature, and comparisons of “nuclear” power to the “n-word.”

Together, the dual speeches appeared to confirm suspicions leading up to Tuesday’s meeting that the country’s top military commanders were being forced from their posts around the world in order to attend what essentially boiled down to a MAGA pep rally—absent the cheering crowds.

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When Miscarriages Become Crimes

In early June, Sasha, who was around 16 weeks pregnant, started to bleed vaginally. She went to the emergency room, where doctors told her she was suffering from a “subchorionic hemorrhage,” diagnosed her with a “threatened miscarriage,” and sent her home.

A couple of weeks later, Sasha (whose name has been changed to protect her privacy) miscarried a tiny, non-viable, 18-week-old fetus in a South Carolina motel room. She later told a county coroner that she didn’t call for help at the time because she “was scared and did not know what to do.”

As it turned out, she was right to be fearful. The day after her miscarriage, Sasha continued to bleed and suffered from severe abdominal pain, so she returned to the hospital. There, her medical providers reported her to the state’s Department of Social Services, whose staff alerted the county sheriff’s office about a possible “child abuse” case, as they complied with South Carolina’s reporting mandates. According to the hospital, failure to report any suspicion of harm to a fetus, viable or not, can result in the provider being criminally liable. The sheriff’s office began an investigation and eventually found the pregnancy remains in a trash receptacle near the motel.

The Mayo Clinic estimates that 10 to 20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. Nonetheless, Sasha was arrested and jailed for the improper disposal of hers. A local abortion fund that had heard about the arrest on the news provided Sasha’s $10,000 bail.

Sasha’s arrest was not an isolated incident. A report released today by Pregnancy Justice—a research, legal, and advocacy group—shows that between June 2022 and June 2024, at least 412 people across the country have been charged for crimes related to their pregnancies, pregnancy losses, or even live births. Sasha’s case is not included in the report because her arrest occurred a year after the researchers’ 2024 cut-off date, as were at least four criminalization cases Mother Jones has identified. But collectively, experts say, these types of arrests show a concerning pattern: Amid a conservative movement to enshrine rights to fetuses, being pregnant is not just a health status. Sometimes, it’s a criminal liability.

“Four hundred and twelve women were charged with crimes that would not have been crimes if they were not pregnant. That is exactly what happens when we give rights and status to embryos and fetuses.”

“Four hundred and twelve women were charged with crimes that would not have been crimes if they were not pregnant,” says Dana Sussman, senior vice president at Pregnancy Justice. “That is exactly what happens when we give rights and status to embryos and fetuses.”

The pregnancy-related prosecutions tracked by Pregnancy Justice span 16 states, most having taken place where Republican state legislatures or courts have conferred legal rights to eggs, embryos, and fetuses: a conservative movement known as “fetal personhood.”

The 62 prosecutions that took place before Sasha’s in South Carolina followed a 1997 state supreme court decision that held child endangerment charges also applied to fetuses. In Oklahoma—where Pregnancy Justice identified 112 prosecutions—a state appeals court made a similar decision in 2020.

Pregnancy Justice counted 192 pregnancy-related prosecutions in Alabama, which was the first state to enshrine rights to unborn children in its constitution via a 2018 ballot measure. The Alabama state supreme court used this ballot measure to support its 2024 decision that even frozen embryos are considered “extrauterine children” with inalienable rights. (This ruling had vast implications for Alabama fertility clinics, some of which paused IVF services out of fear they’d be held liable for the “wrongful death” of embryos on ice. Facing backlash, Republicans spoke out in support of IVF. Alabama subsequently passed a law shielding fertility providers from liability.)

Roughly 90 percent of the charges catalogued by Pregnancy Justice accuse pregnant women of abuse, neglect, or endangerment—accusations that are bolstered by the conservative perception of fetuses having the same rights as children that result from live births.

Many of the abuse, neglect, and endangerment cases involved allegations of substance use during pregnancy. Evidence of meth and cocaine use was noted in some of the charging documents, according to Pregnancy Justice. So was the presence of marijuana, nicotine, and alcohol. In 68 of the cases, the nonprofit says, the only substance use alleged was marijuana.

Some defendants were charged for pregnancies they did not know existed. This was the case for Catherine, a 31-year-old woman in Alabama, who was arrested in 2023 for a pregnancy-related drug charge.

Catherine, who asked not to be identified by her last name, previously spoke to Mother Jones reporter Madison Pauly about her years-long ordeal. She said what began one day in 2021 as severe stomach pain quickly escalated to an intensity that led her to collapse in her bathroom, where she lay on the floor surrounded by blood and holding a stillborn baby. After calling 911 and being transported to a local hospital, law enforcement confiscated her phone, and the nurses asked for her password. They all were seeking evidence in order to charge her with “chemical endangerment” of her “unborn child.”

For many reasons, Catherine said she was shocked. She never tried to hide that she had a controlled substance in her system. (She admitted to battling drug addiction.) Nor was she trying to hide a pregnancy.

“I never knew that I was pregnant,” she told Mother Jones. “My body never showed signs. I never gained weight. I felt completely normal.”

Generally, most health experts would recommend that individuals battling substance abuse try to avoid becoming pregnant. But in real life, Sussman says, the scenarios are often far more nuanced. Some investigations have arisen from pregnant individuals using medications they had been prescribed; there have even been cases in which mothers who consumed poppy seed bagels were falsely charged with opioid abuse. In circumstances where pregnant women are actively battling addictions to substances like methamphetamines or fentanyl, Sussman argues that criminalization can be more harmful than helpful.

“Criminalization does not improve health outcomes,” Sussman says. “Ensuring that people can access prenatal care and go to the hospital when they need to, without worrying that they will be charged with a crime—that is the best intervention possible.”

“Criminalization does not improve health outcomes.”

A law Tennessee passed in 2014 illustrates the risks of criminalization. The statute allowed prosecutors to bring aggravated assault charges against women for using illicit narcotic drugs while pregnant, with penalties of potentially up to 15 years in prison.

While the law intended to reduce Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome and other complications, reproductive care advocates such as Pregnancy Justice say it discouraged pregnant people from seeking prenatal care or drug treatment, out of fear of prosecution.

According to a review by the Georgetown Law Journal, there was a “sharp decline in the receipt of prenatal care” around the time the fetal endangerment law was implemented, and fetal deaths increased. The law was also seen as being responsible for having a disproportionate impact on women in poverty and those with more limited access to treatment programs. As a result, the law was sunsetted in 2016.

The Trump administration’s recentamplification of a narrow research study suggesting that acetaminophen use during pregnancy can cause autism gives Pregnancy Justice additional concerns about what else could make pregnant women vulnerable to prosecution in the future. “We are moving into a place, potentially, where pregnant people’s behavior and exposure of their pregnancy to any risk—whether perceived or actual, justified by science or not—can further diminish their rights,” Sussman says.

As seen with both Sasha and Catherine, medical facilities and personnel potentially can play a significant role in the pregnancy criminalization surveillance system. In 264 of the 412 prosecutions Pregnancy Justice tracked between 2022 and 2024, health care providers contributed information to police that eventually was used as evidence against the defendants during their prosecutions.

Brittany Watts is one example. In September 2023, she repeatedly went to her local hospital in Ohio after her water broke prematurely. Her 22-week-old fetus registered a heartbeat, but doctors determined it was nonviable. Despite physician concerns that Watts could contract sepsis, hemorrhage, or even die, staff at the hospital delayed inducing her as they awaited input from the hospital’s ethics board. (Ohio banned abortion at 22 weeks.) Over the course of two days, Watts waited 18 hours at the hospital for an induction that never came. Frustrated by the delays, she went home to be more comfortable.

Less than 48 hours later, she miscarried in the toilet, attempted to flush, and returned to the hospital, where she was treated for dehydration and blood loss. But hospital staff also took it upon themselves to report Watts to the police.

“The nurse comes in and she’s rubbing my back and talking to me and saying, ‘Everything’s going to be OK. You’re going to be OK,'” Watts told CBS News last year in her first sit-down interview. “Little do I know, there’s a police officer who comes into the room a short time later. And I’m wondering, ‘Why is a police officer coming in here? I don’t recall doing anything wrong.’ And little do I know, the nurse comforting me and saying that everything was gonna be OK was the one who called the police.”

As Watts lay in a hospital bed, police searched her home, where they rummaged through her trash and disassembled her toilet to find evidence of the fetal remains, investigatory files obtained through public records requests show.

Photos taken by police as a part of the investigation reveal what anyone who has endured the trauma of a pregnancy loss might expect: blood-stained pants, soiled rags, a drug store receipt for Tylenol, and a discarded hospital bracelet. For the purported crime of experiencing a pregnancy loss in her bathroom, Watts could have faced a year in prison. Instead, a grand jury declined to indict her, leading prosecutors to drop the charges against her.

Amari Marsh risked a much longer sentence for her 2023 home miscarriage. Prosecutors initially charged the South Carolina woman with homicide through child abuse. Police erroneously suspected she had tried to induce an abortion. They also claimed that a proximate cause of death was her not removing the fetus from the toilet fast enough. An autopsy later determined thatan infection hadcaused the pregnancy loss, and a grand jurydeclined to indict Marsh. Had she been convicted, she could have faced 20 years to life in prison.

Fueling the issue, Sussman argues, is the public’s lack of knowledge around miscarriages: “How common it is, what it looks like, where it happens, how it happens.” Law enforcement might find something suspicious that is, in fact, “completely normal,” she says.

Pregnant women also can be in the dark, Sussman notes: “No one is given a pamphlet in their doctor’s office when they go for their first prenatal appointment that’s like, ‘By the way, if you miscarry, here’s the number to call, here’s the coroner’s office that you’re required to call.'”

Even when charges don’t result in convictions, pregnancy-related prosecutions can have enduring consequences for those accused. In a civil lawsuit Watts recently filed against the city that prosecuted her and the hospital that she went to for medical help, Watts claims to have suffered “deprivation of liberty, reputational harm, public humiliation, distress, pain, and suffering, for which she is entitled to compensatory damages, including damages for mental and emotional distress.”

And in the midst of dealing with legal issues, some women who have been prosecuted for pregnancy-related crimes are also mourning pregnancies they lost. According to her civil suit, Watts’ pregnancy was “very much wanted.” Catherine, who is in remission from drug addiction, says she misses her stillborn daughter every day. Sasha and her lawyer declined to be interviewed while her case is active, but in police records, she asserts that she was taking prenatal vitamins—another indication that she, too, was trying to have a healthy pregnancy.

Contained in these stories, experts say, is a painful irony. Pregnant women who fear becoming the next Watts, Catherine, or Sasha may choose to forgo medical help altogether, risking even worse outcomes for both them and their fetuses. “It’s not surprising,” Sussman says, “that the states that represent a lot of the arrests also have poor infant health outcomes.”

—with reporting by Sheena Samu, Rachel de Leon, and Laura Morel.

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Trump and His Minions Are Eyeing “Wholesale Destruction” of Environmental Science

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

The United States is hurtling towards a potential government shutdown if Congress does not pass a budget or short-term funding bill by the end of the month, and the fate of the federal government’s Earth and climate science programs may hang in the balance.

President Donald Trump has proposed vast, devastating cuts to these agencies, many of which target programs dedicated to studying and preparing for climate change. In the event of a shutdown, the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, has told agencies to consider layoffs or reductions in force for “all employees” in all “programs, projects, or activities” with lapsed funding that are “not consistent with the President’s priorities.”

As Sophia Cai notes in Politico, this is starkly different from how previous government shutdowns were handled, when federal workers were temporarily furloughed and returned to work when funding was restored. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer characterized the memo as an “attempt at intimidation.”

“When you cut holes in the mosaic…It has an impact on people’s lives and their livelihoods….We are really hurting our civil defenses.”

Bobby Kogan, a former OMB official with the Biden administration, said the direction may not be legal. “It doesn’t seem to me that they would really be able to legally do that additional work during a shutdown—and it doesn’t seem to me that they’d be able to get it all done beforehand,” Kogan told the Federal News Network. “So either this is something they were planning to do anyway, and they are just using this as a pretext, or it’s a threat to try to get what they want.”

Organizations that represent the interests of public workers have been more explicit: “The plan to exploit a shutdown to purge federal workers is illegal, unconstitutional, and deeply disturbing,” Tim Whitehouse, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said in a statement. “A shutdown triggers furloughs, not firings. To weaponize it as a tool to destroy the civil service would mark a dangerous slide into lawlessness and further consolidate power in the Executive Branch.”

But illegality (or possible illegality) would not necessarily stop the Trump administration from choosing the layoff route if a budget deal is not reached. In any case, the memo obviously creates uncertainty and anxiety for the federal scientists whose work has been singled out for steep funding cuts or even elimination by the Trump administration.

“Either we all go home or it’s business as usual…nobody knows what’s going to happen,” one NASA scientist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the Bulletin.

Earlier this year, the president submitted a budget request to Congress that would slash NASA’s overall 2026 budget by 24 percent. It is the clearest indication of what his priorities are going into a possible government shutdown. The steepest cuts were within science programs, which the president proposed reducing by more than 46 percent. Funding for Earth science programs specifically would be cut by more than half.

Proposed cuts to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research are also severe, outright eliminating the entire budget for climate research, weather and air chemistry research, and the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR). (In addition to cuts to Earth and climate science, the proposed budget recommends cutting all funding for habitat conservation and research, as well as ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes research.)

Although the White House recommended cutting NOAA’s budget by up to 30 percent, members of the House Appropriations Committee have recommended a much smaller cut of 6 percent. But by telling agencies to conduct layoffs based on the president’s priorities, the Trump administration could try to preempt Congress and reshape the federal government in line with their own vision and budget proposal during a shutdown.

Even without a government shutdown, a third of the US Geological Survey’s Climate Adaptation Science Centers could wind down or cease operations this week because the Interior Department is refusing to submit paperwork to release funding.

“This is a dismantling of efforts in the United States on climate science, and in fact, in large swaths of environmental science. And I don’t think that people know that,” Elisabeth Moyer, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Chicago, told the Bulletin. “This is wholesale destruction, what’s proposed.”

“We are not talking about trying to find water on Mars. We are talking about understanding what’s happening on our planet.”

There are at least 14 NASA Earth science missions that the Trump administration has proposed terminating. These include an array of satellite-related research (see: NASA missions at risk under the Trump administration).

The worst-case scenario would be if the government shuts down and agencies begin to comply with the administration’s budget proposal, including the termination of missions. According to a NASA scientist, people have already been instructed to do the preparatory work for ending these satellite and instrument programs, so this is not an impossibility.

The list of projects and programs that the Trump administration has proposed terminating at NOAA is, frankly, shocking. It includes the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, which conducts wide-ranging research on everything from aquaculture to corals to pollution; the National Coastal Resilience Fund; Habitat Conservation and Restoration; and OAR’s Regional Climate Data and Information program, which helps communities develop plans for dealing with climate crises like droughts and heat waves.

The budget also recommends terminating funding for OAR’s Climate Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes, which would result in the closure of the Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory; the Air Resources Laboratory; the Chemical Sciences Laboratory; the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory; the Global Monitoring Laboratory; the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory; and the Physical Sciences Laboratory.

NOAA has already been hard hit under the Trump administration this year. Rick Spinrad, a NOAA administrator under President Biden, said the agency has lost around 2,000 of its 12,000 employees to layoffs, buyouts, resignations, and retirement this year. (Exact figures are remarkably hard to find, but in March the New York Times reported that the agency was planning to fire another 1,000 workers in addition to the 1,300 workers that had already resigned or been laid off.) Some of the vacancies within the National Weather Service (which is part of NOAA) have resulted in reduced operations at some forecasting stations across the country.

Monica Medina, a principal deputy administrator of NOAA in the Obama administration, compared the work the National Weather Service does to issue weather forecasts to a mosaic. “When you cut holes in the mosaic…you’re losing pixels, and so the picture gets fuzzier,” she said. “It has an impact on people’s lives and their livelihoods. When key vacancies happen, when we cut holes, we are really hurting our civil defenses.”

The Trump administration has already withheld or rescinded several hundred million in funding for NOAA operations this year, Spinrad said. The Senate Appropriations Committee has been tracking federal funding that the Trump administration has frozen or cancelled (last updated September 8) totaling more than $400 million in NOAA funds, including those earmarked for disaster response and the procurement of weather radars and satellites.

“There are programs like the phased array radar program that have been pulled back—that was undoubtedly going to be one of the most important efforts in trying to improve observational capability for the National Weather Service,” Spinrad said. “So many of those kinds of programs are suffering, and that’s just what’s been done in [fiscal year] ‘25, I’m not even talking about the ‘26 budget.”

“We are not talking about trying to find water on Mars,” Medina said. “We are talking about understanding what’s happening on our planet, impacting people in their day to day lives today. We could be improving that in the face of these forces that are changing in our global environment. And instead, we’re taking away funding at the very moment when we need it most.”

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Trump’s Argentina Bailout Enriches One Well-Connected US Billionaire

This story was originally published by Popular Information, a substack publication to which you can subscribe here.

Last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a $20 billion package to rescue the Argentinian economy. The risky taxpayer-financed deal, which involves trading US dollars for Argentine pesos, has little upside for ordinary Americans. Argentina is not a significant US trading partner, and its economy, long in turmoil, has little impact on the United States.

However, Bessent’s announcement had massive economic benefits for one American: billionaire hedge fund manager Rob Citrone, who has placed large bets on the future of the Argentine economy. Citrone, the co-founder of Discovery Capital Management, is also a friend and former colleague of Bessent—a fact that has not been previously reported in US media outlets. Citrone, by his own account, helped make Bessent very wealthy.

Since Javier Milei, a right-wing populist, became president of Argentina in December 2023, Citrone has invested heavily in Argentina. Citrone has bought Argentine debt and purchased equity in numerous Argentine companies that are closely tied to the performance of the overall economy. Due to Argentina’s massive debt load and chaotic economic history—in 2023, Argentina’s inflation rate was over 200 percent—Citrone purchased Argentine bonds with an interest rate of nearly 20 percent. (Citrone has declined to detail exactly “how much of the $2.8 billion he manages is invested” in Argentina.)

In early September, days before Bessent’s bailout announcement, Citrone purchased more Argentine bonds.

Citrone, who is also a minority owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, is effectively betting on Milei’s right-wing economic program, which emphasizes deregulation and sharply reduced government spending. Citrone viewed “the probability of default as minuscule,” even though Argentina has defaulted on its debts many times in the past.

In the short term, this appeared to be a savvy investment. After taking office, Milei fired tens of thousands of government workers, cut spending on welfare and research, and achieved fiscal balance. Inflation was reduced to around 40 percent, which spurred economic growth and foreign investment. Argentina’s economic rebound contributed to Discovery Capital’s 52 percent return in 2024.

Then it all came crashing down.

The austerity measures slowed economic growth, and unemployment spiked to nearly 8 percent. Millions had a harder time making ends meet after Milei reduced or eliminated subsidies for transportation, medicine, and other necessities. Milei’s popularity slumped, leading to speculation that his party could be routed in the 2025 midterm elections, which would hamstring Milei’s ability to implement his agenda. This created an economic panic, with investors dumping the peso and liquidating other Argentine assets.

Milei has desperately attempted to keep inflation in check. Last week Argentina’s “central bank spent more than $1 billion to shore up the peso.” But Argentina was running out of foreign currency. That spelled trouble for Citrone.

Then Bessent and the Trump administration came to the rescue, floating a $20 billion economic package that helped stabilize the Argentine peso and functioned as a political lifeline for Milei.

In early September, days before Bessent’s announcement, Citrone purchased more Argentine bonds.

Bessent’s personal and professional relationship with Citrone has spanned decades. In a May 14 appearance on the “Goldman Sachs Exchanges” podcast, Citrone revealed how he delivered a financial windfall for Bessent. They were both working for investor George Soros in 2013 when Citrone convinced Bessent and Soros to bet on the US dollar against the Japanese yen.

I think there’s special times every five or ten years where there’s a really spectacular trade in investment that we then will concentrate in a meaningful way. 2013, the dollar-yen, where we made over a billion dollars long dollar-yen. And, in fact, you know, we discussed it quite a bit with George, and I kind of convinced George and Scott Bessent at the time to go big in that. And, you know, Scott says I’m responsible for 75 percent of his bonus at Soros, kind of jokingly, over that time.

CE Noticias Financieras, a leading Latin American economic publication, describes Citrone as “a friend of the Secretary of the Treasury.” El Cronista, citing government sources, reported that Citrone “has a personal relationship as well as a past working relationship” with Bessent.

Citrone has also reportedly leveraged his relationship with Bessent to gain access to Trump. According to CE Noticias Financieras, in November, “Citrone gave a case of four red wines to Javier Milei during his visit to Mar-A-Lago, in Palm Beach, in his first meeting with Trump.”

When Argentina’s economy began to falter in April, it was Citrone who “intervened before Scott Bessent…to advocate for an IMF agreement with Argentina,” CE Noticias Financieras reported. Bessent subsequently played a key role in convincing the IMF to extend a separate $20 billion currency stabilization package. (That package ultimately proved insufficient to stabilize the Argentine peso.)

Shortly after the IMF deal was secured, Bessent traveled to Argentina to meet with Milei and other top Argentine officials. It was an unusual choice for the Treasury Secretary’s first foreign trip. Citrone arrived in Argentina at the same time as Bessent, meeting with Milei just before Bessent. During those meetings, Bessent emphasized US support for Argentina’s economic agenda.

Bessent’s September 24 announcement, thus far, has had the desired impact, increasing the value of Argentine assets, including bonds, stocks, and the peso. “It has helped tremendously that the US has come in to support Milei, and it will pay dividends for the US strategically,” Citrone said in an interview with Bloomberg.

Whether the US improves the prospects over the long term is a separate question. Propping up the value of the Argentine currency beyond what the market will support with yet another influx of foreign currency gives wealthy Argentines an opportunity to cash out. The Argentine elite now have the ability to convert their peso assets into dollars and move them abroad. This phenomenon, known as “capital flight,” is why the previous IMF bailout package proved insufficient.

Discovery Capital did not immediately return a request for comment about Citrone’s role in securing the US assistance package for Argentina.

Another overlooked aspect of the rescue package is the role of the organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an influential right-wing political group.

In November 2024, shortly after Trump’s election, key CPAC officials, including Matt Schlapp and Mercedes Schlapp, founded a new lobbying firm called Tactic Global. This is the same group that organized CPAC Argentina in December 2024, an event that featured Milei, Lara Trump, and other right-wing luminaries. CPAC has long played a key role in Trump’s political operation.

In February 2025, Tactic Global began representing the Argentine government as a foreign agent. According to the filing, “Tactic will serve as a liason [sic] between Presidencia de la Nacion de la Republica Argentina and its counterparts in the U.S. Tactic will coordinate meetings between officials of the two countries and offer strategic counsel to the Secretaria de Inteligencia de Estado.”

The contract specifies that Argentina pays Tactic $10,000 per month.

Tactic Global’s official name is Tactic COC because its parent company is COC Global Enterprise. Leonardo Scaturice, an Argentinian businessman and lobbyist who lives in the United States, is the chairman and CEO of COC Global Enterprise and a principal at Tactic Global.

In April 2025, Matt Schlapp traveled with Citrone to meet with Milei and other top Argentine officials, according to news reports. They arrived together in Scaturice’s private jet, a striking black Bombardier Global 5000. Also participating in the meetings was Soledad Cedro, the Managing Director of Tactic Global and the CEO of CPAC Latin America.

Scaturice once worked for Argentine intelligence, which may explain why Tactic Global’s contract was routed through the Argentine Secretariat of Intelligence. More recently, CE Noticias Financieras reported that Barry Bennett, a former Trump advisor and current Tactic Global principal, “became directly involved” in securing the US rescue package.

Although CPAC promotes itself as an “America First” organization, Tactic Global represents not only the government of Argentina but also Kyrgyzstan and Vietnam. After Bessent announced his rescue package for Argentina last week, CPAC promoted the deal on its social media accounts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Trump’s Energy Policies Are Laughable. This Samuel L. Jackson Ad Proves It.

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

Standing alone on a rocky coastline wearing a seaman-style knit hat, Samuel L. Jackson reaches into a snack bag and gazes intensely through binoculars. Wind turbines spin ominously on a watery horizon.

“Motherfucking wind farms. Loud, ugly, harmful to nature,” the ​_Pulp Fiction_ actor says. Then, shaking his head knowingly and shifting his tone, he adds, ​“Who says that? These giants are standing tall against fossil fuels, rising up from the ocean like a middle finger to CO2.”

The 60-second ad, released in July, immediately went viral. It also ran on television channels in Finland, Sweden, Germany, and other European countries. It’s part of a marketing campaign launched by Vattenfall, a century-old Swedish energy giant whose clean energy portfolio includes a famous 11-turbine project built within view of President Donald Trump’s Scotland golf course.

The ad reached 600 million viewers across 33 countries within four days of its release, according to a Vattenfall spokesperson. Trump isn’t named in the video, but Jackson’s script is a comedic wink-and-nod to the president’s frequent anti-wind rants.

“So, what’s it going to be? ​‘Motherfucking wind farms’?” Jackson says in a mock angry voice at the end of the video. He then repeats the question, grinning widely and raising his eyebrows cheekily: ​“Or ​‘motherfucking wind farms’?”

Research shows that comedy plays a powerful role in making climate change information salient for public audiences. That’s especially useful now, as the Trump administration works to derail the clean energy transition, but such efforts also come at a fraught moment for comedy in America.

It’s a tough time for political satire. In July, CBS cancelled ​“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” after Colbert used the phrase ​“big fat bribe” to describe a $16 million settlement the network’s parent company, Paramount, agreed to pay Trump. CBS said the show was killed for financial reasons, but the timing led to speculations that the decision may have been politically motivated.

Then, in mid-September, ABC pulled late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air ​“indefinitely” after comments he made related to the assassination of Charlie Kirk provoked a veiled threat from Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr. The network’s parent company, Disney, reversed course on Monday following public backlash, and Kimmel was back on air Tuesday.

“There’s this tragedy of killing freedom of speech. … The reason this is happening is because [Trump officials] don’t have the superpower of comedy,” said Staci Roberts-Steele, a producer for the wildly successful film ​_Don’t Look Up_. The 2021 Netflix movie used satire to point out the absurdity of delaying climate action.

America now has a president pumping the brakes on the clean energy transition, most recently by attempting to scuttle numerous US offshore wind farms already in development.

Trump has called wind turbines ​“ugly,” ​“terrible for tourism,” and responsible for ​“driving the whales crazy.” His dislike of ​“windmills” dates back to his unsuccessful court battle in the UK to stop a Vattenfall offshore wind farm from being installed within view of his Aberdeen, Scotland, golf course. All 11 turbines were eventually built in 2018.

Some Americans who saw the foul-mouthed Jackson ad on social media relished a major Hollywood movie star poking fun at Trump’s favorite anti-climate talking points. Roberts-Steele said she is glad that big European companies like Vattenfall are turning to humor to call out climate disinformation—and that the content is finding American audiences. She hopes it emboldens US comedians and institutions to follow suit.

“The Europeans have been doing it much longer than us…That’s totally true,” she lamented, adding that US public relations firms and film studios have been less bold about taking big swings at climate skepticism.

Don’t Look Up was a rarity for Hollywood. But its chart-topping success mirrors Jackson’s ad in several ways. Both employed comedy to tackle the topic of climate change. Casting major Hollywood actors drew loads of viewers. Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, and Jonah Hill all starred in what became Netflix’s fourth most successful movie of all time.

Hollywood hasn’t generated a major climate comedy since.

At a press conference with UK’s prime minister last week, Trump went on a rant, saying, ​“We don’t do wind because wind is a disaster. It’s a very expensive joke, frankly.”

Roberts-Steele is now leading Yellow Dot Studios, a new nonprofit aimed at keeping the climate jokes coming. The studio hosts live comedy events, develops podcasts, and produces short-form videos that, among other things, mock the fossil-fuel industry.

But mainstreaming this kind of comedy isn’t easy, even with Hollywood director Adam McKay as the group’s founder and board member. “It hasn’t yet trickled up,” said Max Boykoff, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who studies the fusion of climate change and comedy. After years researching the topic, he’s now trying to catalyze it.

Boykoff and his students—in collaboration with CU Boulder theater professor Beth Osnes-Stoedefalke—are part of an ongoing collaboration with some of the nation’s top writers’ rooms.

They’ve been working with writers on ​“The Daily Show,” ​“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” and Comedy Central to make climate change news funny and memorable. On Saturday, Boykoff and his students produced a climate-themed comedy show with professional comedians in New York City, timed to coincide with Climate Week NYC.

“Comedy has this power to point out the contradictions in which we live,” said Boykoff. ​“It’s through comedy that people feel like they’re not being talked down to or lectured.”

With late-night shows facing intimidation under Trump, Boykoff said the involvement of independent academics—like himself—is more important than ever. He added that Europe’s role should not be discounted either.

The Samuel L. Jackson ad was the brainchild of the communications team at Vattenfall, a Swedish state-owned energy company that has been around for more than 100 years. It manages a wide range of projects, from hydroelectric dams to offshore wind farms. The company’s long-term goal with its outreach is to spread the idea of freedom from fossil fuels, said Monica Persdotter, vice president and head of brand.

Unlike past campaigns, she said, this one ​“took off.”

“We’ve always been very bold in the way that we present ourselves to the world, with the messages that we have, which always circles back to fossil-free energy and fossil freedom,” said Persdotter.

The ad hit Vattenfall’s core market—the UK and EU—where the offshore wind sector has grown steadily for decades. For example, offshore wind farms generated 17 percent of the UK’s electricity last year.

Vattenfall operates more than 1,400 turbines across 14 wind farms, with a total installed capacity of approximately 6.6 gigawatts in five European countries, according to Persdotter. Several other Vattenfall wind projects are also in the works.

Meanwhile, the US only has one large-scale offshore wind farm in operation. Four others are currently being built in America’s waters. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum abruptly paused construction on a fifth, Revolution Wind, in August, but this week, the project’s developer, Ørsted, a Danish state-owned company, won a court-ordered injunction lifting the freeze.

Given the contrast between Europe and the US, Jackson, a widely recognizable American actor, was a powerful choice for Vattenfall’s ad.

According to Persdotter, her team got a tip that Jackson had studied marine biology in college and, at one point, considered a career in the field. The actor, she said, liked the script, making just a few stylistic tweaks to better align with his voice.

The ad was filmed along the California coast to accommodate Jackson’s schedule. The Golden State has no wind turbines installed in its waters yet—though the Los Angeles Times reports that the state, despite losing some federal funding, has not backed down from its plans to deploy the technology. The ad’s wind turbines were superimposed post-production using video footage of a real Vattenfall wind farm in Denmark.

As for the snack bag Jackson dips into—that’s a nod to the fact that wind farms can provide benefits beyond generating carbon-free electricity, for example, serving as sites for seaweed farming. The seaweed snack Jackson is munching—which he calls ​“serious gourmet shit”—isn’t commercially available yet, but Persdotter said it was harvested from experimental seaweed farming ​“lines” strung between wind turbines at Vesterhav Syd, a Vattenfall project in Denmark’s waters. (Vattenfall sent Canary Media a bag of the prototype snack, and a reporter verified that it tasted like conventional seaweed snacks.)

Trump, who famously cannot take a joke, has continued to call for the silencing of comedians critical of his policies, and he’s also been ramping up his attacks on offshore wind.

Last week, during a press conference in England with the UK prime minister, the president went on an unprompted rant about the clean energy resource, saying, ​“We don’t do wind because wind is a disaster. It’s a very expensive joke, frankly.”

Trump may not like jokes. But if the popularity of Vattenfall’s video is any indication, Europeans are clearly having a laugh at him. Roberts-Steele said Americans will keep laughing, too, as long as comedians are free to make the jokes.

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On Its 25th Birthday, Mifepristone Is More Under Attack Than Ever

Twenty-five years ago today, the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of mifepristone for abortions. Now, the drug is more under threat than ever as anti-abortion Republicans seek to revoke FDA approval of the drug in a bid to further curtail abortion access nationwide.

The first of two drugs used in the standard abortion pill regimen, mifepristone blocks the pregnancy hormone progesterone; the second drug, misoprostol, causes the uterus to contract, expelling the pregnancy. Mifepristone’s FDA approvalon Sept. 28, 2000, came more than a decade after the drug was first approved in France, where it was invented.

After it finally was approved in the US, its impact was revolutionary, allowing pregnant people to have abortions in the quiet of their homes, rather than in a clinic, thereby avoiding anti-abortion protesters and opening up access to the procedure as never before.

While mifepristone was originally approved for use up to seven weeks of pregnancy, in 2016, the Obama-era FDA permitted its use throughten weeks’ gestation—although abortion rights activists arguing it is safe later in pregnancy, with the World Health Organization saying it can be used anytime in the first trimester.In December 2021, the Biden administration began allowing abortion drugs to be prescribed remotely rather than in person, a development that has made them even more accessible and less expensive.

Today, despite the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade, mifepristone’s reach has only grown, thanks to telehealth and shield laws that protect providers in blue states from mailing pills into red states_._ Medication abortion now accounts for more than 60 percent of all abortions nationwide, according to the abortion rights research and advocacy organization the Guttmacher Institute. One in four abortions are now provided via pills prescribed through telehealth, and half of telehealth abortions last year were provided under shield laws, according to research from the Society of Family Planning.

Anti-abortion Republicans, including some in the Trump administration, have been doing everything they can to try to roll back access to the pills. Their strategy has been to cast doubt on the safety and efficacy of the drugs, even though more than 100 scientific studies have confirmed that mifepristone is safe and effective. As Carrie N. Baker, a Smith College professor and author of Abortion Pills: US History and Politics, told my colleague Nina Martin earlier this year, medication abortion “really is safer than Tylenol.” According to Baker, because of political opposition, the FDA took much longer to approve mifepristone than it did to approve most drugs at the time—”and now, decades later,” she adds, “anti-abortion groups are using the FDA’s [earlier] caution to argue that this drug is unsafe.”

Just this past week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary announced that HHS would conduct a new review of mifepristone, after hinting they would do so back in May, as I reported at the time. In their announcement, which reportedly came as a response to a letter Republican attorneys general wrote to Kennedy and Makary back in July, the officials cited a report produced by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a right-wing organization that was on the advisory board of Project 2025, which claims to have unearthed a higher-than-previously-reported rate of complications from the pills.

Experts have pointed out major flaws with the EPPC’s alleged findings, including the fact that it is not peer-reviewed, fails to fully clarify its methodology, and lacks standardized definitions of terms like “hemorrhage” and “serious adverse events,” which could inflate rates of so-called complications. Even so, abortion opponents promptly embracedthe report, which urges the FDA to make the pills more difficult to access and ultimately “reconsider [mifepristone’s] approval altogether.” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), for example, asked Makary to “do a complete review” on mifepristone following the report’s publication.

Of course, efforts to reduce access to mifepristone were underway long before the EPPC report’s publication. As my colleague Madison Pauly and I reported back in January, anti-abortion groups sent letters to the Department of Justice and FDA requesting they roll back access to medication abortion by enforcing the 19th-century anti-obscenity Comstock Act, restoring the seven-week gestational limit, and rescinding the Biden-era telehealth regulation. Project 2025, the lengthy playbook for Trump’s second term, also recommended the DOJ enforce the dormant Comstock Act to ban the mailing of abortion pills, though President Donald Trump claimedlast year that it was “very unlikely” the FDA would roll back access or that the DOJ would enforce Comstock.

In 2022, an anti-abortion group calling itself the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine sued in Texas, challenging the FDA’s initial approval of mifepristone as well as the agency’s later moves to expand access. The Supreme Court rejected the suit last year, saying the anti-abortion medical providers didn’t have standing to bring it. But attorneys general in at least six red states, including Texas and Florida, have since intervened in a bid to revive the case. Other suits are trying to curtail access by claiming mifepristone could contaminate drinking water.

There have also been myriad efforts to limit and penalize access at the state level. Last year, Louisiana became the first state to classify mifepristone and misoprostol as controlled substances, a move that one doctor predicted would also impact non-abortion-related care, including postpartum hemorrhages and IUD insertions. This month, Texas enacted a radical bill that allows allows private citizens to sue anyone who “manufactures, distributes, mails, transports, delivers, prescribes, or provides” abortion pills to Texans for at least $100,000. Officials in Texas and Louisiana have sought to punish doctors in New York and California who mailed abortion pills into their states under shield laws. Meanwhile, a handful of blue states with shield lawshave sought to strengthen those laws by allowing providers to keep their names off of prescriptions for abortion pills.

Ahead of mifepristone’s 25th birthday, reproductive rights advocates lauded the role the drug has played in helping people take control of their reproductive lives and blasted anti-abortion Republicans for trying to restrict access to it.

“Anti-abortion policymakers and activists are escalating attacks on medication abortion to continue their crusade against abortion for anyone and at any time through shoddy science, medically unnecessary restrictions, and punitive lawsuits and legislation,” said Kelly Baden, vice president of public policy at the Guttmacher Institute. “With abortion already banned or restricted in much of the country, safeguarding access to medication abortion using mifepristone and rejecting calls to reinstate outdated restrictions or revoke approval is critical.”

“As disinformation campaigns continue to try to scare the public, Planned Parenthood will remain unequivocal: Abortion is health care, mifepristone is safe and effective, and everyone deserves the right to make their own decisions about their body,” added Danika Severino Wynn, vice president of care and access at Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

In an op-ed published Sunday with Stat News, Elisa Wells, co-founder of Plan C, a website that provides information about how to access abortion pills, called mifepristone “a transformational and disruptive hero in the fight to modernize abortion access, even in the face of unjust political restriction of care.”

“Even if all of these barriers are put into place,” she added, referring to Republicans’ myriad attacks, “they will not stop access to abortion pills.”

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New York City’s Eric Adams Era Is Over

New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced on Sunday that he will abandon his chaotic reelection campaign to run the biggest city in the country. The move came after weeks of speculation that the Trump administration was pressuring Adams to drop out, in a bid to boost former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s chances against frontrunner Zohran Mamdani.

In a bizarre start to the nearly nine-minute-long announcement video he posted to X, Adams walks down a set of stairs to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” and plops down next to an oversized photo of his mother. He appears to blame his decision on negative media coverage and his inability to access matchingcampaign funds from the city—rather than the dismal polling that continually showed him trailing Mamdani, Cuomo, and even right-wing vigilante Curtis Sliwa.

“Despite all we’ve achieved, I cannot continue my reelection campaign,” Adams says in the video. “The constant media speculation about my future and the Campaign Finance Board’s decision to withhold millions of dollars have undermined my ability to raise the funds needed for a serious campaign.” (Last month, the CFB denied Adams’ request for matching funds for the 10th time, reportedly claiming the campaign had not submitted the required paperwork and may have violated the law.)

Only in America. Only in New York.
Thank you for making my story a reality. pic.twitter.com/efHuyBnITJ

— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) September 28, 2025

Predictably, Adams sought to write hisown political obituary, casting himself as an unlikely upstart who rose to great heights against all odds—and leaving out his fall from grace following a federal indictment and a doomed mayoral campaign that recently featured a since-suspended advisor appearing to try to pay off a reporter. “Who would have thought that a kid from South Jamaica Queens, growing up with learning disabilities, could one day become the mayor of the greatest city in the world,” Adams says in the video. “I cannot thank my mother enough for instilling in me the values she lived by. I hope every parent can use my life as an example for their child during challenging moments. Only in America can a story like this be told.

Adams also struck a decidedly Trumpian tone, characterizing himself as a martyr for New York City. He claimed, for example, that he “was wrongfully charged because I fought for this city”; in fact, he was charged with bribery and campaign finance offenses before the case was dropped earlier this year after Trump’s Department of Justice requested it so that Adams could help with the administration’s mass deportation agenda. Later in the video, when warning of rising political extremism, Adams echoes a Republican talking point: “Our children are being radicalized to hate our city and our country.”

“Major change is welcome and necessary, but beware of those who claim the answer to destroy the very system we built together over generations,” Adams says in the video.

And while he did not make an endorsement in the race, Adams appears to take swipes at Mamdani, the 33-year-old state assembly member and Democratic Socialistwho has campaigned on a series of sweeping changes to city government, including universal daycare, free buses, and city-run grocery stores. “Major change is welcome and necessary, but beware of those who claim the answer to destroy the very system we built together over generations,” Adams says in the video. “That is not change, that is chaos. Instead, I urge New Yorkers to choose leaders not by what they promised, but by what they have delivered.”

Mamdani, Cuomo, and Sliwa do not appear to have commented on Adams’ decision as of early Sunday afternoon. But the mayor’smove could play a key role in November’s election—particularly if Sliwa follows his lead in dropping out. A New York Times/Siena poll released earlier this month found that in a one-on-one matchup, Mamdani only leads Cuomo by four points, as opposed to the more than 20-point margin he enjoyed with all the candidates in the race. But Sliwa has pledged to stay in the race, which polling suggests will be good for Mamdani. A Quinnipiac poll released earlier this month, for example, suggested that Mamdani would maintain a 16-point lead over Cuomo and a nearly 30-point lead over Sliwa in a three-way race.

Adams does not address what’s next for him—though there has been speculation he may get a job in the Trump administration—but says that he “will continue to fight for this city as I have for 40 years since the day I joined the NYPD to make our streets safer and our systems fairer.”

Before he does, maybe he’ll take a vacation…perhaps to Istanbul.

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Trump Says He’ll Send Troops to Portland and Sanction “Full Force” Against Americans

President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social Saturday that he was directing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland,” escalating his unprecedented use of military deployments to US cities. “I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary,” he added.

Trump has already sent the National Guard to Los Angeles—which a federal court ruled illegal—Washington, DC, and, recently, Memphis.

Mayor Keith Wilson said on Friday there had already been an increase in federal agents in the city in response to protests at an ICE facility in South Portland, Oregon. “We did not ask for them to come,” he said at a news conference.” They are here without precedent or purpose.”

The state’s leading politicians accused Trump of trying to provoke violence and unrest in the famously liberal town. “Portland is a peaceful, vibrant city with no need for federal agents on our streets,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote on Bluesky. “I urge Oregonians not to fall into Trump’s attempt to incite violence.”

Trump’s legal authority to deploy troops to American cities without state consent is legally dubious at best—a red line few presidents have crossed. Abraham Lincoln did so early during the Civil War, for instance, in 1861, but that was in response to real crises, whereas Trump has been claiming made-up emergencies to justify his actions. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 bars the president from using federal troops to enforce domestic laws. In September, federal District Court Judge Charles Breyer ruled that Trump’s deployment of active-duty troops to Los Angeles “executed domestic law in…prohibited ways.”

Trump, Breyer warned, was “creating a national police force with the president as its chief.” The Trump administration is appealing his decision.

Trump’s new threat to send the military to Portland follows a sweeping executive order he issued on Monday, designating “Antifa“ a domestic terrorism organization—although it is not an organization at all, but rather a loose-knit movement of people opposed to neo-fascist and neo-Nazi groups that have periodically come into cities like Portland aiming to provoke.

This past week, Mother Jones interviewed Chip Gibbons, a civil liberties expert advocate and critic of law enforcement overreach, who called Trump’s order “extremely disturbing,” in part because it could be used to justify a federal law enforcement campaign against progressive groups and individuals.

“The national security state is a wonderful tool for a skilled authoritarian to crush American democracy,” Gibbons said. “There’s very little question at this point that Trump is an authoritarian—the question is, how skilled is he? He has all these powers, from the FBI to the NSA to the DOJ to the DHS, to really do damage to our democracy. These are powers that should never have been given to the executive branch, but now he has them, and it’s terrifying.”

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The Justice Department Is Ramping Up Trump’s Election-Rigging Efforts

On Thursday evening, around the same time the Justice Department overruled career prosecutors in order to bring charges against former FBI Director James Comey, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division sued six states—California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania—for failing to hand over their full, unredacted voter registration lists. The new legal actions signify a ramping up of the Trump administration’s voter-suppression agenda in the wake of similar lawsuits the department filed last week against Maine and Oregon.

Thelawsuits may seem unrelated to Comey’s indictment, but both developments show how the DOJ has been weaponized in an unprecedented way to target Trump’s political opponents and retaliate against those who resist his extreme MAGA agenda.

The DOJ has demanded voter registration lists, which include sensitive personal information like driver’s license and Social Security numbers, from at least 27 states, and is reportedly attempting to build a national voter database, which has never been done before. This could endanger voter privacy and become a prime target for hackers, while the DOJ could abuse such a list to retaliate against voters based on party affiliation and promote Trump’s debunked claims of widespread voter fraud.

I explained the risks in a recent article:

In particular, the DOJ appears eager to share state voter data with the Department of Homeland Security, in orderto comb through federal immigration databases to search for cases of ineligible voting or noncitizens on the voter rolls. Such databases are not designed for those purposes and will likely produce inaccurate results, especially becausesuch fraud is also exceedingly rare. Nonetheless, this will give them an opportunity to trumpet fake claims of fraud in order to advance Trump’s lies about the voting process.

“My guess is they want the voter files to be able to say we have the voter files and we know there are x or y fraudulent people on it,” says Justin Levitt, who served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under President Obama. “It will be fiction, but now they’ll say it because they have them. Even if they find an infinitesimal number of wrong people on the rolls, they will lie about the numbers. This administration cannot be trusted. They have an enormous problem with credibility and an even bigger problem with data.”

Both red and blue states have resisted sharing their voter data with the Trump administration. A similar demand during Trump’s first term from his “election integrity” commission sparked a national outcry, but the responses this time have been more muted. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, “few states have sent the DOJ their voter files, and those that did—at least 11—seem to have provided only the publicly available versions of their voter files.”

“The Justice Department’s demand for voters’ personal information, including driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers, is unprecedented and unlawful, and we will vigorously fight the federal government’s overreach in court,” Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania’s Republican secretary of state, said in a statement. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a Democrat, called the DOJ lawsuit “a fishing expedition and pretext for partisan policy objectives.”

The demand for sensitive data is but one aspect of the Trump DOJ’s assault on voting rights. The department alsofiled a brief this week in a Louisiana redistricting case, urgingthe Supreme Court to dramatically gut the Voting Rights Act (VRA).

Under a court order, Louisiana drew a second majority-Black congressional district in advance of the 2024 election, which the Supreme Court allowed, despite legal challenges, at least for the time being. The state, which is about one-third Black, has six congressional districts. In its brief, the DOJ called the new map “a form of electoral race-based affirmative action” and urged the Court to make it far more difficult to draw districts that would allow voters of color to elect their candidates of choice, essentially dealing a death blow to the VRA. “Effectively, this is asking SCOTUS to gut the VRA without saying you are gutting the VRA,” Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center, wrote on Bluesky.

The DOJ has already weaponized the VRA to boost Republican gerrymandering efforts. In early July, the department sent a letter to Texas alleging that four congressional districts, all represented by Black or Hispanic Democrats, were “unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott cited that letter as a justification for redrawing the state’s map this summer, on Trump’s orders, to give Republicans five more US House seats.

But in court documents filed this week, Texas threw the DOJ under the bus, denouncing its “ham-fisted legal conclusions,” which “apparently sought to provide political cover for Texas to engage in partisan redistricting.” The disavowal of the DOJ’s argument is particularly notable given how closely Texas worked with the Trump administration to redraw its map.

The partisan legal advocacy, meddling in state affairs, and similar actions by the DOJ have made it increasingly clear that the department, and the administration, intend to turn civil rights laws on their head, using them to target the very communities they were designed to protect.

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New Hampshire and Vermont Could be Next to Introduce “Balcony Solar”

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

Small solar-panel kits that can be assembled as easily as an Ikea bookcase and plugged into a regular residential outlet could be coming soon to New Hampshire and Vermont. Lawmakers and advocates in both states are preparing legislation that would make these plug-in solar systems accessible to residents who don’t have the space, money, or inclination to install a larger, conventional rooftop array.

“It’s really about energy affordability,” said Kevin Chou, cofounder of Bright Saver, a nonprofit that advocates for the adoption of plug-in solar. ​“It’s about access for people who wanted solar but haven’t been able to get it.”

These systems—also called ​“portable” or ​“balcony” solar — generally come in kits that even a novice can put together at home. They plug into a standard outlet, sending the power they generate into a home’s wires, rather than drawing electricity out.

Unlike rooftop arrays, plug-in systems don’t generate enough power to meet all, or even most, of a household’s needs, but they offset enough consumption to pay for themselves within four or five years, even without incentives like tax credits or net metering, Chou said. Models now on the market start at about $2,000. If the equipment becomes more popular and prices come down, the payback period could get even shorter.

“You don’t need any subsidies to make this work,” Chou said. ​“The pure economics are so attractive, it’s one of the best investments you can make.”

These systems have taken off in Germany, where more than a million have been deployed, but have been much slower to catch on in the United States.

DIY solar “seemed like something that would fit into the ethos of people being able to make individual choices.”

Recently, though, the idea has gained traction in the US. In March, Utah lawmakers, working with Bright Saver, unanimously passed a law authorizing and regulating the equipment, making it the first state to lay out the welcome mat for plug-in solar. Last month, a Pennsylvania state representative announced plans to introduce a similar law, and Bright Saver is having conversations with lawmakers in about a dozen additional states about possible legislation, Chou said.

All of the legislative proposals follow the same principles as Utah’s law: They would define a new class of small, portable solar systems, and establish the right of households to use the systems without submitting applications or paying fees to the state or utilities. They also define safety standards for the systems, including that they be certified by Underwriters Laboratories, or UL, a company that sets standards and provides safety certifications for a wide range of products.

At the moment, two manufacturers make plug-in solar systems with inverters that have been certified as complying with safety requirements, Chou said. Because the market for portable solar is so new, however, UL has not developed standards for entire systems. Bright Saver and other plug-in solar supporters have been working with the company on this issue and expect a standard to be released in the next month or two, Chou said.

Other startups are waiting in the wings, hoping to launch their own products next year, once the questions about UL standards are resolved, he added.

“Bottom line: Once Vermont’s legislation passes, there will be existing manufacturers ready to sell into the state immediately, along with new entrants waiting for additional UL clarity, who are also preparing to launch,” Chou said.

Supporters hope the benefits of plug-in solar—lower electricity costs, freedom to make personal energy choices—will help the idea gain support even in states not known for their embrace of renewable energy, and despite federal efforts to slow or stop renewable energy progress. The early and robust acceptance of the technology in deep-red Utah has bolstered this vision.

“I am optimistic that, as in Utah, it’s going to be seen as a commonsense way to just get out of the way and let people do good things,” said Ben Edgerly Walsh, climate and energy program director at the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, an organization backing Vermont’s expected plug-in solar bill.

“This creates access for folks who might otherwise not have the authority to put something on their roof.”

In New Hampshire, a swing state known for its ​“live free or die” libertarian streak, Democratic state Sen. David Watters also thinks this dynamic might work in the technology’s favor, despite the state’s historical lack of support for measures boosting solar use.

“We’re really kind of stuck in a rut with anti-renewable-energy sentiment in the House,” Watters said. ​“This seemed like something that would fit into the ethos of people being able to make individual choices.”

Watters, a member of the state Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, worked with local advocacy group Clean Energy New Hampshire to author a rough draft of a plug-in solar bill based on Utah’s new law. It will be refined in the coming months and formally introduced in the legislature in January.

Notably, Watters said, his proposal would not stop homeowners associations or landlords from imposing their own rules on members and tenants.

“Their authority is not taken away,” he said. ​“For this state, that’s crucial.”

In Vermont, two Democratic state legislators—Sen. Anne Watson, chair of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy, and Rep. Kathleen James, chair of the counterpart committee in the House—are championing a plug-in solar bill based on model legislation drafted by Bright Saver. Watson is particularly excited for the potential of plug-in solar to reach low-income residents and renters.

“This creates access for folks who might otherwise not have the authority to put something on their roof, or who might need something a little more flexible,” she said.

Vermont, a decidedly left-leaning state, has long welcomed renewables. The state’s governor, Phil Scott, however, is a Republican who has shown reluctance to spend public money on clean energy. Further, the legislature lost its veto-proof Democratic majorities during the last election, so prospects for forward movement on energy and climate issues have been dimmed this year.

However, Watson has already heard a lot of positive feedback from her fellow lawmakers, even though the bill won’t be taken up until the legislature reconvenes in January. Indeed, several colleagues came to her with similar proposals before learning she was already working on it. She has also had initial conversations with the Scott administration and found it willing to consider the idea, she said.

“While I can’t say they are necessarily for it, the reception I’ve received so far is that they are open and interested in learning more,” she said. ​“I am hoping for broad support.”

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Anti-Vax Activists Staged a Rally Exactly Where an Anti-Vax Gunman Killed an Officer Last Month

On Friday morning, a group of about 20 anti-vaccine activists gathered across the street from the Atlanta headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in support of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and promoted by Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine advocacy group he led before he entered politics. The rally attendees showed up to support Kennedy during a week when he came under fire for a particularly rambling press conference, where he and President Trump blamed the over-the-counter painkiller Tylenol for what they described as an autism epidemic.

The location of the event was significant; it took place in front of the CVS pharmacy where a gunman opened fire last month, killing police officer David Rose. The shooter, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, reportedly was targeting CDC headquarters because he blamed Covid vaccines for his mental illness.

Some of the messages on the attendees’ signs were simple expressions of anodyne support—“Make America Healthy Again”, for instance, and “Thank You, RFK Jr.” But others were more unusual. One woman carried a sign announcing, “I am Charlie Kirk,” a reference to the conservative activist who was assassinated in Utah earlier this month and has become a symbol of free speech activism on the right. Other signs referenced bible verses, and one said “Anti-Science, Pro-Informed Consent.”

MAHA rally attendees outside the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 26.Kiera Butler

Two of the attendees told me they worked with autistic children. Christy Kennedy, an occupational therapist in Decatur, Georgia, said she came to the rally because she believed “we have children that are in dire need to get help, but not pharmaceutical help.” Sometimes, she said, she brings up the dangers of vaccines with families in her practice. “This is a very, very sensitive topic because it’s become so politicized,” she said. “If I feel that a parent is open to the idea, then I will broach the concept.”

“Once you learn that truth, you become less resistant to learning more truth, so I learned about fluoride and chemtrails.”

Mike Arnold, who explained that he worked as a therapist with autistic children but declined to say in what capacity, said he had protested outside the CDC every day for seven years, carrying signs bearing slogans about the supposed link between vaccines and autism. Not that the issue had always interested him. His journey “down the truth rabbit hole” began around 2008, on internet forums where he became convinced that the 9/11 attacks were the work of the US government. “Once you learn that truth, you become less resistant to learning more truth, so I learned about fluoride and chemtrails,” he said. “I learned that story—the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers, and how they funded the UN. Elon Musk is not the richest person in the world. He has nothing compared to the Rothschilds. They basically own the Federal Reserve.” (The Rothschilds are the Jewish family at the center of a modern antisemitic conspiracy theory, and they do not have any influence on the Federal Reserve.) His research led him to believe that many other supposed conspiracy theories were actually true. “Let’s just say I’m Jewish, and I can get away with saying certain things that other people would call antisemitic,” he said. “Yeah, some of those things are true.”

Most of the attendees I spoke to approved of Trump’s message that pregnant women shouldn’t use Tylenol, despite the fact that it is the only safe way to prevent birth defects caused by maternal fever.

Rally-goers oppose vaccines outside the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 26.Kiera Butler

Kendra Foltz Biegalski, the chair of DeKalb County Republican Party, said she had come to the rally because she is “a big fan of RFK Jr. and his program to make America healthy again.” Though she was a bit fuzzy on the details, Trump’s announcement about Tylenol causing autism seemed important to her. “I hope that women take the recommendations to heart,” she said, “and just try to be healthy when you’re pregnant, eat whole foods, and reduce any type of chemicals or man-made products that you’re putting in your body.”

Biegalski wasn’t the only attendee involved in local politics. Phoebe Eckhardt, who lost a bid to represent Georgia’s 47th Congressional district last year, said she came to the rally because she didn’t want children to be “harmed by vaccinations and wrong medical procedures.” She wasn’t worried about the return of infectious diseases like measles and polio, and, like Trump, cited the example of the Amish. They “don’t have any of these diseases at all, because they don’t get vaccinations,” she said. “They don’t take any of this medication from all of these doctors, they trust God.” (The assertion that there is no autism in the Amish community, a common anti-vaccine talking point, is demonstrably false.) Eckhardt’s voice swelled with emotion as she talked about what she considered to be a campaign by the pharmaceutical industry to lie to Americans. “Television has been programming Americans for 50 years, and I’ve been one of them, but I’m not anymore—so wake up and smell the roses of what real life is all about!” she said. “I am Charlie Kirk!”

About an hour into the rally, no counter-protesters had shown up, though some drivers who passed by rolled down their windows to boo the people who had assembled. Across the street at the CDC Headquarters was a small memorial to Officer David Rose and homemade signs expressing support for some 600 workers who had been laid off or placed on administrative leave during the upheaval and massive shrinking of the agency under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “The CDC must restore public trust,” Kennedy wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. “And that restoration has begun.”

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How One Word Could Make the Difference in the Revenge Case Against James Comey

President Donald Trump finally realized one of his many revenge fantasies. The Department of Justice that he has pressed to pursue his critics and political opponents on Thursday indicted former FBI Director Jim Comey. A wildly unqualified lackey Trump appointed US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia brought charges against Comey after her predecessor—who was forced out by Trump—and career prosecutors found there was no solid case against Comey.

The brief, five-paragraph indictment is unusually vague. It alleges that Comey on September 30, 2020, lied to Congress and obstructed an investigation by “falsely stating to a U.S. Senator during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that he…had not ‘authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports’ regarding an FBI investigation.”

That’s it. But there’s a big problem with this indictment: That’s not what exactly Comey said.

First, some background. This alleged false statement supposedly occurred when Comey testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing held by Republicans as part of their ongoing crusade to depict the Trump-Russia investigation as an illegitimate Deep State plot against the president. But his remark was not about the main subject at hand. While questioning Comey, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) asked him about something else: the investigation of an FBI leak. That’s the portion of Comey’s testimony that appears to be at the center of this case.

This leak occurred in 2016 when Andrew McCabe, then the FBI deputy director, authorized other FBI officials to tell a Wall Street Journal reporter about a meeting in 2016 in which McCabe had disagreed with Justice Department officials about the handling of an investigation of the Clinton Foundation. (FBI agents had continued the inquiry after Justice Department officials had concluded there wasn’t much to case, and McCabe had believed continuing the inquiry was warranted. Eventually, no prosecutions ever materialized.) A Wall Street Journal piece that included a description of this meeting was published on October 30, 2016, shortly before the election.

Later, the Justice Department inspector general investigated the leak and released a report in February 2018. According to the IG, McCabe had told IG investigators that Comey had approved of this leak. Comey, though, said otherwise. There was no hard-and-fast evidence that resolved the conflict between their accounts, but the IG, citing a long list of circumstantial evidence, concluded that McCabe did not tell Comey that he had authorized others to share that information with the Wall Street Journal. It noted, “Had McCabe done so, we believe that Comey would have objected to the disclosure.” The IG said that McCabe had exhibited a “lack of candor” with Comey and with the IG investigators.

Comey, according the IG, had done nothing wrong in this episode. Still at the 2020 hearing Cruz pressed the former FBI director on this. Here’s the full exchange.

Cruz: On May 3rd, 2017, in this committee, Chairman [Chuck] Grassley asked you point blank, “Have you ever been an anonymous source in news reports about matters relating to the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation?” You responded under oath, “Never.” He then asked you, “Have you ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton administration?” You responded again under oath, “No.”

As you know, Mr. McCabe, who worked for you, has publicly and repeatedly stated that he leaked information to the Wall Street Journal and that you were directly aware of it and that you directly authorized it. Now, what Mr. McCabe is saying and what you testified to this committee cannot both be true. One or the other is false. Who’s telling the truth?

Comey: I can only speak to my testimony. I stand by the testimony you summarized that I gave in May of 2017.

Cruz: So you our testimony is you’ve never authorized anyone to leak, and Mr. McCabe, if he says contrary is not telling the truth.

Comey: Again, I’m not going to characterize Andy’s testimony. But mine is the same today.

That’s it. The indictment gives the impression that Comey made a remark during this testimony in which he said he had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports.” But Comey never directly said those words. His response was: “I stand by the testimony you summarized.” The indictment, drawing on the question that Comey was asked at that earlier hearing, is putting words in his mouth.

There’s another problem for the prosecution. According to the IG report, McCabe said he spoke to Comey after the Wall Street Journal article appeared and this is supposedly when Comey approved of the disclosure. The IG concluded Comey did no such thing. But if he had, would an after-the-fact approval count as an authorization? That’s a tough argument to make.

And there’s more. That question which Grassley presented to Comey in 2017 that Cruz cited was specific, referring only to “news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton administration.” Note that Grassley had mentioned the Clinton administration, not the Clinton Foundation. His query technically did not cover whatever had happened regarding the leak to the Wall Street Journal about the Clinton Foundation investigation.

So when Comey told Cruz that he stood by his previous testimony he was not truly addressing the leak issue related to the Wall Street Journal article. So how could he have lied about it? Consequently, it could be hard to convict him by showing that he had approved of that particular leak—which, according to the Justice Department IG, he did not.

In a video he posted on social media Thursday night, Comey said, “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I’m innocent.”

At this point, it’s hard to have a full understanding of the case. Because the indictment is so vague, it is not yet publicly known that the charges are indeed based on the Wall Street Journal leak. That’s a reasonable assumption, and the media reporting at the moment is focused on the McCabe leak. But perhaps there could be another disclosure of sensitive information involved. Still, the problems with the indictment would remain.

This case is likely destined to be bogged down in word games. But words and precision are crucial to indictments that accuse a person of lying to Congress. And in this instance, it is no surprise that the indictment is sloppy, vague, and misleading, for this is an act of vengeance and not justice—which is what makes the case so dangerous.

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When Home Isn’t Safe: Immigration Enforcement Meets Housing Discrimination

This story is published in partnership with the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.

For one California mother, public housing has been a lifeline for her household of five—her two young adult daughters, husband, and young nephew. She could not afford rent without the federally subsidized housing that they all share.

It’s also a lifeline for another reason: She doesn’t feel comfortable leaving the safe haven of her home amid increased immigration enforcement. An undocumented immigrant herself, she fears she could be targeted by federal agents any time she leaves to work or shop. Her family is known as “mixed-status” by the government—some people in her household are documented, but others are not. Now, a proposed rule by the Trump administration would end eligibility for mixed-status families such as hers.

Even as she acknowledges that she does not feel threatened in her home, like many of her neighbors, she worries about losing federal housing aid. She’s worked hard since she came to the United States in 1989, she said, but without a stable income, she hasn’t been able to cover the full month’s rent—she contributes 30 percent to the total—without help. Though now, since she relies on subsidies, she is far less comfortable engaging with public housing employees. Given her family’s status, she worries that they’ll share her information with immigration enforcement officers.

“I don’t feel as confident as I did before,” she said in her native Spanish during an interview with a translator. “They tell you they’re not going to share it, and then it turns out they did share the information. The employees are lying.” She asked that her name not be used because of concerns about being evicted or deported.

As the law now stands, any assistance received by these families is prorated based on how many family members are eligible. But the Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Trump is seeking to end this policy, re-upping a rule that he had proposed in 2019 during his first administration. The policy is currently under review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, but if enacted, it would require that all members of a household must be eligible for housing assistance, or the entire household would be disqualified.

On March 24, 2025, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem signed a “memorandum of understanding”—a nonbinding agreement between the two agencies—promising to “end the wasteful misappropriation of taxpayer dollars to benefit illegal aliens instead of American citizens.” In short, Turner and Noem’s agreement aims to exclude undocumented residents and non-citizens from accessing any federal housing programs, including public housing and housing choice vouchers.

In an email response from Homeland Security, Noem wrote, “If you are an illegal immigrant, you should leave now.” The Department of Housing and Urban Development did not respond to a request for comment.

“What differentiates then from now is the very aggressive and lawless nature of their deportation and general anti-immigrant agenda,” said Marie Claire Tran-Leung, evictions initiative project director at the National Housing Law Project. She added that all families are being forced to calculate their risks—whether they live in subsidized housing or not.

In 2019, the Congressional Research Service estimated that Trump’s proposed “rule would likely result in the displacement from HUD-assisted housing of over 25,000 families, including 55,000 children.” CRS noted that in total, around 110,000 people would have been affected by the rule change, but the Biden administration rescinded the policy in 2021 before it went into effect. While a similar estimate on this rule does not exist for 2025, the Center for Migration Studies estimates that there are around 4.7 million mixed-status households in America.

In commenting about the situation, Noem wrote in the email, “The Biden Administration prioritized illegal aliens over our own citizens, including by giving illegal aliens taxpayer-funded housing at the expense of Americans. Not anymore. The entire government will work together to identify abuse and exploitation of public benefits and make sure those in this country illegally are not receiving federal benefits or other financial incentives to stay illegally.”

This year’s version of the rule has yet to go into effect, but the potential change is forcing some families to preemptively relocate.

“We’re trying to spread the message that the administration is going to say all sorts of things that are untrue, but you still have the right to stay where you are.”

“We’re trying to spread the message that the administration is going to say all sorts of things that are untrue, but you still have the right to stay where you are,” Tran-Leung said. “You don’t have to move.” She added that preemptive moves also occurred in 2019 when the rule was first proposed.

As of May this year, more than 2.3 million units nationwide were leased using housing choice vouchers, and by mid-August nearly 790,000 public housing units were being leased across the country. That means millions of Americans rely on federal rental or housing assistance.

Already, non-citizens are largely excluded from accessing any of these programs and are only eligible for federal housing vouchers if they are in the United States with specific designations, if they are refugees, for instance, or have parole status, which is a temporary status provided for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,” according to HUD guidelines.

Although these changes do not substantially alter existing laws, immigration advocates, fair housing nonprofit leaders, and housing lawyers with whom I spoke say that the most significant impact is likely to be the chilling effect not only for undocumented or non-citizen residents, but also for those who are legally eligible for federal rental assistance.

“What we’re seeing is people are terrified, and it’s deliberate,” said Nicole Smith, communications manager at the Protecting Immigrant Families Coalition, a national group of organizations advocating for immigrants’ rights. “Now that we’ve got this data sharing happening between service providers and the federal government, people are just terrified to access anything.”

This pervasive reluctance to engage with federal housing resources also includes not reporting incidents of housing discrimination or violations of fair housing law, according to multiple advocates at fair housing enforcement and education nonprofits.

“Because these individuals have now been put in such a state of fear, if you’re an undocumented individual, putting your name in any federal system is the last thing on your mind,” said a leader at one Rocky Mountains nonprofit. “You’re going to accept the little conditions that are presented to you until you find something better—if you find something better,” he added, asking that his name not be used because of concern about future retaliation against his organization. “So these people are now going to be living in inappropriate conditions, in illegal circumstances.”

Advocates with several nonprofits tasked with assisting in fair housing enforcement noted that they did not have any specific cases related to immigration-based discrimination—not because there was no such discrimination, but because, as Michael Chavarria, executive director of the HOPE Fair Housing Center in Illinois, wrote in an email, “of the fear and anxiety that exists at this time. I do not think anyone feels safe reporting the housing discrimination they experience, even if it is a violation of their federal or state civil rights.”

“I do not think anyone feels safe reporting the housing discrimination they experience, even if it is a violation of their federal or state civil rights.”

That distrust even extends to nonprofits themselves.

Carole Conn, executive director of Project Sentinel, a fair housing organization in Santa Clara, California, reminds everyone she works with that the data they collect is protected and should not be shared outside of their organization. They also won’t ask for someone’s immigration status. But even in a state with legal protections against landlords threatening immigration enforcement against tenants, she still sees distrust among people seeking help. Once more, the recurring theme, she said, “is the fear, unquestionably and justifiably.”

“Some of this is just rooted in the fact that not only are they fearful of anything that has a whiff of government,” Conn added. But that includes people who work in her organization. It was like, “ ‘How can I trust you, you’re taking vital information from me?’ ”

Some of these nonprofits lost funding earlier this year amid grant cancellations for the Fair Housing Initiatives Program. A significant proportion of those cuts were meant to educate residents on their rights as tenants and how they could determine what constituted housing discrimination, regardless of their legal status.

And this chilling effect goes beyond immigrants or those who are undocumented. Tenants from Latino or Hispanic backgrounds, even if they are American citizens, are significantly more likely to face threats of immigration action. Smith said she believes that the fear associated with immigration enforcement is intentionally targeted to harm these communities.

“It is to intimidate the largest immigrant groups in this country. It’s full racism. It’s shameless racism,” she said. “There is no way to deny, and it’s absolutely deliberate.”

The impacts of Trump’s rhetoric remain to be seen. Only eight months after his inauguration, data on housing discrimination claims regarding immigration status or national origin are not yet available. Advocates from across the country, however, said that anecdotally, they have seen the number of fair housing concerns about immigration enforcement increase.

“With the direction that the administration is taking, I think we’ve seen, even since January, a lot more instances of targeted discrimination where maybe we hadn’t seen before,” said Courtney Arthur, the program manager for Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid’s Housing Discrimination Law Project, a fair housing nonprofit. She said landlords have started to call ICE to report people whom they think may be undocumented.

A December 2024 study by the Urban Institute found that, even before Trump’s inauguration, 29 percent of adults in all immigrant families and 60 percent in mixed-status families worried “a lot” or “some” about participating in essential activities, such as going to work, sending children to school, and driving a car.

“So many people who are afraid of ICE enforcement, at work or at schools, are staying at home as a refuge,” Tran-Leung said.

But if federal assistance to that housing is in jeopardy, so is that refuge—especially if there is additional discriminatory behavior coming from the landlords themselves.

“They might be subject to harassment by their landlord, or subject to weaponized threats to call ICE on them,” Tran-Leung added. “It has made a lot of immigrant families just far less likely to access the resources that are legally available to them because a lot of folks live in fear of being entrapped.”

Some of the fear around engaging with federal housing resources comes from a concern about data-sharing practices. Multiple federal laws, the Privacy Act of 1974, for example, of the more recent Federal Information Security Modernization Act and E-Government Act, allow agencies to maintain records that are relevant and necessary to their agency work. But under Trump, agencies have regularly shared what was once privileged and sensitive personal information.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center and Democracy Forward organizations filed a lawsuit against the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, in February for “its illegal seizure of personnel records and payment system data” in the Department of the Treasury and Office of Personnel Management databases. And later that month, ProPublica reported that DOGE gained access to the HUD Enforcement Management System, which contains confidential information about those who have reported housing discrimination claims—a database consisting of hundreds of thousands of people. Though a HUD spokesperson told ProPublica after publication that, in fact, DOGE did not have access to that system, just the possibility that information could be shared was sufficient to dissuade someone from reporting discrimination.

This has all resulted in a climate where the fear of losing one’s housing or having personal information used against them by immigration enforcement is omnipresent for many people, even those with legal residency status.

“There is no word that captures the cruelty of putting families in such precarious, isolated, and unsafe situations,” Chavarria wrote.

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Trump’s Energy Secretary Aims to Claw Back Billions Slated for Clean Energy Projects

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

The US energy secretary, Chris Wright, on Wednesday announced that his department will return to the treasury billions of dollars set aside for green projects, while dodging questions about affordability and grid reliability and claiming international climate policy has not lowered emissions.

“The more people have gotten into so-called climate action, the more expensive their energy has become,” Wright said. “That lowers people’s quality of lives and reduces their life opportunities.”

The Trump administration aims to end “cancel culture,” Wright said, wherein “you can’t say anything about climate change” without being “shouted down.” He also defended a widely criticized Energy Department report that experts say was full of climate misinformation, claiming it only contained one figure that was out of line with a recent National Academies report on climate science.

Asked about concerns that the administration’s widespread attacks on climate policy, Wright said climate action had not delivered. “We’ve had 30 years, more than 30 years, since the Kyoto protocol,” he said “We haven’t even changed the trajectory of global greenhouse gas emissions.”

However, since the adoption of the Paris agreement, the projected rise in global warming has been dramatically reduced, from over four degrees celsius of temperature rise expected by the century’s end to 2.6C if climate action plans are fully implemented, according to the UN secretary general.

Wright also announced plans to return $13 billion in Biden-era funding for green projects, which his department said were “initially appropriated to advance the previous administration’s wasteful ‘Green New Scam’ agenda.” He did not clarify which green projects would be targeted.

Questioned about his administration’s attempts to halt wind farm construction, including ones that are already permitted, Wright said the administration is merely investigating widespread concerns about the projects’ impacts, including on whale populations. Scientists say there is no credible evidence that wind turbines pose a major danger to whales.

Asked if future presidential administrations should be able to launch similar attacks on already permitted fossil-fuel projects, he said they already have, citing Biden’s revocation of a permit for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline.

The president has pledged to slash electricity bills by half. Yet grid operators have said the Trump administration’s efforts to halt renewable energy while keeping costly coal plants online have forced them to increase utility bills. Wright dodged a question about those rising costs, claiming that Biden’s efforts to close coal plants raised the price of electricity.

Asked if he plans to go to Cop30, the United Nations climate talks in Brazil, in November, Wright said no. “I don’t have any plans to go there,” he said.

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The Charter School Pressuring Teachers to Get Involved In Politics

A few days before a September 18th pro-charter school rally, Eva Moskowitz, the CEO of Success Academy—New York City’s largest charter school network—dropped in at a new teacher training. The visit was unannounced. Moskowitz had an urgent message for her employees that had nothing to do with pedagogy or classroom management: You need to help push the charter school agenda.

In a recording of the meeting obtained by Mother Jones, and first reported by Gothamist, Moskowitz told her workers this was a moment of “heightened risk, policy risk, political risk,” and sternly reminded them about the march for charters set to come. “You’re gonna need to get up early,” Moskowitz explained. The employees would march across the Brooklyn Bridge and rally in Cadman Plaza, she said. “You guys think you don’t have a lot of time to organize your rally? I’m sorry. Wah, wah, wah. We had eight days to organize the rally in Albany,” she said, referring to a 2014 action. “We’re facing a very serious threat.”

“I think we’re getting a little democratic here,” the CEO of Success Academy scolded. “When your boss asks you to do something, assuming it’s not unethical or a question of conscience, you do the task.”

During the meeting, Moskowitz also vented about low participation in the organization’s “Phone 2 Action” campaign, which requires every employee to reach out to New York elected officials five times, sending pre-written messages supporting charter schools.

One prospective teacher who was present at the meeting, Anita, says Moskowitz’s speech made it clear that “this [job] wasn’t about school and education at all—it felt like she was just trying to push politics onto us.” Frustrated and disappointed, Anita did not return for the remainder of her training.

Mother Jones spoke with eight current and former teachers and staff across Success Academy, who described political coercion and repression inside the network of schools. (Out of concern that Success would retaliate against them for speaking with the press, all requested that their names be changed.) The employees described an atmosphere in which they feared that to keep their jobs they needed to publicly advocate for charter schools.

Employees told Mother Jones they had been pressured to participate in the September 18th rally and conduct outreach as part of a public campaign for charters in New York City. These demands were followed up with check-ins: Leaders asked employees in public Slack channels to confirm via emoji reaction when they’d completed outreach to elected officials, demanded screenshots as evidence, called teachers after hours, and cornered educators in classrooms to check if they had sent the messages.

Erin, a teacher in her second year, says she was asked to call parents and encourage them to attend the rally. Blake, a third-year teacher, was almost daily told to send flyers home to families. Zakiyah Shaakir-Ansari, Co-Executive Director of the Alliance for Quality Education (AQE), says pressure to attend a midday political event creates an undue burden for families.

Success Academy did not respond to a request for comment and questions about the pressure to participate in politics. In a statement to Gothamist, a spokesperson said that Success has organized marches for years and no one working there should be “surprised by this or should object to standing up for charter schools.” Success did not respond to specific questions about whether there had been retaliation or firings for non-participation in pro-charter political activities.

After last week’s rally, state lawmakers called for an investigation into potential violations of state law. “Canceling classes during a school day and forcing families and students to engage in a political rally is an egregious misuse of instructional time and state funds,” State Sens. John Liu and Shelley Meyer wrote in a letter to the New York State Education Department. “Our state provides public dollars to charter schools to educate students, not for political activism or for influencing elections.” (Charter schools responded, according to the New York Post, with a letter saying the event was “not a partisan display.”)

Success has a history of involving its staff, students, and families in political actions. This year, these efforts have taken on a more prominent role after New York City nominee for mayor Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary.

Casey, in his fifth year at Success, says the pressure has never been so intense—and it’s been largely focused on Mamdani. “This year, in training, they explicitly started with naming Mamdani and how he is the villain in our story,” says Casey.

“They started the year off by being like ‘We’re anti-Zohran, and here’s why,” Erin says.

Success in public statements has said its political work is strictly advocacy for charters, and not about the mayoral race or specific politicians. But Moskowitz was also quoted in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled “Zohran Mamdani Threatens Charter Schools,” emphasizing the need for a mayor who is friendly to charter school interests.

Mamdani has said that he opposes raising the charter cap (which determines how many charter schools can operate in New York City), the mandated expansion of charter school operations in the city, and the placement of more charter schools inside public school buildings. As mayor, he has said he would audit existing co-located schools to review uneven funding, overcharged rent, and legal entitlements.

New York Civil Liberties Union Director of Education Policy Johanna Miller said requiring employees to participate in an anti-Mamdani campaign would be “directly undermining democratic values and diversity of thought” and “feels like coerced speech.”

“The political coercion is a form of threat under the [National Labor Relations Act] (NLRA),” said Lorena Roque, Interim Director of Education, Labor and Worker Justice at the Center for Law and Social Policy. “Being forced to do any of these things is an unfair labor practice, and then when you throw the political element in there, I think the [National Labor Relations Board] (NLRB) would be very upset.”

Although charters straddle a careful divide as privately run schools receiving public funding, they’re within the jurisdiction of the NLRB. Under nonprofit law in New York, charters can require staff to advocate for the school, but not for or against specific political candidates.

“I’m frustrated. I’m nervous all the time.”

Lee Howard Adler, a professor of critical labor and employment law at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, says the political advocacy Success requires its employees sounds inappropriate, nonprofit or otherwise, if it is in reaction to “the educational ideas and political candidacy of Zohran Mamdani.”

In the recorded meeting, Moskowitz presented her demands as typical work tasks and herself as a boss simply doing what was needed.

“I think we’re getting a little democratic here,” she scolded. “We are quite hierarchical. There is a chain of command, and when your boss asks you to do something, assuming it’s not unethical or a question of conscience, you do the task.” Those who lived in New Jersey were told to list the company’s office as their address when contacting elected officials. Under Moskowitz’s watchful eye, employees were ordered to send the messages then and there.

Success board members and leaders, including co-founder Joel Greenblatt, have donated a total of $935,700 to independent mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo directly and to a supportive super PAC, Fix the City.

Keisha, who’s been with Success for multiple years, says when she first started, she “drank the Kool-aid,” but “in recent months I’ve become more clear-eyed and realized there’s a lot of unethical and sort of inappropriate stuff happening.”

Blake, another teacher, says at his back-to-school orientation, staff were told “the current Democratic nominee represents the biggest danger to our existence since [former] Mayor Bill de Blasio.”

During de Blasio’s tenure as mayor, Success Academy opened 21 new schools and more than doubled its revenue. Joseph Viteritti, PhD, a professor of public policy at Hunter College and author of a recent book about the school choice movement, disagrees that a Mamdani mayoral win spells doom for charters. “The issue with charter schools now is whether or not you’re going to raise the cap [and] it’s not Mamdani who’s going to make that stop or go.”

Keisha said this has not stopped Success from hammering home the urgency. “I voted for Zohran, and to have the CEO state that his policies threaten our mission and if we work here we have to align with the mission…it makes me feel like we will be fired if we don’t participate,” she says.“I’m frustrated. I’m nervous all the time.”

Every long-time employee at Success with whom Mother Jones spoke described an environment of frequent, sudden, and often seemingly unjustified firings.

Keisha says a new member of her team was fired unexpectedly just weeks after starting. “Over the last six months, people are just fired left and right for no good reason,” she said.

Blake said that “you learn pretty quickly not to question anything. Just nod your head yes, so that way you don’t get hit with the big stick.”

Blake says he thinks Success makes changes to its employee handbook to justify disciplinary actions after the fact. Employees sign the handbook at the beginning of each new year, but last year was the first time they were told what changes had been made to it. Because the handbook can’t be downloaded or printed due to permission settings, Blake says, it’s often hard to compare versions to check for differences. “It’s like the Berenstein-Berenstain effect. People will say they’re pretty sure something is in the handbook, but then they go and try to find it and can’t,” he notes.

Feeling increasingly uncomfortable about the pressure to participate in the rally and Phone 2 Action campaign to contact elected officials, Casey shared his concerns with a team leader. In response, the leader pointedly turned the conversation to his job and future with Success, he said. Intimidated, Casey walked back his concerns—after which the conversation was “very positive, all smiles.” The leader told him if he knew anyone else with doubts, he should pass their name along.

“I started playing the game inside because I don’t want to lose my job and I don’t want to be targeted,” says Casey.

Viteritti says he knows Success for both its consistent high test scores, and for being “controversial,” and “very aggressive politically.” This means Success or Moskowitz should not be used as a barometer for the larger landscape of New York City charter schools, he explains. Still, asked about the political pressure, he says, “if it’s happening, it’s a problem.”

As the school year has progressed, teachers and staff say the messaging around the rally has focused less on Mamdani. But Moskowitz and other leaders have continued emphasizing the “political risk” posing “an existential threat” to Success Academy, school choice, and, by extension, their jobs.

Earlier this month, some employees received an email from an unknown sender emphasizing their labor protections and encouraging them not to attend the rally. About an hour after the message appeared, it vanished.

“I know we do have monitoring software on our laptops that allows the company to view our screens,” says Blake. “Some people were saying that while they had the email on their screen they saw a little message on the top saying that the screen was currently being viewed.”

Many Success teachers are fresh out of college, and as Moskowitz was quick to remind them during the recorded training, “most of you would not be able to be hired in [Department of Education] schools,” because they lack the necessary credentials. “We are very deliberately not unionized,” she said.

“After the conversation I had, I said to myself, ‘They’re gonna be out to get me this year. I need to make zero reason for them to fire me,’” says Casey. “​​In the beginning, I was a little bit more confident in like, ‘Oh, whatever happens, I’ll find another job.’ But I really am not in a position to lose my job.”

When he was first told about the rally, he planned on refusing to attend. But on September 18th, he found himself in Cadman Plaza. He felt he had no choice.

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The Dismantling of the US Forest Service Is Imminent

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

In the 1880s, giant cattle companies turned thousands of cattle out to graze on the “public domain”—i.e., the Western lands that had been stolen from Indigenous people and then opened up for white settlement. In remote southeastern Utah, this coincided with a wave of settlement by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The region’s once-abundant grasslands and lush mountain slopes were soon reduced to denuded wastelands etched with deep flash-flood-prone gullies. Cattlemen fought, sometimes violently, over water and range.

The local citizenry grew sick and tired of it, sometimes literally: At one point, sheep feces contaminated the water supply of the town of Monticello and led to a typhoid outbreak that killed 11 people. Yet there was little they could do, since there were few rules on the public domain and fewer folks with the power to enforce them.

That changed in 1891, when Congress passed the Forest Reserve Act, which authorized the president to place some unregulated tracts under “judicious control,” thereby mildly restraining extractive activities in the name of conservation. In 1905, the Forest Service was created as a branch of the US Agriculture Department to oversee these reserves, and Gifford Pinchot was chosen to lead it. A year later, the citizens of southeastern Utah successfully petitioned the Theodore Roosevelt administration to establish forest reserves in the La Sal and Abajo Mountains.

Since then, the Forest Service has gone through various metamorphoses, shifting from stewarding and conserving forests for the future to supplying the growing nation with lumber to managing forests for multiple uses and then to the ecosystem management era, which began in the 1990s. Throughout all these shifts, however, it has largely stayed true to Pinchot and his desire to conserve forests and their resources for future generations.

But now, the Trump administration is eager to begin a new era for the agency and its public lands, with a distinctively un-Pinchot-esque structure and a mission that maximizes resource production and extraction while dismantling the administrative state and its role as environmental protector. Over the last nine months, the administration has issued executive orders calling for expanded timber production and rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule, declared “emergency” situations that enable it to bypass regulations on nearly 60 percent of the public’s forests, and proposed slashing the agency’s operations budget by 34 percent.

The most recent move, which is currently open to public comment, involves a proposal by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to radically overhaul the entire US Department of Agriculture. Its stated purposes are to ensure that the agency’s “workforce aligns with financial resources and priorities,” and to consolidate functions and eliminate redundancy. This will include moving at least 2,600 of the department’s 4,600 Washington, DC, employees to five hub locations, with only two in the West: Salt Lake City, Utah, and Fort Collins, Colorado. (The others will be in North Carolina, Missouri, and Indiana.)

The goal, according to Rollins’ memorandum, is to “bring the USDA closer to its customers.” The plan is reminiscent of Trump’s first-term relocation of the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado, in 2019. That relocation resulted in a de facto agency housecleaning; many senior staffers chose to resign or move to other agencies, and only a handful of workers ended up in the Colorado office, which shared a building with oil and gas companies.

Using an emergency declaration, Trump’s timber production executive order would ease environmental protections so as to greatly expand logging in the national forests.

Though Rollins’ proposal is aimed at decentralizing the department, it would effectively re-centralize the Forest Service by eliminating its nine regional offices, six of which are located in the West. Each regional forester oversees dozens of national forests within their region, providing budget oversight, guiding place-specific implementation of national policies, and facilitating coordination among the various forests.

Rollins’ memo does not explain why the regional offices are being axed, or what will happen to the regional foresters’ positions and their functions, or how the change will affect the agency’s chain of command. When several US senators asked Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden for more specifics, he responded that “decisions pertaining to the agency’s structure and the location of specialized personnel will be made after” the public comment period ends on September 30.

Curiously, the administration’s forest management strategy, published in May, relies on regional offices to “work with the Washington Office to develop tailored strategies to meet their specific timber goals.” Now it’s unclear that either the regional or Washington offices will remain in existence long enough to carry this out.

The administration has been far more transparent about its desire to return the Forest Service to its timber plantation era, which ran from the 1950s through the ’80s. During that time, logging companies harvested 10 billion to 12 billion board-feet per year from federal forests, while for the last 25 years, the annual number has hovered below 3 billion board-feet. Now, Trump, via his Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production order, plans to crank up the annual cut to 4 billion board-feet by 2028. This will be accomplished—in classic Trumpian fashion—by declaring an “emergency” on national forest lands that will allow environmental protections and regulations, including the National Environmental Protection Act, Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act, to be eased or bypassed.

In April, Rollins issued a memorandum doing just that, declaring that the threat of wildfires, insects and disease, invasive species, overgrown forests, the growing number of homes in the wildland-urban interface, and more than a century of rigorous fire suppression have contributed to what is now “a full-blown wildfire and forest health crisis.”

Emergency determinations aren’t limited to Trump and friends; in 2023, the Biden administration identified almost 67 million acres of national forest lands as being under a high or very high fire risk, thus qualifying as an “emergency situation” under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Rollins, however, vastly expanded the “emergency situation” acreage to almost 113 million acres, or 59 percent of all Forest Service lands. This allows the agency to use streamlined environmental reviews and “expedited” tribal consultation time frames to “carry out authorized emergency actions,” ranging from commercial harvesting of damaged trees to removing “hazardous fuels” to reconstructing existing utility lines. Meanwhile, the administration has announced plans to consolidate all federal wildfire fighting duties under the Interior Department. This would completely zero out the Forest Service’s $2.4 billion wildland fire management budget, sowing even more confusion and chaos.

The administration also plans to slash staff and budgets in other parts of the agency, further compromising its ability to carry out its mission. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency fired about 3,400 Forest Service employees, or more than 10 percent of the agency’s total workforce, earlier this year. And the administration has proposed cutting the agency’s operations budget, which includes salaries, by 34 percent in fiscal 2026, which will most likely necessitate further reductions in force. It would also cut the national forest system and capital improvement and maintenance budgets by 21 percent and 48 percent respectively.

The goal, it seems, is to cripple the agency with both direct and indirect blows. The result, if the administration succeeds, will be a diminished Forest Service that would be unrecognizable to Gifford Pinchot.

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Anti-Vax Groups Struggle to Explain How Tylenol Fits In With Their Whole Thing

Since President Trump’s rambling Monday announcement about the supposed cause of autism and a purported new treatment, anti-vaccine groups have grappled with what the administration’s latest revelations mean for their movement. While some MAHA activists appeared to be overjoyed that the president had brought their cause to a national stage, others were frustrated that it was Tylenol, and not vaccines, that took the brunt of the blame.

The messaging of the press conference was wildly mixed. Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that Tylenol and folate deficiency could cause autism, a conclusion that has not been reached by any credible medical body. At the same time, Kennedy also implied that further studies could also implicate vaccines and suggested such research was underway at HHS.

Many anti-vax groups were confused that vaccines weren’t explicitly blamed.

Trump also spent a great deal of apparently unscripted time demonizing Tylenol, while struggling to pronounce Acetaminophen, its generic name. But he also rambled on against vaccines: advocating for parents to visit the doctor “four or five times” for immunizations and further spread out their children’s injections. (This is nonsense; getting multiple vaccinations in a single visit is completely safe and well-studied, and not vaccinating a child on an established schedule carries its own serious risks. More broadly, experts believe autism is likely caused by a mix of environmental and genetic factors—actual research remains ongoing.)

Some longtime anti-vaccine activists reacted to the press conference with unalloyed joy. John Gilmore, who runs a website called the Autism Action Network, wrote in his newsletter, “The President couldn’t have made it clearer that he and his administration believe vaccines are a major, if not the major, cause of autism. No doubt, there will be much more to come.”

Nicole Shanahan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s former running mate, has sometimes been critical of the administration’s appointments at HHS. But she lavished praise on every official taking part in the press conference.

“Today was incredibly bold,” she tweeted. “@POTUS you have exceeded my expectations in truth telling – we were only expecting to hear about the published work on Acetaminophen (pronounced AH-SEE-TOE-MET-O-FIN — you killed it btw).”

“Instead,” Shanahan continued, invoking assassinated MAGA commentator Charlie Kirk, “you channeled Charlie and spoke the truth that haunts millions of us on a daily basis: our nation’s approach to childhood vaccinations is reckless and is causing immense suffering.”

Others were less sure. As Ars Technica was first to point out, the focus on Tylenol led some anti-vaccine groups to push back. Many were confused about why vaccines weren’t explicitly blamed for autism, a central belief in their movement, albeit one that has been repeatedly and roundly debunked.

The discontented included, to a certain extent, Children’s Health Defense, where Kennedy served as chairman for many years before becoming HHS secretary. Mary Holland, CHD’s president and general counsel, said on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast that the announcement was “something of a sideshow,” adding, “Tylenol is not the primary cause. Vaccines are the primary cause.” Bannon agreed, declaring, “This Tylenol thing stinks to high heaven.”

CHD wasn’t alone. Dr. Ben Tapper, a chiropractor and longtime anti-vaccine activist with 120,000 followers on X, posted, “The reason we have a huge increase in autism rates is not becuse of Tylenol. It’s when Tylenol is given to a child POST vaccination creating the perfect storm. In other words, the vaccines are to blame. The vaccines light the fire and tylenol throws the fuel.”

Dr. Simone Gold, the founder of America’s Frontline Doctors, a group that energetically spread Covid misinformation early in the pandemic, tweeted, “The Tylenol–autism link is real enough to warrant urgent concern—especially when used in pregnancy.” But, she added, “[L]et’s be clear: autism’s rise cannot be reduced to Tylenol alone. Toxins, vaccine ingredients/adjuvants, and Pharma’s disregard for safety must all be investigated.”

Others saw the focus on Tylenol as an insult to—or even a way to blame—the mothers of autistic kids who make up a large portion of the anti-vaccine world’s most devoted foot soldiers. Jessica Rojas, an anti-vaccine activist who describes herself on X as an “American WOMAN, Mother and critical thinker,” told her 213,000 followers, “Gaslighting ends here. It’s NOT the Tylenol. You’re not to blame, mamas. We believe you.”

“Tylenol is not the primary cause. Vaccines are the primary cause.”

One group seized on the confusion as an opportunity to promote products. Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist who rose to prominence opposing Covid vaccines during the pandemic, told his 1.2 million followers on X that the “pathway to developmental regression begins with vaccines, not acetaminophen.” McCullough is the chief scientific officer of The Wellness Company, a business that sells supplements it says can detox the body from vaccines. In an email newsletter earlier this week, the Wellness Company derided Trump’s announcement of a new autism treatment, a form of Vitamin B called leucovorin, as “a sales pitch.” The email urged readers to “Stay sharp, stay skeptical, and don’t let headlines decide your health,” while providing a sales link and noting that “our Vitamin B Complex delivers the full spectrum of B vitamins—including folate—to support energy, mood, and cognitive clarity.”

Some activists appear to be shifting the blame for the Tylenol announcement away from Trump. One of those people is Derrick Evans, a 2020 election denier from West Virginia who was convicted of a felony after he admitted in court to unlawfully entering the Capitol on January 6, 2021 while yelling “Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!” (He was pardoned earlier this year by Trump.) On Tuesday, Evans tweeted to his 838,000 followers, “Neither Trump or RFK Jr. linked Tylenol with Autism. The dean of Harvard’s School of Public Health did.” (According to the New York Times, the dean in question, Andrea Baccarelli, was paid $150,000 in 2023 for his work as an expert witness on behalf of plaintiffs who sued Tylenol’s parent company, Kenvue, because they believed the drug had caused neurodevelopmental problems in their children. A federal judge dismissed the case, finding the evidence did not support their claims.)

The federal government, meanwhile, doubled down what Trump and Kennedy said about Tylenol during Monday’s press conference. On Wednesday, HHS reposted a now-viral 2017 tweet from Tylenol’s brand account where the company told a user that it doesn’t recommend taking the drug while pregnant. HHS didn’t mention in its repost the fact that guidelines for Tylenol, like those of practically all drugs, recommends that pregnant women consult their doctors before using it.

The anti-vaccine and “health freedom” movements have always held multiple, and sometimes conflicting, beliefs about the causes of autism and other conditions they blame on pharmaceuticals. Some lay the fault entirely on vaccines, while others also blame products like the weed-killer glyphosate. In the past, anti-vaccine groups have resolved these ideological differences by being vague about the causation and mechanisms to blame and instead foregrounding suspicion of the broader medical establishment. A 2020 study in the American Journal of Public Health found that anti-vaccine groups had shifted away from making specific medical arguments on social media and towards the message that rejecting vaccines is a civil liberties and freedom of choice issue.

While anti-vaccine groups have spent the last few days trying to figure out their messaging—and whether Tylenol is now among their targets—autism experts expressed shock and concern about the damage unleashed by the press conference.

“Any association between acetaminophen and autism is based on limited, conflicting, and inconsistent science and is premature,” warns Dr. Alycia Halladay in a statement; she’s chief science officer at the Autism Science Foundation, which tries to guide families towards safe, evidence-based treatments for autism. “This claim risks undermining public health while also misleading families who deserve clear, factual information. For many years, RFK and President Trump have shared their belief that vaccines cause autism, but this is also not supported by the science, which has shown no relationship between vaccines and autism.”

“We are unsure why this announcement came today and how the conclusions were drawn,” added Alison Singer, the foundation’s president, in the same statement. “No new data or scientific studies were presented or shared. No new studies have been published in the literature. No new presentations on this topic were made at scientific or medical conferences. Instead, President Trump talked about what he thinks and feels without offering scientific evidence. He said ‘tough it out,’ meaning don’t take Tylenol or give it to your child. It took me straight back to when moms were blamed for autism. If you can’t take the pain or deal with a fever, then it’s your fault if your child has autism. That was shocking. Simply shocking.”

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The Wildly Unqualified Lawyer Trump Just Named to Prosecute His Enemies

The US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia is one of the most significant positions in the Department of Justice.

Erik Siebert, the federal prosecutor whom President Donald Trump pushed out last Friday for declining to prosecute his political enemies, had extensive experience. He is listed as an attorney on 675 federal cases. His replacement, Lindsey Halligan, a 36-year-old former Florida insurance lawyer, has worked on only three.

But for an administration in which loyalty reigns supreme, what matters is who Halligan has represented in each of those federal cases: Donald Trump.

An attorney in Florida remembered Halligan as nice and professional, but was “kind of shocked, frankly” when she began to work for Trump.

The decision to make Halligan one of the country’s top prosecutors is a major escalation in Trump’s efforts to weaponize the Justice Department. Halligan, who was previously tasked with helping to rid the Smithsonian of “improper ideology,” was sworn in on an interim basis on Monday. Her predecessor, Siebert, was installed by Trump in January and officially nominated by the president in May. He was forced out after he declined to bring charges against two of Trump’s enemies: New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey.

James is facing unsubstantiated allegations related to mortgage fraud, while Comey is facing similarly weak claims about lying to Congress. People familiar with the cases told the Washington Post that there was not enough evidence to move forward with either.

Instead of accepting the lack of evidence, Trump is trying to make Halligan—his former lawyer and White House aide—into the legal equivalent of a contract killer. She has zero experience as a prosecutor. Her mandate from the president is not to pursue what is normally considered justice but to subject people who have gone after Trump to legal harassment.

Trump made that clear in a Saturday evening post on Truth Social that was addressed to his attorney general, Pam Bondi. “Pam,” the president wrote. “I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, ‘same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.’”

“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump added. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

Three hours later, Trump put up another post stating that it was his “honor to appoint Lindsey Halligan” to be the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. In that role, the Washington Post has reported that Halligan will hold “one of the most sensitive posts in the Justice Department, leading around 300 lawyers and staff, overseeing complex national security investigations and representing federal agencies such as the Defense Department and CIA in court.”

Halligan joins other underqualified appointees using top prosecutorial positions to push seemingly questionable criminal investigations of political opponents.

Alina Habba, another former Trump defense attorney, was installed as interim US Attorney for New Jersey in March. In that role, she quickly charged Democratic Congresswoman LaMonica McIver with assaulting and interfering with law enforcement officials outside an oversight visit to an immigration detention facility in Newark. McIver pleaded not guilty and dubbed the prosecution “political intimidation.” Following a battle over Habba’s appointment, a federal judge last month ruled that she was not legally serving as US Attorney.

In January, Ed Martin, a former Stop the Steal organizer, was made acting US Attorney in DC. In that role, he threatened to prosecute various Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Trump selected him for the permanent position in March but pulled his nomination in the face of bipartisan opposition in the Senate. But Martin has stuck around. He now leads a DOJ task force pursuing Trump foes, including New York Attorney General James. (Martin even posed for photographs outside James’ home in August, while wearing a trench coat.)

Halligan is similarly close to the president. Trump has claimed that she would be qualified for her role partly because she was a “Partner at the biggest Law Firm in Florida,” where she “proved herself to be a tremendous trial lawyer.” But her legal background is less distinguished than Trump’s post might suggest.

After graduating from the University of Miami School of Law in 2013, the new US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia went on to become a partner at one of the Fort Lauderdale offices of Cole, Scott & Kissane in 2018. That distinction, according to CSK’s website, can be claimed by more than 260 people who are currently partners at the firm. (Before joining the firm, Halligan reportedly interned at the Innocence Project, as well as the Miami-Dade County public defender’s office.)

At CSK, South Florida court records show that Halligan largely defended insurance companies that were being sued by homeownerswho believed they were entitled to better coverage. In many cases, Halligan also represented home insurance companies against relatively small-time corporate plaintiffs with names like Water Dryout, Moisture Rid, and Water Restoration Guys. These cases—some of which were filed as small claims—were often resolved without the need for a trial. (Halligan’s name appears on her former law firm’s website only once—in a press release that notes that she and another attorney had achieved a “complete defense verdict in a denied roof leak case in Broward County” involving more than $500,000 of claimed damages.)

David Comras, the founding attorney at Comras & Comras in Fort Lauderdale, said he handled a few cases in which Halligan represented the companies his clients were suing. He remembered Halligan being nice and professional, but was “kind of shocked, frankly” when she leapt from that work to Trump’s legal team. He was similarly surprised that someone who handled Florida home insurance cases was now a top federal prosecutor in Virginia.

Halligan told the Washington Postthat she met Trump at a November 2021 event at his golf club in West Palm Beach. A former contestant in Miss Colorado USA pageants, Halligan has said that she probably stood out to Trump during their initial meeting because—unlike other women at the event—she was wearing a suit. Trump hired her as a lawyer soon after.

Halligan was at Mar-a-Lago during the FBI’s 2022 raid of the club. And she went on to represent Trump in a civil suit related to the raid. According to court records, it was the first time she had represented a client in a federal litigation.

At the start of the case in August 2022, Judge Aileen Cannon rejected two filings Halligan submitted for failing to comply with local procedures. The judge directed Halligan to the court’s website for instructions on how to file the documents correctly.

Two days later, Halligan submitted a notice updating her contact information. That filing was similarly rejected by the court. “Attorney has not followed the required procedures for updating their address with the Court…” a court notice explained. “See the Court’s website for detailed instructions.”

Lawyers who worked with Halligan on the case have defended her legal work. Tim Parlatore told the New York Times that he “found her to be very hard-working, intelligent and also with a deep understanding not only of what was going on in the case but what the president’s priorities were.”

Halligan also actively defended Trump on camera in appearances on Fox News, Newsmax, and Bill O’Reilly’s show. During the 2024 campaign, she was awarded a front-row seat in Trump’s box at the Republican National Convention. After Trump won in November, Halligan joined the president in the White House.

In March, Trump named Halligan in an executive order that claimed to seek to “restore the Smithsonian Institution to its rightful place as a symbol of inspiration and American greatness.” (The order listed Halligan’s title as “Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Associate Staff Secretary.”) The order said Halligan would work to “remove improper ideology” from Smithsonian facilities, including the National Zoo.

Now Halligan has been given a far more important role after her predecessor was forced out for not prosecuting Trump’s foes. As Trump put it in his post announcing her appointment, he expects her to do “GREAT things for JUSTICE.” There is little doubt about what he means by that.

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Jimmy Kimmel Hits Back at “Bully” Trump

Jimmy Kimmel returned to late-night on Tuesday to a powerful standing ovation before using his opening monologue to directly condemn President Trump’s aggressive efforts to bring his critics and the larger media to heel.

“We have to speak out against this bully,” Kimmel said. “He’s not stopping, and it’s not just comedy. He’s gunning for our journalists, too. He’s suing them, he’s bullying them.”

The return capped off an intense week of protest after ABC executives abruptly pulled Kimmel off the air “indefinitely” over his criticism that MAGA personalities were using the murder of Charlie Kirk to “score political points.”

“It was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man,” Kimmel said on Tuesday, appearing emotional.

Shortly before Kimmel’s return, the president, in typical Trump fashion, took to Truth Social to air his grievances and vow retribution against ABC.

“I think we’re going to test ABC out on this,” Trump wrote. “Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative. A true bunch of losers!”

“This show is not important,” Kimmel said. “What’s important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”

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“Godsend” or “Concentration Camp”? A Lucrative ICE Deal Divides a Colorado Town

In January 2010, the private prison operator now known as CoreCivic announced the closure of a 752-bed facility in Walsenburg, Colorado. At the time, the Huerfano County Correctional Center was the second-largest employer in the county. Its shutdown caused a “major hit” to the economy, said John Galusha, then the county’s administrator. The town estimated a loss of $300,000 in revenue as almost 190 jobs disappeared, helping spike the county unemployment rate to 10.2 percent, above the state average. Without the contract that paid 25 cents a day per inmate into local coffers, Galusha said, “we had a hard time keeping up with the demand from social services.”

For the last 15 years, the facility has lain dormant. But that may soon change. Vested with a $45 billion immigration detention budget courtesy of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to open or expand at least 125 facilities, with the goal of scaling up to more than 107,000 beds by the end of 2025, according to the Washington Post. Under ICE’S ambitious blueprint, the 200,000-square-foot Walsenburg prison would not only be reactivated, but used to hold double the number of people it previously detained.

The Huerfano County Correctional Center has lain dormant for 15 years. It could soon turn into an ICE detention center.Rachel Woolf

Trump’s ballooning of what already is the world’s largest immigration detention system has unleashed a gold rush among federal contractors eager to cash in. And nowhere are the economic incentives to take advantage greater than in struggling communities with empty prison beds.

“It’s a very hungry machine,” said Nancy Hiemstra, co-author with Deirdre Conlon of Immigration Detention Inc.: The Big Business of Locking Up Migrants. “These webs of dependency, they want to keep being fed.” For an old coal mining town like Walsenburg—with an aging population and a median household income about half that of the state—the money detention offers can seem like a matter of survival. “It’s easy pickings,” Hiemstra said. “All of a sudden, immigration detention seems to be this beacon on a hill.”

But the prospect of a privately run ICE facility has divided Walsenburg. Some locals and public officials have welcomed the potential influx of money and jobs. “It’s a godsend,” Mayor Gary Vezzani told a TV reporter in early July. “If they use it for ICE or use it for a prison or use it for whatever they use it for, we really don’t care…It’s a pretty big paying customer for us. We’re not big enough, nor [is] anybody here big enough to stop it. So, we may as well take advantage.”

The mayor’s comments sparked fierce backlash. At a July 15 county commissioners meeting, one resident succinctly shot back: “We don’t want to be known as a town with a concentration camp.” At a city council meeting the same day, a speaker argued that “what’s happening in Walsenburg isn’t just corrupt. It’s fascist. It’s a blueprint for authoritarianism wrapped in barbed wire and dressed up as local revival.”

The potential reopening of the Huerfano County prison as an immigration detention center has divided Walsenburg.Rachel Woolf

Since February, a local group, Speak Up Southern Colorado, has been gathering weekly outside Walsenburg’s historic downtown courthouse to protest Trump’s policies. Lately, members have focused on fending off the potential deal between ICE and CoreCivic. “The day we become silent about things that matter is the day we begin to die,” organizer Dee Maes-­Sandoval told me, paraphrasing Martin Luther King Jr. “And I am not at that day.”

During the first Trump administration, the now-66-year-old retired mortgage operations manager drove to the Southern border to volunteer at migrant camps that had formed in ­Mexico as a result of US policies. Now, she’s taken up the fight in her own hometown. “It’s a money-making thing,” Maes-Sandoval explained. “That’s what it’s all about: money and power.”

She’s right that big bucks are on the line. During a May earnings call, CoreCivic executives reveled in the likely profit. “This is such a significant moment,” said outgoing CEO Damon Hininger. “Never in our 42-year company history have we had so much activity and demand for our services.”

In the second quarter of 2025, about half of the company’s revenue came from federal contracts, primarily from work with ICE and the US Marshals Service. Over that period, CoreCivic brought in $176.9 million from ICE, a 17.2 percent increase over the year before. If the agency’s expansion plans are fully realized, it is estimated that CoreCivic could rake in an additional $500 million in annual revenue.

“It’s a money-making thing,” Dee Maes-Sandoval said of the potential reopening of the prison. “That’s what it’s all about: money and power.”Rachel Woolf

Company executives have prioritized reopening idle prisons and have identified nine with a combined capacity of more than 13,400 beds. On the investors’ call, CoreCivic boasted that ICE officials had already visited several facilities and highlighted the Huerfano County Correctional Center as “attractive” to the agency, even “top of the list.”

While CoreCivic may be enthusiastic when speaking to investors, it’s been tight-lipped around Walsenburg, leaving even local officials in the dark. Carl Young, Huerfano County’s current administrator, says he knows little other than that ICE toured the prison earlier this year. “We’re along for the ride,” he said, explaining that the county has no say in what happens with the privately owned facility. “The thing is already built,” Young said. “There’s really not much we can do one way or the other.”

CoreCivic’s senior director of public affairs, Ryan Gustin, wrote that the company’s staff are “trained and held to the highest ethical standards” and referred questions about new contracts to ICE. As of late August, an agency spokesperson said no decision had been made about the Walsenburg facility, but noted that ICE “is exploring all options to meet the nation’s current and future detention requirements.”

Jason Valdez, another organizer with Speak Up Southern Colorado, said the group first caught wind something might happen in June, after CoreCivic asked officials about utility infrastructure near the facility. “People around here started putting two and two together,” he said, “because we knew that ICE was looking for new places.”

Suspicion grew when the group found a CoreCivic job listing for detention officers at $31.50 an hour in Walsenburg, contingent on the company winning an unspecified contract. Official confirmation came in July, when the ACLU of Colorado won a public records lawsuit seeking information submitted by potential contractors to ICE’s Denver field office about “possible detention facilities.” The 115 pages of heavily redacted documents that were released revealed several companies, including CoreCivic and GEO Group, offering six locations. CoreCivic’s proposal said ICE could have the Huerfano County Correctional Center’s “total capacity” and suggested it could begin “a staged ramp 120 days after contract commencement.”

“They’re not providing information to the public,” said Tim Macdonald, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado. “People have no idea what the actual plans are.” He’s especially concerned about increasing private immigration detention in the state, given complaints of dehumanizing treatment at GEO Group’s existing Aurora location. (The company said its services meet ICE’s “strict requirements.”) “It’s the wrong thing to be doing—to expand in secret and add to these deplorable conditions and spending billions of dollars to do so,” Macdonald said.

The lack of transparency is just one issue infuriating locals. On August 15, Maes-Sandoval and Valdez were among an estimated 300 protesters who turned up outside the facility and along a nearby interstate overpass. They waved signs that read “Keep ICE Out of Our Burg” and “No Concentration Camp,” as supportive honks and cheers from passing cars lifted their spirits.

Valdez has a different vision to remake the scenic town’s economy, by creating incentives for new businesses to flourish in empty storefronts, luring tourists and hikers making their way to the nearby Spanish Peaks wilderness. “Our focus should be improving the town,” he said, “not putting all of our hopes and dreams into making money off of kidnapping people who are just out there trying to earn a living for their families.”

Jason Valdez, an organizer with the group Speak Up Southern Colorado, joins a weekly protest against the potential deal between CoreCivic and ICE.Rachel Woolf

As mayor when the Huerfano County Correctional Center shut down in 2010, Bruce Quintana tried to keep the prison open. Now, he thinks turning it over to ICE will only polarize the community without a positive long-term impact.

“I say, go somewhere else,” he told me. “Let somebody else have that kind of left and right battle. It’s not going to bring us permanent jobs. It’s a very temporary thing. Why would we want to go up, just to come back down again?”

Quintana also worries about the conditions to which detainees would be subjected. “I think that there’s a temptation there to house them in less than pristine ways,” he said. “It’s all about the almighty dollar…And if they don’t do it right, somebody’s going to either get hurt or die.”

It still remains unclear when, or if, the prison will be reactivated. Galusha, who is now Walsenburg’s interim administrator, said that as of late August, he had heard ICE was still considering the site. If it does reopen, Galusha anticipates a “natural uptick in economic activity,” estimating an annual infusion of $1 million into the city from salaries and related consumer spending.

When asked whether there was any other revenue source the town could turn to, Galusha cut to the chase: “No, nothing short term…This is really the only thing.”

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Big Utilities Are Even Worse on Climate Than They Were Five Years ago

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

Since 2021, the Sierra Club has been grading US utilities on their commitment to a clean-energy transition. While most utilities have not earned high marks on the group’s annual scorecards, as a whole they had been showing some progress.

That’s over now. The latest edition of the Sierra Club’s ​“The Dirty Truth” report finds that the country’s biggest electric utilities are collectively doing worse on climate goals than when the organization started tracking their progress five years ago. This year they earned an aggregate grade of ​“F” for the first time.

With only a handful of rare exceptions, US utilities have shed the gains they made during the Biden administration. Almost none are on track to switch from fossil fuels to carbon-free energy at the speed and scale needed to combat the worst harms of climate change. “It’s very disappointing to find we’re at a lower score than in the first year,” said Cara Fogler, managing senior analyst at the Sierra Club, who coauthored the report. But it’s not entirely unexpected.

Utilities had already begun slipping on their carbon commitments last year, in the face of soaring demand for electricity, according to the 2024 ​“Dirty Truth” report, largely in response to the boom in data centers being used to power tech giants’ AI goals. But the anti-renewables, pro–fossil fuels agenda of the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress has pushed that reversal into overdrive.

The thirst for new gas-fired plants is driven in part by soaring demand forecasts based on expected new data centers that might never be built.

“We have a new federal administration that’s doing everything in their power to send utilities in a direction away from cleaner power,” Fogler said. ​“They’re doing away with everything in the Inflation Reduction Act that supported clean energy. They’re straight-up challenging clean energy, as we’ve seen with Revolution Wind,” the New England offshore wind farm that’s now under a stop-work order. ​“And they’re doing everything in their power to keep fossil fuels online”—for example, through Department of Energy actions that force coal, oil, and gas plants to keep running even after their owners and regulators had agreed on retirement dates.

But utilities also bear responsibility for not doing more to embrace technologies that offer both cleaner and cheaper power, Fogler said. ​“From a cost perspective, from a health perspective, from a pollution perspective, there are so many reasons to build more clean energy and fewer fossil fuels. Unfortunately, we’re seeing that utilities are much less concerned about doing the right thing for the climate and their customers.”

For its new report, the Sierra Club analyzed 75 of the nation’s largest utilities, which together own more than half the country’s coal and fossil-gas generation capacity. The report measures utilities’ plans against three benchmarks: whether they intend to close all remaining coal-fired power plants by 2030, whether they intend to build new gas plants, and how much clean-energy capacity they intend to build by 2035.

As of mid-2025, the utilities had plans to build only enough solar and wind capacity to cover 32 percent of what’s forecast to be needed by 2035 to replace fossil-fuel generation and satisfy new demand. While 65 percent of the utilities have increased their clean-energy deployment plans since 2021, 31 percent have reduced them.

Meanwhile, commitments to reduce reliance on fossil fuels have taken a big step backward as utilities have turned to keeping old coal plants running and are planning to build more gas plants to meet growing demand. As of mid-2025, the utilities had plans to close only 29 percent of coal generation capacity by 2030, down from 30 percent last year and 35 percent in 2023.

And the amount of gas-fired generation capacity the utilities plan to build by 2035 spiked to 118 gigawatts as of mid-2025. That’s up from 93 gigawatts in 2024, and more than twice the 51 gigawatts planned in 2021.

“Their high-load-growth scenario calls for all new gas. There should be more clean options.”

That expanding appetite for new gas-fired power has been supercharged by the surge in forecasted electricity demand across much of the country—data centers are the primary driver of that growth. But much of that expected data-center demand is speculative. And the lion’s share of it is premised on the idea that the hundreds of billions of dollars in AI investments from tech giants like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, as well as AI leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic will end up earning those companies enough money to pay off their costs—a risky bet.

The Sierra Club is among a growing number of groups demanding that utilities and regulators proceed with caution in building power plants to serve data centers that may never materialize. Forecasted data-center power demand is already driving up utility rates for everyday customers in some parts of the country, and the new gas power plants now in utility plans aren’t even built yet.

“There is some load we’re naturally going to see—there’s population growth, lots of beneficial electrification we want to see happen,” said Noah Ver Beek, senior energy campaigns analyst at the Sierra Club and another coauthor of the report. ​“But we also want utilities to be realistic about load-growth projections.”

Unfortunately, booming demand growth gives utilities ​“more cover” to invest in polluting assets, Fogler said. Utilities earn guaranteed profits on the money they spend building power plants and grid infrastructure, which gives them an incentive to avoid questioning high-growth forecasts or seeking out lower-cost or less-polluting alternatives.

Some of the most aggressive fossil fuel expansions are planned for the Midwest and Southeast, including by Dominion Energy in Virginia, Duke Energy in North Carolina, and Georgia Power.

Even the handful of utilities that have previously earned high marks for clean-energy and coal-closure commitments in past ​“Dirty Truth” reports have slipped. Fogler highlighted the example of Indiana utility NIPSCO, which earned an ​“A” in the past four reports but only a ​“B” in the latest, largely due to its plan to rely on gas power plants to meet expected data-center demand.

NIPSCO has ​“no plans to pursue the high-load-growth scenario until they see contracts signed and progress made,” Fogler said—a prudent approach that avoids burdening customers with the costs of new power plants built for data centers that may never come online, she said. ​“The problem? Their high-load-growth scenario calls for all new gas. There should be more clean options.”

Most utilities are not capitalizing on the solar and wind tax credits that are set to disappear in mid-2026 under the megalaw passed by Republicans in Congress this summer, she said. Only a handful of utilities, such as Xcel Energy in Colorado and Minnesota, are accelerating their clean-energy deployments to take advantage of those tax credits. ​“We want more utilities to take that period of certainty and speed up what they’ve already planned.”

Going big on clean energy is also the only way to quickly add enough generation capacity to meet growing demand forecasts and contain rising utility costs, Ver Beek noted. Utilities and major tech companies are pinning their near-term capacity expansion plans on new gas plants, despite the yearslong manufacturing backlogs for the turbines that power those plants and rapidly rising turbine costs.

“From a cost perspective, from a climate perspective, we want to see utilities advocating for getting as much clean energy online as they can,” he said.

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Baltimore Mayor to Trump: Don’t Send Your Troops

When Brandon Scott took office in late 2020 as one of the youngest mayors in Baltimore’s history, he pledged to reduce the number of homicides and incidents of gun violence. That year, there were 335 reported homicides in the city of roughly 600,000 people, making it one of the most dangerous cities per capita in the US.

Scott began implementing a violence prevention strategy designed to get at the root causes of gun violence. It was a program he helped pass previously as city council president. And in the last few years, it’s worked.

Baltimore has been witnessing a remarkable drop in violent crime, especially homicides, since 2022. This year, the city has recorded fewer than 100 murders and violent crime rates are approaching all-time lows. But that progress doesn’t seem to matter to the White House. Last month, President Donald Trump listed the city as one of several led by Democratic mayors where he’s considering sending the National Guard, saying it’s needed to help address crime. So far, he’s sent troops to Los Angeles and Washington, and he recently announced plans to send them to Memphis. Baltimore could be next.

It’s a move that Scott says is not only unnecessary, but a distraction from the violence prevention strategy he helped set in motion.

“It’s very peculiar that this is when the president is choosing to say he needs to come in and save the city because it’s so unsafe, when in fact, when the president was in office during his first term, we had a lot more violence,” Scott says. “But the president didn’t say he was gonna send in troops then. The president didn’t say he was gonna help the city out then.”On this week’s episode of More To The Story, Scott talks to host Al Letson about what he thinks is really driving the Trump administration to send troops to Democratic-led cities, why Baltimore’s strategy to reduce gun violence appears to be working, and what his political future might look like.

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: Mayor Scott, how are you doing today?

Mayor Brandon Scott: I’m doing all right, brother. How are you today?

I am good, I am good. Let me tell you before we get started, I have such a deep, deep love of Baltimore, and I love the city, and the thing about Baltimore, especially when I was there a lot, The Wire had either was still on or it was going off. But I think that The Wire, which I think is one of the greatest TV shows ever made, but I think it had a specific viewpoint of Baltimore that after being there as long as I was, I just saw a completely different side that I think that people on the outside of Baltimore don’t really know, the joy, the people. It was just such a great time in my life. I’m wondering, as the mayor of it, do you feel like you are constantly fighting a misconception of the city from people outside of it?

Well, if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me about The Wire, I’d be the richest man in the world. But the truth is that we’ve always had to battle those kind of narratives, whether it be The Wire or homicide life on the street or the corner or whatever TV show that was filmed here. But I think it’s tied to something deeper, because when you think about Baltimore as this majority Black city, and you tie in to the history of this being the first place to have racial redlining, with the first redlining bill being passed literally in the office that I sit in every day, you have to understand it in a very different way. Because no one looks at New York, and the first thing that they think about in New York is NYPD Blue or New York Undercover or one of the 20,000 different mayor’s regions of Law & Order. But for Baltimore, that has always been what people have known because that’s what’s been fed to them about the city.

Yeah. And I mean you said this, but I think something we should talk about a little bit is that you were born and raised in Baltimore. Did you always know that you wanted to go into politics because it sounds like you were working in city hall when you were pretty young.

Yeah. I’m 41. This is my 18th year in city hall. I came to city hall at the age of 23 years old. First, as a staffer and then as an elected official at 27 on the city council. So I can actually retire from city government if I wanted to today. But I always knew that I wanted to be the mayor of Baltimore, and that’s really, it comes from my upbringing. I was a very, very young child. I saw my first shooting before my seventh birthday. Being that young and seeing something like that happen, it happened in my neighborhood, really changed my life.

So imagine growing up in the neighborhood where your neighborhood, it’s the center of the sports world. Every third Saturday in May for a horse race known as the Preakness, and then every other day of the year you’re not treated as human. That was my life, and said at a very young age. And why no one cared about what happened in our neighborhood. And my mom is only a Black mom can say to shut their child up, said, “If you want it to change, you have to do it yourself.” So I set out my life to do that at a very, very young age.

Yeah. Let’s talk about the change that has happened in Baltimore since you became mayor. How did you reduce crime rates? Because my understanding is that right now the data shows us that there is a 29.5% decline in homicides, and a 21% decrease in non-fatal shootings compared to last year. And if those numbers hold, this would be the third consecutive year of declining gun violence in the city.

Yeah, I think that what we laid out in 2021 was that we were going to look at gun violence in Baltimore in a different way. Because you know, were here for many years, we were under the zero tolerance era where basically if you were Black and breathing outside, then you could be arrested for basically just being there.
And when you think about Baltimore, for example, in 2003 when we had 91,000 arrests, we had 278 homicides. But the last year when we had significantly fewer arrests, we had 201 homicides, right? So you think about 278 homicides in 2004 with 91,000 arrests in the city of 600,000 versus 201 homicides in 2024 with 17,000 arrests because it’s never been about how many, but who and for what. And we understood that we had to look at gun violence in a different way, or what we were able to do is say that gun violence is a public health issue, and we will approach it as such.

No longer were we going to put the sole responsibility of curing gun violence on the backs of the women and men of our police department. Every agency would be involved, all the community would have to be involved if we were going to truly deal with this issue. It just so happened to be that as a council person, I passed a law that said that Baltimore had to have a comprehensive violence prevention plan and released that plan in 2021.

And when I said that we would reduce homicides by 15% from one year to the next, people literally laughed at me, said, “It was impossible.” And we did it through many different ways. First and foremost, we created and set up our group Violence Reduction Strategy, which is a focused deterrence model where we actually identified the small group of people who are the most likely to be the victim or perpetrator of gun violence and we focus on them.

We first go to them and give them a actual letter directly from me that says, “We know who you are, we know what you do. We want you to stay alive and be able to provide for you and your family, but you cannot do that doing what you are doing, and we will not allow you to continue to drive violence in our city.” Many of those individuals have taken us up on that, and some of them work for city government, some of them work for private companies and they’re doing well for their families.

Others did not heed that mandate to stop the violence. And then through my police department, and we went out and made arrest, turned them over to our state’s attorney and our attorney general for prosecution. But at the same time, we’re also having a historic investment into community violence intervention work where we pay people who used to be involved in their life of crime and violence to intercede and mediate conflicts to make sure that they don’t arise to a violent conflict.

We put $50 million of offer funding into that, and at the same time, we’re focused on guns in every way, going after gun traffickers. If you are trafficking weapons into the city of Baltimore, then we are going to go after you. If you are a gun store, we just won a historic lawsuit on a gun store, a $62 million judgment in favor of the city of Baltimore because this gun store was selling weapons, ghost guns to people without ID, without background checks into residents and individuals in Baltimore that were committing crimes. We sued Polymer80, the nation’s largest ghost gun company, ending their business not just in Baltimore, Maryland. And now the company itself is going out of business because we are focused on all of it. And then we’re also making the historic investments into our recreation and parks department growing their budget by 40% and putting more money into Baltimore City Public Schools than any administration before.

So what you’re laying out is such a comprehensive plan that usually, I mean the thing that you hear when it comes to violent cities or crime rates going up is basically like zero tolerance and law and order, and we’re just going to come down harder and arrest more people. But the version that you’ve laid out is more comprehensive and looking at… It feels like what you’re trying to get at is the reason why crime goes up and not necessarily crime itself. If you can figure out the reason, then you can stop the crime itself.

Yeah, it’s about understanding that there’s all and above, that there is no one solution. We have to, and we will hold people accountable who are committing acts of violence, who are trafficking weapons, who are peddling poison, doing all of those things. But we do not have to live under this false pretense that everybody that lives in these communities is violent, that everybody that lives in these communities is a criminal, but also because we know better, we have to do better. The numbers don’t lie.

They arrested everybody for anything for all those many years, but the numbers didn’t move, they didn’t budge. We now have significantly less violence with significantly less arrests because as my deputy mayor for public safety, who used to be the deputy police commissioner and acting police commissioner would say, “All arrests are equal.” One arrest of one gun offender who we know is a shooter, who we know commits acts of violence is worth a thousand times more than some simple arrest for someone for some minor infraction. And that’s what folks have to understand. That is never been about how many arrests, but about who and for what, and also that the conditions of these neighborhoods. That you have to invest in the people and the places that have been disinvested in on purpose because that’s how you get at the root of the issue.

Yeah. I’m curious, how did the different department heads, and I’m thinking specifically about the police and the police union, how did they respond to this drastic change in policing that you are championing?

Well, the good thing for us is that our police department had already moved away from zero tolerance. And really what they were looking for was someone to come up with a plan for how we were going to take it to the next level. I just happened to be the person to bring that, and being someone that’s been in city hall as long as I have, and who started out with many of the folks that are now in management and leadership in the police department, we started out as staffers together. So for example, my police commissioner and I have known and worked with each other now since 2010. So it was an easy sell for them, and quite frankly, it wouldn’t have been easy if it wasn’t because I’m the commander in chief. They have to follow my direct orders.

So tell me, how was it working with former governor Larry Hogan? My understanding is that at first he wasn’t quite sure of the young man from Baltimore.

Well, I obviously knew Governor Hogan before I got elected as mayor. I knew him as a council person, obviously, and as a city council president. The frustration for me was it took a long time for me to actually get a meeting with Governor Hogan. I reached out to Governor Hogan after winning the primary, which is because you lived there, is the only election that matters in Baltimore, and was told that, “Oh, he couldn’t talk to me about anything until after the general election.” And then after the general election, I still didn’t get a meeting with him until that January or February.

That was disappointing because all the while he’s talking about how the city doesn’t have a plan for violence and all of these things, but he’s refusing to meet with me about those things. Once he actually met with me about them, he committed the resources of the state to be partners in that work. But that was at the tail end of his time as governor, unfortunately. But now it’s a new day because I’ll be with my governor later today about violence. I talk to him every day. And the most important thing, the thing that we talk about the most is how to keep this work moving because it is the North Star for me, driving down violence in Baltimore.

The whole country is entering an unprecedented period where the President of the United States is sending the National Guard into cities, partly to back up ICE, but also because he believes that the only way to trample down violence is by sending in the military. It’s very obvious to me that all the places that he is targeting to send military action in the National Guard are cities that are governed by African-American mayors. And definitely Baltimore is on his list. I mean, several years ago he said something about Baltimore, as in no one wanted to live there in 2019, he trashed the city. And so with that knowledge, and what he is saying from the Oval Office in present day about Baltimore and threatening to come in, how are you preparing for that?

Listen, well, this is not new for Baltimore, right? The president has an obsession with the city of Baltimore for whatever reason. And what we know here, what we have to do is be prepared. We’ve been very clear and letting him know that we don’t need or want the National Guard. The governor said, “He’s not sending the Maryland National Guard here to Baltimore,” but we’ve also laid out very clearly what the president can do to help us continue these historic reductions.
I don’t want to lose that point because even though we had August that had the fewest amount of homicides in any August on record, and through today’s date that you and I are talking, we have the fewest amount of homicides of any year on record. You don’t hear me having a celebratory ways of remarks because we are focused on driving it down even further because those seven are seven too many for us, we still have two months violence in the city of Baltimore, and we want to continue to work it down so that one day it’s at zero. But it’s very peculiar that this is when the president is choosing to say he needs to come in and save the city because it’s so unsafe. When in fact, when the president was in office during his first term, we had a lot more violence.

We had over 300 homicides in those years, ’16, ’17, ’18, ’19, and ’20. But the president didn’t say he was going to send in troops then. The president didn’t say he was going to help the city out then, none of that happened during his first term, right? And I want folks to be very aware that they’re attacking these Black-leg cities, not just Baltimore, D.C., Chicago, all of them Oakland, that have historic reductions in violent crime because a few things is happening here.
One, they think that the American people are stupid and that he’ll come in and tag along to these already historic violence reductions and say, “Look what I did,” and that people will fall for it and say that he did it. Also, they are testing the limits of what the American people will allow them to do, when they give them an enemy, when they give them an issue, when they give them people to hate. And that’s what they’re doing here.

And we’ll be prepared for whatever legal action that we need to take and otherwise, but people need to see exactly what they’re doing here because why now? Why when we have historic lows in all of these places and let’s be very honest. And why is it that every one of us happens to be a Democratic Black mayor when there are Republican mayors in cities and Republican-led states that have higher amounts of violence that they’re just not talking about.

We have to be very mindful of what is happening right now because this is important to American democracy. But we’ve also offered up solutions that they could help us with right now. One, restoring the grants that they have cut to organizations and governments for violence reduction programs. Two, joining the fight and call for myself and mayors around this country to ban those guns, to ban Glock switches. And three, they could very well just say, “They’re going to repeal the Tiahrt Amendment that will allow local leaders to be able to”-

So the mayor’s call dropped right here as he was advocating for the repeal of the Tiahrt Amendment, which prohibits the ATF from releasing firearms information to local leaders.

I’m sorry. I don’t even know the last thing you heard, man, I’m so sorry. I was telling-

Yeah. Let me move to another question that works with all that other stuff, and that is, so I hear you on all the things that you’re doing, all the crime prevention, and how you are lowering the murder rates and lowering shootings, all of these amazing things that are happening in the city right now. How do you combat the misinformation and the disinformation about the city in a way that reaches people beyond the city? Because I guess what I’m getting at here is that from the biggest bully pulpit in the country, people who live in rural parts of the country or don’t live in Baltimore, they’re hearing that Baltimore is basically a hellhole, right?

I think that the irony of this is that prior to the president going off in August, on August 11th, actually my anniversary day, which is kind of funny, we actually had been going viral in Baltimore for their homicide reduction. His remarks have actually caused a lot of more people to even start sharing that information. And it’s really about communicating that out in many ways. Obviously now we have social media, obviously now we have the ability to do ads and all of those things in places so that people can see what’s happening here and then telling our own story. No longer are we going to let HBO or some other TV show or the president tell our story. We’re going to tell our own story. We’re going to acknowledge that we have a lot of work to do. But we’re also going to say, “We want y’all to know how much better we are today than we were 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 20 years ago.”

I think recently there’s been a, it’s a non-news story, but the news story about Governor Westmore going on vacation and things are happening in Maryland, and he’s not around. And so when I say, “It’s a non-story,” because I think it’s just so-

Ridiculous.

And ridiculous in the sense that we’re having conversation and the vice president, JD Vance like has gone on, I think at least four vacations, and nobody says anything about that. But if Westmore goes on vacation, it becomes a big story. If you are a Black leader, and if you are a Black city, there’s no level of excellence that you can reach that will keep you out of the crosshairs of people that want to bring you down.

No, it isn’t. I preached that to young, Black elected officials all the time, right? It’s actually, I don’t even tell people when I’m going on vacation. Ironically, when the president made his first statements about Baltimore, my wife and I were celebrating our anniversary in Mexico, and no one knew because we know what happens here, and it’s crazy. The governor went on vacation. Oh, my God. Oh, the conspiracy, oh, okay. People go on vacation. But this is directly tied to, unfortunately, there’s still deep levels of racism in this country because folks still think that if you’re a Black elected official, if you’re a woman, like, oh no, you don’t get to go on vacation, but it’s okay for the vice president to golf all the time. It’s okay for the president to golf all the time because the image of them golfing is what they expect of their white executives.

But Black people, Black men are supposed to work all day, every day, and it goes through all levels, right? Most notably, Sinclair Broadcasting Station here in Baltimore followed me to my flag football game and recorded and said, “Well, Mr. Mayor, things are going on in the city, and you’re playing flag football.” And I remember asking the reporter like, “Well, do you follow Governor Hogan when he goes to a bar or a restaurant? Did you follow any of the mayors a long time ago and ask them.”

For example, Governor O’Malley was in a band when he went to play at a local bar, did y’all follow them there? And they’re like, “No.” I’m like, “Well, why is this any different?” You should actually be proud that your mayor isn’t drinking. I don’t drink. I don’t eat meat, but I’m actually out here trying to keep myself in good shape.

But the reality is, is that for them, it’s about that I’m not supposed to be in the position in the first place. They’re supposed to be able to sit in a room, some rich white guys and determine who becomes the mayor of Baltimore. And now I’ve defeated them in that twice. And for me, I know every day I wake up, they are never going to stop trying to tear me down because they don’t think I should be here. They’re really jealous of the success that we’ve been able to have despite them, and I think the governor knows it very well. And he knows that he just has to ignore the foolishness and focus on making sure that he continues to be a great governor. Like the same thing that I’ll do as being a great mayor.

What’s your dream for Baltimore?

My dream for Baltimore is for Baltimore to be the best Baltimore it can be. And by that I mean a city that has significantly continued to reduce its gun violence problem, that has dealt with the inequities that we’ve had in our city, that keeps its authenticity, especially as we go through our projects and plan to eliminate vacant housing in Baltimore. We don’t want to push out a whole bunch of folks. We want to keep that Baltimore, this beautiful, Black diverse place where we are a little gritty. We’re not fancy. We want to keep all of that and just grow so this next generation, my children’s generation, are able to experience a Baltimore that no one in my generation has.

What’s next for you politically, after your time is done with being the mayor of Baltimore, where does that path lead you?

We don’t know. Right now that path is focused on being the best mayor I can be for Baltimore, the best husband I can be to my wife, the best father I can be to my children. We shall see. When folks ask me, “What will you run? What will you run for?” If you ask me what’s the thing I’m most likely to do, everyone knows that my congressman, Congressman Mfume literally gave me the confidence in my voice you need to speak. As a young child after having some surgeries on my throat when I really didn’t like talking anymore. And in the event that he would go off into the sunset, that is the position politically that I’m most likely to run for. But I don’t limit myself to that.

I don’t limit myself to elected office at all. I limit myself into being someone that’s always going to be working to benefit my people in my city and helping to improve lives. That could be me teaching. I could be running a school, teaching in Morgan State or copping, working strictly on gun violence, being a congressman, but as right now, it’s about being the mayor. And as you and I are talking today, that includes running for mayor again, but that could change.

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If Only Pete Hegseth’s Military Shaving Crusade Was Just Stupid

On September 17,Pete Hegseth—newly dubbed our Secretary of War—announced that any member of the US military who needs a shaving exemption for more than a year will be forced out of the service, tossing out a decades-old policy created for mainly Black and browntroops with pseudofolliculitis barbae, a skin condition that makes daily shaving lead to cuts, sores, and scarring.

“The Department must remain vigilant in maintaining the grooming standards which underpin the warrior ethos,” wrote Hegseth in an August 20 memo made public last week.

For years, the US military required members to have clean-shaven faces as a condition of service. However, amid the extensive drafting and recruitment of Black troops during the Vietnam War, the armed forces saw growing demand for “no-shave chits,” shaving waivers that covered pseudofolliculitis barbae, colloquially known as PFB or “razor bumps.” The condition affects at least 60 percent of Black men and causes painful pustules on a person’s face. If untreated, it can lead to infection, and in some cases, permanent scarring.

Hegseth’s order states that any service members in need of a shaving waiver will be required to start a medical treatment plan to “resolve” their PFB—and if they still need a waiver after a year of treatment, the US military will discharge them.

However, medical and military sources generally concur that the only reliable treatment for PFB is not shaving. Hegseth’s new policy practically guarantees an unfathomable wave of terminations, with Black service members likely to face the brunt. Does the secretary know who mainly benefits from the waivers? There’s almost no way he doesn’t.

For years, Black troops fought for policies that allowed them to thrive in the service—including around grooming. To Hegseth and the White House he serves, that’s the whole problem: a military with Black leadership, with women in senior roles, and without obstacles to a diverse officer corps is one in which white men have to take orders from the wrong kind.

The initiative falls in line with the Trump administration’s wider campaign to purge any inkling of diversity from federal ranks. As the Guardian recently reported, Trump’s layoffs of federal workers have disproportionately hit Black women, who—despite only making up 6 percent of the workforce—constitute 12 percent of reported federal government layoffs.

With more than 200,000 Black active-duty members serving in the military—historically one of the country’s few avenues of social mobility for the Black community—Hegseth grooming policy will no doubt have a devastating impact. That’s no accident.

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Who’s Part of Trump’s “Radical Left”? Maybe You.

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

Following the horrific murder of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump has blamed what he calls the “radical left” for political violence in the United States and has vowed to demolish it. Of course, Trump is peddling BS when he insists the left bears sole responsibility for violence while any emerging from the right is excusable. But his rhetoric never clarifies: Who is this “radical left” Trump seeks to stamp out? His use of this term has been rather elastic, affording him the leeway to pursue anyone he considers an opponent or detractor.

Even, possibly, you.

I asked Perplexity AI to help me determine when Trump first began assailing the “radical left.” It could not pinpoint the original instance, but the chatbot noted that during a press conference after the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in which one woman was killed—the event had prompted Trump to refer to “very fine people on both sides”—he remarked, “What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, at the alt-right? Do they have any assemblage of guilt?” At the time, ABC News reported, “It’s unclear what he meant by the ‘alt-left.’”

Before this audience of Kirk devotees, Trump insisted Democrats in charge of big cities were aligned with the “radical agenda” of the “radical left.”

During a June 22, 2020, speech at a conference held by Kirk’s Turning Point USA—in the wake of protests against police brutality that erupted across the country following the killing of George Floyd—Trump repeatedly referred to the “radical left.” He hailed the attendees for refusing “to kneel to the radical left.” He declared, “The radical left demands absolute conformity from every professor, researcher, reporter, journalist, corporation, entertainer, politician, campus speaker, and private citizen.” He asserted the “radical left” hate “our history, they hate our values, and they hate everything we prize as Americans.” And the “radical left,” he maintained, was “waging war on timeless American values like freedom of speech, which is what we’re just talking about. Anyone who dares to speak the truth is canceled, censored, de-platformed, fired, expelled, harassed, abused, boycotted, deprived of a livelihood, or even physically assaulted.”

Before this audience of Kirk devotees, Trump insisted Democrats in charge of big cities were aligned with the “radical agenda” of the “radical left.” Bedlam, he said, “will come to every city near you, every suburb and community in America, if the radical-left Democrats are put in charge.”

As he campaigned for reelection, he turned the “radical left” into his chief boogeyman. A few months later, in his acceptance speech at the GOP convention, Trump, looking to exploit the Floyd protests, which in some cities had been accompanied by looting and violence, once more leaned heavy into this “radical left” pitch. He brayed that the “election will decide whether we will defend the American way of life, or whether we allow a radical movement to completely dismantle and destroy it.” He excoriated Joe Biden, the Democrats’ nominee, for not possessing “the strength to stand up to wild-eyed Marxists like Bernie Sanders and his fellow radicals.” He warned that Biden was a partner of the “radical left” and that “if the radical left takes power, they will apply their disastrous policies to every city, town, and suburb in America.” Trump was essentially saying the Democrats were a key component of the “radical left.” And it was everywhere!

In four years, according to Trump, the Democrats had shifted from being lapdogs for 1-percenters to being in cahoots with communists. Quite the 180.

Trump’s conflation of the Democratic Party with the “radical left” was a dramatic shift from his 2016 acceptance speech, when he had lashed out at Hillary Clinton for being the “puppet” of “big business, elite media, and major donors.” In four years, according to Trump, the Democrats had shifted from being lapdogs for 1-percenters to being in cahoots with communists. Quite the 180.

During the post-2020 election stretch, when Trump was conniving to overturn the election results and subvert the republic, he relied on this trope to whip up his base and sell his lie. He blamed the “radical left” for having rigged the contest against him. At the speech he gave on January 6, 2021, which incited the insurrectionist attack on the Capitol, he proclaimed, “All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they’re doing. And stolen by the fake news media.” Fact-checkers who vetted his social media posts were also part of the “radical left,” he said. And he told the crowd, “The radical left knows exactly what they’re doing. They’re ruthless and it’s time that somebody did something about it.” Put simply, anyone who had a role in the free and fair election that he lost was a member of the “radical left.”

Demonizing an amorphous “radical left” and linking it to the Democrats did not win the election for Trump, but he stuck to this line of attack when he ran for the White House again. On Veterans Day in 2023, at a rally in New Hampshire, he gave a speech that historians compared to those of Hitler and Mussolini. “We pledge to you,” he bellowed, “that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” He added, “The real threat is not from the radical right. The real threat is from the radical left. It’s growing every day, every single day. The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within.”

After Vice President Kamala Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee in the summer of 2024, Trump blasted her as a “radical left lunatic.” Months later in an interview with Fox News, he raised the prospect of “radical left lunatics” disrupting the election and noted they could be “easily handled” by the National Guard or US military. He also branded Democrats like then-Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who led the first impeachment against Trump, as “lunatics” and part of “the enemy within.” He called them “more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries.”

Trump’s goal is to cast as wide a net as possible to vilify his critics and political foes. If Kamala Harris is a radical leftist, then just about every Democrat is a radical leftist—and a prime target for their new Red Scare.

It’s no shocker that Trump’s use of derogatory and dangerous language is imprecise. He and his MAGA henchmen rail against antifa—but they can’t define it. (Does it even have an office or PO box?) Last week, he proclaimed that it was a “major terrorist organization” and should be designated as such. On Monday, Trump signed an executive order labeling antifa a “domestic terrorist organization.” But the significance of this was unclear, given that antifa is not an organized group and the president does not have the legal authority to declare a domestic entity a terrorist group.

Obviously, Trump’s goal is to cast as wide a net as possible to vilify his critics and political foes. If Kamala Harris is a radical leftist, then just about every Democrat is a radical leftist—and a prime target for their new Red Scare. Trump is trying mightily to delegitimize the Democrats and all political opposition. White House aide Stephen Miller recently snarled on Fox that the Democratic Party “is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.” He called Democrats “evil.” Anyone associated with the party is the enemy deserving of Trump’s wrath.

This is an old playbook. Since the days of McCarthyism, the right has endeavored to portray liberals and Democrats as intimately tied to radicalism or godless communism. Nixon did that in the 1960s. During the 1980s, there was a cottage industry of conservative media outlets and nonprofits that concocted elaborate wire diagrams seeking to show that Soviet-funded organizations were connected to left-wing groups in the US that were tied to mainstream liberals and Democrats.

Right-wing commentator Glenn Beck did something similar during the Obama years, with chaotic chalkboard scribbles and flow charts that supposedly depicted a vast left-wing conspiracy that ran from the far left straight into the Oval Office with predictable detours involving billionaire philanthropist George Soros. (A gunman on his way to attack the offices of a foundation at the center of Beck’s byzantine conspiracy theory was stopped by police officers and apprehended after a furious shootout.) And Sarah Palin claimed Obama had been “palling around with terrorists.” Now Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and their MAGA conspirators claim they are going to smash the networks of the “radical left” and everyone to which it is linked.

Trump grouses that he’s the victim of witch hunts every time he’s the subject of an investigation. He now seems determined to launch his own, as part of a huge smear campaign that equates Democrats with violent extremists. When anyone he considers a political threat can be called the “radical left,” anyone can become a target of the assault to come.

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