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“Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

-- Chico Marx

News and Opinion

Israel’s Backers Keep Whining That They’re Losing Control Of The Narrative

Amnesty International is now calling Israel’s mass atrocity in Gaza “a live-streamed genocide” due to the way this nightmare is unfolding right in front of us on the screens of our devices around the world, and public support for Israel is plummeting in the United States.

Zionists are losing control of the narrative, and they know it. And they are not taking it well.

During a speech at a summit hosted by the Jewish News Syndicate earlier this week, former US senator Norm Coleman said that Jews are “the masters of the universe” and should use their power in Silicon Valley to control online information in order to win a “digital war”.

Coleman, who is Jewish, made the following remarks on Monday:

“A majority of Gen Z have an unfavorable impression of Israel. And, my friends, I think the reason for that is that we’re losing the digital war. They’re getting their information from TikTok… and we’re losing that war.

“And when you think about it, the masters of the universe are Jews! We’ve got Altman at OpenAI, we’ve got [Facebook founder Mark] Zuckerberg, we’ve got [Google founder] Sergey Brin, we’ve got a group across the board. Jan Koum, y’know, founded WhatsApp. It’s us.

“And we have to figure out a way to win the digital battle. We’ve got to get our digital sneakers on, so that the truth can prevail over the lies. And when we do that, the future of Israel will be stronger because a majority of all Americans will support Israel. We’ll make that happen, we have to make it happen.”

“The masters of the universe are Jews!” former US Sen. Norm Coleman proclaims at the Jerusalem JNS policy summit, calling on Jewish tech industry CEO’s to counteract Gen Z’s growing support for Palestine

(Coleman was a warm-up act for Netanyahu) pic.twitter.com/JCRqWxpsXR

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) April 28, 2025

If any anti-Zionist with a public profile had said Jews control Silicon Valley and use it to influence public opinion for the benefit of Israel, they’d be forcefully denounced by the entire western political-media class as a rabid antisemite. But a Jewish politician saying Jews must use their control over Silicon Valley to influence public opinion about Israel receives no attention from that same political-media class.

Interestingly, at that same event, Meta’s “Jewish Diaspora” chief Jordana Cutler noted that Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram “banned content claiming Zionists run the world or control the media.” Under Cutler’s own guidelines, the prior comments from her fellow attendee would have been banned if he had said them on Facebook instead of at the Jewish News Syndicate International Policy Summit.

Israel’s backers have been whining about losing control of the narrative for months.

In February, US Senator Lindsey Graham told the press at an event in Tel Aviv that in the Arab world “Israel has won the war on the ground, but they’ve lost it on television,” lamenting that “all they see is morning, noon and night attacks on the Palestinian people.”

The Arab world is seeing attacks on the Palestinian people morning noon and night because that is what’s happening. That is what the entire world is seeing.

"Israel has won the war on the ground, but they’ve lost it on television" — Senator Lindsey Graham in Israel pic.twitter.com/LHIMfzyfRw

— HOT SPOT (@HotSpotHotSpot) April 29, 2025

In a talk at the McCain Institute last year, then-Senator Mitt Romney told then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Congress supports banning TikTok because it shares information that turns people’s opinions against Israel, saying such information has a “very, very challenging effect on the narrative.”

After bemoaning Israel’s lack of success at “PR” regarding its Gaza assault, Romney just came right out and said that this was “why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature” — with “us” meaning himself and his fellow lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

“How this narrative has evolved, yeah, it’s a great question,” Blinken responded, saying that at the beginning of his career in Washington everyone was getting their information from television and physical newspapers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

“Now, of course, we are on an intravenous feed of information with new impulses, inputs every millisecond,” Blinken continued. “And of course, the way this has played out on social media has dominated the narrative. And you have a social media ecosystem environment in which context, history, facts get lost, and the emotion, the impact of images dominates. And we can’t — we can’t discount that, but I think it also has a very, very, very challenging effect on the narrative.”

Notice how he said the word “narrative” three times? That’s how empire managers talk to each other, because that’s how they think about everything. Everything is about narrative control. It doesn’t matter what happens as long as you can control how people think about what happens.

Incredible mask-off moment: Romney and Blinken say that the ban of TikTok was directly because "the emotion, the impact of images has a very challenging effect on the narrative", the narrative being "Israel's PR".pic.twitter.com/WkIGTAXG2X

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) May 6, 2024

During the university protests last year, Palantir CEO Alex Karp came right out and said that if those on the side of the protesters win the debate on this issue, the west will lose the ability to wage wars.

“We kind of just think these things that are happening, across college campuses especially, are like a sideshow — no, they are the show,” Karp said during his rant. “Because if we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the west, ever.”

In an audio recording published by the Tehran Times in 2023, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt is heard saying “We really have a TikTok problem” and calling for more aggressive online narrative operations to control public opinion about Israel among young people.

In the audio recording, whose authenticity was confirmed by the ADL, Greenblatt says the following:

“I also wanna point out that we have a major major major generational problem. All the polling that I’ve seen, ADL’s polling, ICC’s polling, independent polling suggests this is not a left or right gap, folks. The issue in United States’ support for Israel is not left and right: it is young and old. And the numbers of young people who think that Hamas’s you know massacre was justified is shockingly and terrifyingly high. And so we really have a Tik-Tok problem, a Gen-Z problem, that our community needs to put the same brains that gave us Taglit, the same brains that gave us all these other amazing innovations, need to put our energy toward this like, fast. Cause again like we’ve been chasing this left-right divide. It’s the wrong game. The real game is the next generation, and the Hamas and their accomplices, the useful idiots in the West, are falling in line in ways that are terrifying.”

“We think these things that are happening across college campuses are a sideshow. No, they are the show.”

“If we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the West, ever.”#Palantir CEO Alex Karp at #SCSPAIExpo2024 pic.twitter.com/MwQoDlSMFw

— Palantir (@PalantirTech) May 8, 2024

Israel’s backers are losing control of the narrative because there’s only so much that PR spin can do to convince people they’re not seeing what’s right in front of their eyes. If you’re strangling someone right in front of me there are no words you can say to me to convince me I’m not seeing someone being strangled, no matter how skillful you are at manipulation.

Actions speak louder than words. Talk is cheap. A picture is worth a thousand words. These aphorisms exist for a reason. Past a certain point there is only so much that mountains of verbiage can accomplish when people are seeing history’s first live-streamed genocide playing out right before their eyes.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. The average human life is dominated by mental stories, so if you can control the stories they are telling about what’s going on, you can control the humans.

Losing narrative control is losing real power. That’s why Israel’s supporters are growing increasingly anxious.

Israel has no duty to allow UN aid agency into Gaza, says US state department lawyer

Israel’s urgent security needs override its obligations to provide aid to Palestinians in Gaza, a US state department lawyer has told the international court of justice (ICJ). Joshua Simmons spoke as the United Nations’ top court hears a case on Israel’s ban on cooperation with Unwra, the UN’s main agency for Palestinians.

He said that Israel had no duty under the Geneva convention to cooperate specifically with Unrwa, due to its concerns about the organisation’s links to Hamas – an allegation that has been fiercely contested.

Simmons addressed the ICJ in The Hague on the third day of the hearing and the 60th day of Israel’s complete ban on any aid, food or water entering Gaza. The ban applies to all agencies, but in October the Knesset voted to end all cooperation with Unrwa specifically, bringing its operations to a halt.

Simmons insisted in his alloted half-hour presentation that the US did want to see aid enter Gaza, but denied there was any unqualified legal obligation for Israel to allow this, either as the occupying power or as a UN member state. He argued that an “expansive” ruling by the ICJ setting out Israel’s obligations and any remedies would be damaging to the credibility of international law. ...

He said the only issues to be addressed were whether Israel was obliged under the law of occupation to cooperate with a third party such as Unrwa to provide aid, and whether Israel had been directed to supply aid by the UN security council.

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Why is the US at War with Yemen?

UNRWA Chief Accuses Israel of Torturing Staff as US Backs Ban on Agency at World Court

As the International Court of Justice this week weighs an Israeli ban on a United Nations agency that provides lifesaving aid in Gaza, the program's leader called out attacks on its workers while the United States defended Israel—the recipient of billions of dollars in U.S. military assistance.

The ICJ is holding a week of hearings in The Hague, Netherlands following the U.N. General Assembly's December passage of a Norwegian-led resolution asking the tribunal, which is also known as the World Court, for an advisory opinion on Israel's legal obligation to "ensure and facilitate the unhindered provision of urgently needed supplies essential to the survival of the Palestinian civilian population."

Among the 38 nations and three regional blocs scheduled to address the 15 ICJ judges, only the United States and Hungary have so far defended Israel, whose forces have killed nearly 300 United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) workers during their nearly 19-month annihilation of Gaza.

"An occupational power retains a margin of appreciation concerning which relief schemes to permit," U.S. State Department legal adviser Joshua Simmons argued before the court Wednesday, referring to Israel's 58-year occupation of Palestine, which the ICJ ruled an illegal form of apartheid in a June 2024 advisory opinion.

"Even if an organization offering relief is an impartial humanitarian organization, and even if it is a major actor, occupation law does not compel an occupational power to allow and facilitate that specific actor's relief operations," Simmons continued, noting "serious concerns about UNRWA's impartiality, including information that Hamas has used UNRWA facilities and that UNRWA staff participated in the October 7th terrorist attack against Israel" in 2023.

"Given these concerns, it is clear that Israel has no obligation to permit UNRWA specifically to provide humanitarian assistance," Simmons added. "UNRWA is not the only option for providing humanitarian assistance in Gaza."

In what UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini described at the time as an act of "reverse due process," the agency fired nine employees in February 2024 following Israeli allegations that they were involved in the Hamas-led attack on Israel in which more than 1,100 Israelis were killed and 251 Israeli and foreign survivors were kidnapped.

Lazzarini admitted to terminating the staffers without due process or an adequate investigation of Israel's claims. A subsequent probe by the U.N. Office of Oversight Services "was not able to independently authenticate information used by Israel to support the allegations."

On Tuesday, Lazzarini reminded the world that "over 50 UNRWA staff—among them teachers, doctors, social workers—have been detained and abused" by Israeli forces since October 2023.

“I wished for death to end the nightmare I was living through”.

Received this awful testimony from a colleague who was rounded up in #Gaza tortured while in Israeli detention and finally released.

For @UNRWA staff humanitarian duty is met with brutality.
Since the start of…

— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) April 29, 2025

"They have been treated in the most shocking and inhumane way," he continued. "They reported being beaten up and used as human shields. They were subjected to sleep deprivation, humiliation, threats of harm to them and their families, and attacks by dogs. Many were subjected to forced confessions."

Those forced confessions spurred numerous nations including the United States to cut off funding to UNRWA. Almost all of the countries have since restored funding as Israel's claims have been debunked or questioned over a lack of evidence.

The U.S.—which has not restored funding for UNRWA—earlier this week abandoned its long-standing position that the body is immune from lawsuits, opening the door for cases by October 7 survivors and victims' relatives stemming from dubious claims of agency involvement in the attack.

In addition to accusing Israeli troops of torturing its staffers, UNRWA has also documented tortures allegedly suffered by Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, including interrupted drowning—also known as waterboarding—being shot in the knees with nail guns, sexual abuse of both men and women, and being sodomized with electric batons. The Israel Defense Forces is investigating dozens of in-custody deaths, many of them at the notorious Sde Teiman base in the Negev Desert.

While Israel's physical assault on Gaza has killed hundreds of UNRWA workers, its diplomatic war on the U.N. has seen the agency banned from operating in Palestine and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres declared "persona non grata" in Israel after he included Israel on his 2024 "list of shame" of countries and armed groups that kill and injure children during wartime.

The U.S.-backed 572-day war waged by the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is a fugitive from the International Criminal Court—has left more than 184,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Nearly all of the embattled enclave's more than 2 million people have been forcibly displaced and Israel's "complete siege" of the coastal strip has fueled widespread starvation and illness.

This week's ICJ hearing comes amid the tribunal's ongoing genocide case against Israel, which was brought by South Africa and is backed by dozens of nations either individually or via regional blocs. The court has issued three provisional orders in the case, all of which Israel has been accused of flouting.

Responding to the U.S. intervention in this week's ICJ hearings, Palestinian Ambassador to the Netherlands Ammar Hijazi told Middle East Eye that "everybody knows that Israel is using humanitarian aid as a weapon of war and is starving the population in Gaza because of that."

U.N. agencies and international humanitarian groups have warned in recent days of the imminent risk of renewed famine in Gaza as food stocks run out.

"The U.S. intervention is very narrow in its scope, when it highlights the rights of an occupying power but ignores the so many layers of duties of that occupying power that Israel is in violation of," Hijazi added.

Among the countries defending UNRWA during Wednesday's ICJ session were Indonesia and Russia, which is currently waging a war against Ukraine. Indonesian Foreign Minister Sugiono affirmed "the Palestinian people's right to self-determination," while Maksim Musikhin, legal director of Russia's Foreign Ministry, argued that "international law should be respected by Israel" and that UNRWA deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.

FREE SPEECH WIN! Judge Releases Pro-Palestinian Columbia Student!

‘Weaponizing’ Food – Over 65,000 Gaza Children Hospitalized for Malnutrition

Gaza’s Government Media Office accused Israel on Monday of exacerbating Palestinian children’s suffering through its ongoing genocide and blockade, using starvation as a “systematic” weapon of war in the enclave.

The Gaza Media Office accused Israel of worsening Palestinian children's suffering through its ongoing genocide and blockade, causing acute malnutrition in over 65,000 hospitalized children amid widespread hunger https://t.co/RugW9KQk3v pic.twitter.com/Ip8dCpKq0W

— Anadolu English (@anadoluagency) April 29, 2025

Israel is “using starvation and thirst as systematic weapons of war against civilians, in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law,” the office said in a statement cited by the Anadolu news agency. ...

The situation has led to widespread acute malnutrition affecting more than 65,000 hospitalized children out of 1.1 million facing daily hunger, the report noted.

Yemeni People in State of "Terror" After 1,000+ U.S. Airstrikes Kill Hundreds: Helen Lackner

Deadly Syria clashes continue for second day outside Damascus

At least 16 civilians and security officials have been killed in clashes in a town near Damascus, Syria’s interior ministry reported, the second consecutive day of fighting in Druze-majority areas around Syria’s capital. Reports on Wednesday said fighting had started overnight in the town of Ashrafiah Sahnaya, south-west of Damascus, after unknown gunmen attacked a security checkpoint. An attack on the Druze-majority Damascus suburb of Jaramana a day earlier left at least 10 people dead, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Residents reported hearing gunfire, explosions and shelling throughout Wednesday morning. The security forces closed off roads leading to the area and sent reinforcements in an attempt to stop the fighting.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, also announced that Israeli forces had struck an “extremist group that was preparing to attack the Druze population south of Damascus”. A second Israeli strike killed a member of Syria’s security forces outside Damascus and Israel’s military chief of staff ordered preparations to attack Syrian government targets “if the violence against the Druze did not stop”.

Israel has said it will protect the Druze population in southern Syria, an offer that Syrian Druze have said they did not ask for.

Aaron Maté : Can Trump’s Ukraine Negotiations Bring Peace?

US and Ukraine sign minerals deal that solidifies investment in Kyiv’s defense against Russia

The US and Kyiv have signed an agreement to share profits and royalties from the future sale of Ukrainian minerals and rare earths, sealing a deal that Donald Trump has said will provide an economic incentive for the US to continue to invest in Ukraine’s defense and its reconstruction after he brokers a peace deal with Russia.

The minerals deal, which has been the subject of tense negotiations for months and nearly fell through hours before it was signed, will establish a US-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund that the Trump administration has said will begin to repay an estimated $175bn in aid provided to Ukraine since the beginning of the war.

“This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine over the long term,” said Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, in a statement.

“President Trump envisioned this partnership between the American people and the Ukrainian people to show both sides’ commitment to lasting peace and prosperity in Ukraine. And to be clear, no state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.”

Ukraine’s first deputy prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, confirmed in a social media post that she had signed the agreement on Wednesday. “Together with the United States, we are creating the fund that will attract global investment into our country,” she wrote. The deal still needs to be approved by Ukraine’s parliament.

Russia Seeks Ukraine Victory, Deploys 2 New Armies; Gives Up On Talks; US Opts To Invest In Ukraine

Trump DOJ Adopts Policy Permitting Journalist Arrests

United States Attorney General Pam Bondi ended a Justice Department (DOJ) policy that explicitly discouraged federal prosecutors from forcing journalists to reveal their sources and other sensitive information, including information obtained from potential leaks. With new guidelines, members of the news media who refuse to cooperate with prosecutors could be arrested for contempt. If accused of contempt, they could be fined or jailed.

The move by Bondi comes as Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has “referred” three alleged “intelligence leakers” to the DOJ for criminal prosecution. According to Gabbard, one of those individuals allegedly leaked to the Washington Post. The policy change effectively gives the green light to prosecutors to subpoena Post reporters and other staff.

In October 2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland adopted changes to “news media guidelines” that were celebrated by journalist associations and press freedom groups. As the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) described, for the first time, guidelines prohibited prosecutors “from using subpoenas or other investigative tools against journalists who possess and publish classified information obtained in newsgathering, with only narrow exceptions.”

On April 25, 2025, Bondi issued a memo [PDF] that voided those changes. The memo informs all DOJ employees that members of the news media “must answer subpoenas,” and it also applied to court orders and search warrants intended to "compel the production of information and testimony.” Bondi will approve all “efforts to question or arrest members of the news media.”

Michael Hudson and Yanis Varoufakis with Ann Pettifor on Economic and Political Paradigm Changes

Transcript at link.

US economy shrinks in first quarter of Trump 2.0 amid sweeping tariffs

The US economy shrank in the first three months of the year, according to official data, triggering fears of an American recession and a global economic slowdown. Donald Trump, who returned to the White House promising to “make America great again”, sought to blame Joe Biden for the figure.

However, economists said it was largely driven by an unprecedented surge in imports, as consumers and companies braced for the president to impose his controversial wave of tariffs

“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” Trump wrote on social media, adding that the contraction “has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”

Democrats argued the figures were a damning verdict on the new administration’s handling of the economy. Senator Jeff Merkley said: “Trump has been in office for only 100 days, and costs, chaos and corruption are already on the rise. The economy is slowing, prices are going up, and middle-class families are feeling the pinch.”

Gross domestic product (GDP), a key measure of the US economy, contracted by 0.3% in the first quarter of the year, down from growth of 2.4% in the last quarter of 2024. The contraction – the first since the start of 2022 – puts the US on the brink of a technical recession, defined by two quarters of negative growth.

UPS cites Trump tariffs as it announces expected layoffs of 20,000 workers

The United Parcel Service (UPS) is expected to cut about 20,000 jobs in 2025 as a part of a larger plan to reduce costs and increase profit, citing “changes in the global trade policy and new or increased tariffs”.

UPS announced the layoffs on Tuesday in its first quarter earnings report. The parcel delivery service said it made consolidated revenues of $21.5bn, compared with $21.7bn about the same time a year ago. Additionally, the company said it would be shuttering 73 leased and owned buildings by the end of June of this year. ...

The service currently has roughly 490,000 employees, about 330,000 of whom are members of the Teamsters union. Last year, UPS said it cut its workforce by 12,000 jobs. In Tuesday’s report, the company said it planned to make these latest reductions to its “operational workforce”, or those who are directly involved in package sorting, transport and delivery.

The job cuts come as Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs are discouraging some UPS customers from shipping as many goods, and Americans are anticipating continuous impact on US and global trade. The company cited “current macro-economic uncertainty” as preventing it from providing any updates to its previously issued forecasts for revenue and full-year outlook.

US Postal Service Now Aiding Trump's Mass Deportation Effort

The United States Postal Service has joined the ranks of federal agencies that are cooperating with President Donald Trump's mass deportation operation that's sent hundreds of people to a foreign prison without due process and deported more than one young U.S. citizen with cancer.

As The Washington Post reported Tuesday, leaders of the Postal Inspection Service—the USPS law enforcement arm that's more accustomed to investigating threats against mail carriers and contraband sent through the mail—agreed to participate in Trump's deportation campaign amid threats from the administration that it could take control of USPS.

Administration officials moved to oust Postmaster General Louis DeJoy last month, and Trump has discussed the idea of privatizing the agency and bringing it under the control of the Department of Commerce.

"We want to play well in the sandbox," an email from the inspection service said after a meeting with immigration officials, according to the Post.

So far, that has included postal inspectors' participation in an immigration raid in Colorado Springs on Sunday, according to a video posted on social media by the local Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) office, which also showed at least one official from the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) criminal investigation unit. More than 100 undocumented immigrants were arrested in the raid.

"Is there a single government agency or service left that hasn't fully embraced fascism?" asked one critic on Bluesky.

Trump signed an executive order shortly after taking office directing all federal law enforcement agencies to take part in locating and deporting undocumented immigrants. Earlier this month, immigrant rights and privacy advocates were outraged at the news that the IRS would begin cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by allowing it to access taxpayer data.

In the case of the USPS law enforcement arm, immigration officials are working with postal inspectors to access photographs of the outside of envelopes and packages and the postal agency's surveillance systems, including credit card data and mail tracking information, to help locate undocumented immigrants.

Postal inspectors have previously taken part in federal law enforcement operations, but this marks the first time they have been involved in immigration enforcement.

One source who remained anonymous for fear of retribution told the Post that the Postal Inspection Service is "very, very nervous" about its new involvement, but leaders "seem to be trying to placate Trump by getting involved with things they think he'd like."

"But it's complete overreach," they said. "This is the Postal Service. Why are they involved in deporting people?"

Jonathan Cohn of the grassroots group Progressive Mass said the new development at USPS is indicative of the Trump administration "weaponizing every arm of the federal government to commit state terror against the population."

Trump Says He CAN But WON’T Bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia Back From El Salvador

Trump officials contacted El Salvador president about Kilmar Ábrego García, sources say

The Trump administration has been in touch directly with the Salvadorian president Nayib Bukele in recent days about the detention of Kilmar Ábrego García, the man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, according to two people familiar with the matter. The nature of the discussion and its purpose was not clear because multiple Trump officials have said the administration was not interested in his coming back to the US despite the US supreme court ordering it to “facilitate” Ábrego García’s release.

The contacts produced no new developments after Bukele rejected the outreach, the people said. The supreme court had ordered the administration to return Ábrego García to the US so that he would face immigration proceedings as he would have, had he not been sent to El Salvador.

The discussions appeared to be an effort by the Trump administration to window dress the underlying legal case and build a paper trail it could reference before the US district judge Paula Xinis, who previously ruled that Donald Trump raising the matter in the Oval Office was insufficient.

Ábrego García has since been moved out of Cecot, the mega-prison officials known as the terrorism confinement center, to another prison in El Salvador since the supreme court ruling which the administration has repeatedly tried to manufacture uncertainty around or otherwise misrepresent. The recalcitrance from the US administration to comply has been on display for weeks as senior Trump advisers have become increasingly determined to use it as a case to test the extent of presidential power and its boast that the courts have no practical way to ensure quick compliance with orders.

Pritzker REBUKES "Do Nothing" Dems, Wants "NO PEACE" for Republicans

Review of first 100 Days of Trump: Tariffs, Israel, Free Speech, Wars & More

Norwegian corporation considers suing Trump administration over halted US windfarm

Norway’s state energy company may take Donald Trump’s administration to court after it ordered an “unprecedented” halt to a $2.5bn (£1.87bn) windfarm project off the coast of New York.

Equinor is considering its legal options after the US interior secretary, Doug Burgum, ordered the company to “immediately halt all construction activities” on an offshore windfarm last month.

Equinor is understood to have spent almost $2bn on the Empire windfarm project, which is almost a third complete and was expected to power the equivalent of 500,000 US homes once operating in 2027.

Anders Opedal, the chief executive of Equinor, said: “We have invested in Empire Wind after obtaining all necessary approvals, and the order to halt work now is unprecedented and in our view unlawful. We seek to engage directly with the US administration to clarify the matter and are considering our legal options.”

The company, which is majority-owned by the Norwegian government, has a 35-year history of developing energy projects in the US. It estimates it has invested more than $60bn in US oil, gas and renewables projects.

Powerful earthquake could raise Pacific north-west sea levels ‘dramatically’

A massive earthquake in the Pacific north-west could rapidly transform areas of the coast from northern California to Washington, causing swaths of land to quickly sink, “dramatically” raising sea level and increasing the flood risk to communities. That’s according to a new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examining the potential impact of the “big one”, a powerful quake along the Cascadia fault that stretches from Canada to California.

The region has long braced for such an event, which would unleash a major tsunami, causing widespread destruction and potentially killing tens of thousands of people. A major earthquake could cause land along the coast to sink more than six feet and significantly expand the coastal floodplain with “lasting impacts to coastal populations, infrastructure, and ecosystems”, according the study. There is a 15% chance of an earthquake greater than 8.0 magnitude on the fault in the next 50 years, the study states.

“The expansion of the coastal floodplain following a Cascadia subduction zone earthquake has not been previously quantified, and the impacts to land use could significantly increase the timeline to recovery,” said Tina Dura, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of geosciences at Virginia Tech, told a university publication.

While climate-driven sea level rise happens gradually, these changes would unfold in an instant and persist over decades to centuries, Dura and the study’s other authors write. The most significant impacts would occur in “densely populated” parts of southern Washington, northern Oregon and northern California. And if the next major earthquake took place in 2100 – there is a 29% chance of one greater than 8.0 magnitude by then – with climate-driven sea level rise, some “low-lying” areas along the fault might never recover, according to the study.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

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A Little Night Music

Doug Macleod - Who is driving this bus

Doug MacLeod - Vanetta

Doug MacLeod - Home Cooking

Doug Macleod - East Carolina Woman

Doug MacLeod - Travel On

Doug MacLeod - Black Nights

Doug MacLeod - Plaquemine

Doug MacLeod - [If You Going to The] Dog House

Doug MacLeod - Grease In My Gravy