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"You don’t have journalists over there anymore, what they have is public relations people. That’s what they have over in America now. Two-hundred and fifty thousand people in public relations. And a dwindling number of actual reporters and journalists."

-- Robert Crumb

News and Opinion

Israeli Officials Explain Balancing Act Between Overt Genocide And Maintaining Western Support

One of the talking points Israel apologists like to regurgitate is that Israel can’t possibly be acting with genocidal intent in Gaza, because if they had wanted to exterminate the Palestinians they could have easily done so in a matter of days.

As luck would have it, leaders from the Israeli government have just helpfully come out and debunked that talking point with a few shockingly frank public admissions.

Explaining the decision to allow a minuscule amount of aid into Gaza after months of deliberate starvation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel is now allowing “minimal humanitarian aid” on the insistence of western officials so that they will support Israel’s murderous operation to conquer the enclave.

Jeremy Scahill reports the following for Drop Site News:

“We’re going to take control of all the Gaza Strip,” Netanyahu vowed Monday in a video released by his office announcing that Israel would begin delivering “minimal humanitarian aid: food and medicine only.” Netanyahu claimed that international pressure, including from pro-Israel Republican senators and the White House, required the appearance of humanitarian intervention. “Our best friends in the world — senators I know as strong supporters of Israel — have warned that they cannot support us if images of mass starvation emerge,” he said. “They come to me and say, ‘We’ll give you all the help you need to win the war… but we can’t be receiving pictures of famine,’” Netanyahu added. To continue the war of annihilation, he asserted, “We need to do it in a way that they won’t stop us.”

Four rice crackers (31 grams) per person is the equivalent of how much aid Israel allowed into Gaza today after 78 days of full starvation

This isn't aid, it's a PR stunt to buy time for genocide; to "annihilate everything that is left of Gaza" as Smotrich put it bluntly! pic.twitter.com/zVkVMCFpu6

— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) May 19, 2025

As usual, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich went even further in saying the quiet part out loud and giving the whole game away, explaining that Israel is providing just enough aid to maintain western support and avoid war crimes charges while advancing its ethnic cleansing operation in the Gaza Strip, boasting about the government’s skillfulness in “navigating” that line.

Some choice Smotrich quotes, courtesy of the aforementioned Drop Site News write-up:

Smotrich said the aid scheme would allow “our friends in the world to continue to provide us with an international umbrella of protection against the Security Council and the Hague Tribunal, and for us to continue to fight, God willing, until victory.”

“The [aid] that will enter Gaza in the coming days is the tiniest amount. A handful of bakeries that will hand out pita bread to people in public kitchens. People in Gaza will get a pita and a food plate, and that’s it. Exactly what we are seeing in the videos: people standing in line and waiting to have someone serve them, with some soup plate.”

“Truth be told, until the last of the hostages returns, we should also not let water into the Gaza Strip. But the reality is that if we do that, the world will force us to halt the war immediately, and to lose. It would be winning the battle, and losing the war. I’m committed to winning the war.”

“We are disassembling Gaza, and leaving it as piles of rubble, with total destruction [which has] no precedent globally. And the world isn’t stopping us. There are pressures. There are those who attack [us]; they are trying to [make us] stop; they are not succeeding. You know why they aren’t succeeding? Because we are navigating [the campaign] responsibly and wisely, and that’s how we’ll continue to do [it].”

Smotrich said that the Israeli forces are initiating a campaign to force Palestinians into the south of Gaza “and from there, God willing, to third countries, as part of President Trump’s plan. This is a change of the course of history — nothing less.”

Smotrich also praised the IDF for deliberately targeting civilians and civil infrastructure, saying “The IDF is finally conducting a campaign against the civilian rule of Hamas… eliminating ministers, officials, money changers, and figures in the economic and governmental apparatus.”

Smotrich: Gaza Aid Is Just Enough to Avoid ‘War Crimes’ Charges While We ‘Annihilate’ the Strip

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich gave a speech Monday defending Israel’s strategy of mass devastation in Gaza, saying humanitarian aid is only being allowed in “so the… pic.twitter.com/bhsUCf7Kq4

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) May 19, 2025

So there you have it, spelled out in plain language. There is no need to wonder why Israel has been dragging out its genocidal atrocities over a year and a half instead of just brazenly annihilating all the Palestinians in one swift scorched-earth campaign. Israel has told us why. They have opted for their slow-motion strangulation approach because that’s what’s necessary to maintain essential western support and avoid war crimes tribunals.

This comes as the governments of France, Canada and the UK publicly issue a warning to Israel saying that they may begin imposing targeted sanctions on Tel Aviv if it does not begin allowing in more aid to Gaza and curbing the abuses in the West Bank. So Israel is currently acutely aware that it is walking a delicate line between (A) making Gaza an unlivable hellhole for Palestinians and (B) maintaining western support. So it is making the smallest concessions it thinks it can get away with in order to keep both A and B.

The western pushback against Israel’s criminality has thus far been feeble, pathetic, and entirely inadequate. Australia’s denunciation of Israel’s starvation warfare is even more toothless than that of France, the UK and Canada. But we are seeing some movement, which shows that these western governments are not entirely unresponsive to internal pressures from their citizenry.

I just saw a tweet from the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi which reads as follows:

“Something is happening. The number of government officials from around the world who I’ve heard in private conversations call Israel’s slaughter in Gaza a genocide — without qualifications and caveats — has increased dramatically in just the past weeks. The dam is breaking.”

Keep pushing.

Matt Hoh : Who Will Stop Netanyahu’s Slaughter?

Israel still blocking aid for Gaza despite promise to lift siege, says UN

Two days after Benjamin Netanyahu announced he was lifting the siege of Gaza, Israel is still blocking food from reaching starving Palestinians, the UN has said, as the leader of the country’s centre-left Democrats party said his country was becoming a pariah nation that “kills babies as a hobby”.

Only five trucks of aid had reached Gaza by Tuesday afternoon and aid workers had not been given permission to distribute even that token shipment, Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office (Ocha) told a Geneva press briefing. Israeli authorities have approved “around 100” other trucks to enter Gaza but not yet let them cross, he said. Even that shipment would do little to reduce widespread hunger after 11 weeks of near total siege; it is just a fifth of what reached Gaza daily before the war, when people were well-fed.

Israeli officials responsible for aid distribution in Gaza said 93 trucks had entered Gaza on Tuesday but did not respond to questions about whether the food and medicines they carried had been authorised for distribution. Looming famine in the territory has provoked international outrage and heavy diplomatic pressure on Israel’s prime minister to allow food to reach more than 2 million people trapped in Gaza. ...

Yair Golan, the leader of the opposition Democrats who served as deputy chief of staff for Israel’s military before entering politics, said that after an unjustifiably brutal campaign, much of the damage had already been done. Netanyahu’s government was making the country as isolated as apartheid-era South Africa, he told Reshet Bet radio. “A sane country doesn’t engage in fighting against civilians, doesn’t kill babies as a hobby and doesn’t set the expulsion of a population as a goal,” he said.

Netanyahu attacked Golan’s comments as “contemptible antisemitic blood libels against IDF soldiers and the state of Israel”, but Golan later doubled down on his position in a press conference.

UK suspends trade talks with Israel and attacks ‘repellent’ extremism

UK-Israeli relations have plunged to their worst state for decades after the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, suspended negotiations over a new free trade deal, saying Israel’s cabinet ministers’ calls to “purify Gaza” by expelling Palestinians were repellent, monstrous and extremist. He also said wider talks about a future bilateral strategic roadmap with Israel were being reviewed.

Lammy condemned Israel’s refusal to allow thousands of aid trucks access to starving Palestinians and said Israel’s treatment of Palestinians was “an affront to the values of the British people” and “incompatible with the principles that underpin the UK-Israeli bilateral relationship”.

At the same time, EU foreign ministers, meeting in Brussels, decided to review the bloc’s trade agreement with Israel after a request from the Dutch foreign minister, Caspar Veldkamp. Seventeen of the 27 states backed the move. The EU is Israel’s biggest trading partner, accounting for 32% of Israel’s total trade in goods in 2024. Lammy, unleashing language he has not used since the latest Gaza conflict began, said the further planned major military incursion into Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces was “morally unjustifiable, wholly disproportionate and utterly counterproductive”. As the foreign secretary made his opening remarks in the Commons, backbenchers shouted “genocide”. ...

Israel’s foreign ministry accused the UK of having an anti-Israel obsession. ...

But many Labour backbenchers in the Commons found a gulf between Lammy’s rhetoric and the government’s actions limited to a symbolic suspending of talks on a free trade deal. Backbenchers including many Tories called for a tightening of controls of UK arms exports to Israel, recognition of the state of Palestine at a UN conference next month and a full ban on Israeli trade. Lammy said further concrete action would be considered but in conjunction with allies.

UN Warns 14,000 Babies in Gaza Could Die in 48 Hours Without True Lift of Israeli Blockade

The United Nations estimated that the Netanyahu government's continued starvation of more than 2 million Palestinians could kill up to 14,000 infants in the next two days without a serious influx of aid.

News outlets have reported since Monday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu allowed five aid trucks carrying baby food and other nutritional aid into the besieged enclave—but humanitarian experts and workers have decried the arrival of the aid as "a trickle among a sea of need."

Tom Fletcher, under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs for the United Nations, said the tiny amount of aid was a "drop in the ocean" in a bombarded enclave where food security experts announced earlier this month that nearly a quarter of a million people are facing "extreme deprivation of food" and the entire population has "very high" levels of acute malnutrition and excess mortality.

While many medical workers have been killed in Israeli bombings, Fletcher told the BBC's Radio 4 "Today" program that teams have assessed that 14,000 infants are likely to die within 48 hours if food aid can't reach them. The small amount of trucks allowed in through the Karem Abu Salem crossing Monday—a fraction of the 600 per day that provided food, medications, water, and other aid to Palestinians during the recent cease-fire—have yet to actually reach civilians.

Aid agencies estimated before that 500-600 trucks were needed per day to meet the minimum need in Gaza, which has been under Israel’s total blockade for almost three months.

They let in 5 trucks. Five. pic.twitter.com/oqygyGsNiv

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) May 19, 2025

On Tuesday, 100 more U.N. trucks were given clearance to enter Gaza. Fletcher said humanitarian workers fear potential looting of aid trucks due to the chaotic, desperate situation faced by Palestinians.

The current blockade began March 2, and international humanitarian groups operating in Gaza have exhausted their reserves of food aid over the past 79 days.

"For over 70 days Israel has been starving the people of Gaza, depriving them of food, water, medicine, and essential supplies while escalating its cruel and indiscriminate bombing campaign," said Wassem Mushtaha, Gaza response lead for Oxfam. "Two million people are on the brink of famine, and they are not just starving, but also traumatized, sick, and displaced from their homes."

"The limited entry of aid into Gaza cannot be mistaken for meaningful progress, especially alongside the expansion of Israel's brutal bombing campaign across the Gaza Strip," said Mushtaha. "It is not a turning point, but at best a narrow concession that seems to reflect mounting international pressure."

The continued blockade on effectively all humanitarian aid prompted the United Kingdom, Canada, and France to issue a joint statement Monday saying that "the level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable" and threatening "targeted sanctions."

On Tuesday, U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy told Parliament that the government had suspended trade negotiations over Netanyahu's blockade and plan to expand military operations across Gaza.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said Tuesday that the country also supports a review of the European Union's trade relationship with Gaza.

"The blind violence and the blockade of humanitarian aid by the Israeli government have turned the enclave into a death trap, not to say a cemetery," Barrot said. "This must stop... It is an absolute violation of all the rules of international law."

The European leaders' comments were a departure from many Western governments' insistence since 2023 that Israel is operating in self-defense and that it is targeting Hamas in retaliation for the group's attack on October 7, 2023. Humanitarian groups, rights experts, and progressive lawmakers have called on Western governments to end their support for Israel, which faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.

Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam's policy lead in the occupied Palestinian territory and Gaza, said Tuesday that "what is urgently needed is for all crossings to be opened to allow a full and proper humanitarian response that allows real access, with safe corridors and respect for international humanitarian law."

"A token convoy does not equal progress, only sustained, accountable access through every crossing will end the impunity that keeps aid from flowing," said Khalidi. "We must also see an end to the relentless bombing and attacks on Palestinian people, with an urgent and permanent cease-fire, alongside justice and accountability for all."

Israel Plans Iran NUCLEAR SITE Bombings

CNN: Israel Preparing Possible Strike on Iran’s Nuclear Facilities

The US has obtained new intelligence that suggests Israel is preparing to launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, CNN reported on Tuesday.

The report cited officials who said it was unclear if Israeli leaders had made a final decision, and the chances of an attack depend on the results of the negotiations between the Trump administration and Iran.

One source told CNN that the “chance of an Israeli strike on an Iranian nuclear facility has gone up significantly in recent months” and the “prospect of a Trump-negotiated US-Iran deal that doesn’t remove all of Iran’s uranium makes the chance of a strike more likely.”

The CNN report acknowledged that Israel doesn’t have the capacity to destroy Iran’s nuclear program without support from the US. A senior US official said that the US was stepping up intelligence collection to be prepared to assist in an Israeli attack on Iran, but another source said it was unlikely Trump would support such a move at this time.

An Israeli source said that Israel could launch an attack on its own if the US and Iran were to negotiate what it considers a “bad deal.”

Pepe Escobar : How Iran Plans to Tackle the US

Columbia President Greeted With Chants of 'Free Mahmoud!' During Graduation Speech

Columbia University administrators seemed intent on proceeding with an undergraduate commencement ceremony Tuesday as though the Ivy League school hasn't been at the center of student-led anti-genocide protests and government efforts to crack down on free speech for more than a year—but graduating students ensured the school's treatment of student organizers was front-and-center.

As acting president Claire Shipman approached the podium to address students at Columbia College's graduation, she was immediately met with loud booing.

She addressed the response, saying she knows many students feel "some amount of frustration" with her and the administration—but many of the graduates appeared uninterested in hearing from the university leader less than two weeks after she authorized the New York Police Department to enter the campus and arrest dozens of student protesters for occupying the university library in solidarity with Palestinians.

The Trump administration announced shortly after the arrests that they were reviewing the visa status of the student protesters—their latest escalation against pro-Palestinian organizers at the school.

"You arrested us!" graduates shouted at one point in Shipman's address, as she congratulated the Class of 2025 for making it "through one of the most rigorous schools in the world."

Mahmoud Khalil, the 2024 graduate who helped lead negotiations with administrators last year regarding divestment from Israel's military operation in Gaza, was also top-of-mind for many students who started chanting, "Free Mahmoud!" early in Shipman's speech.

"The work of your generation will be to shape these interesting times," Shipman said as the chants rang out. ...

Columbia University Acting President Claire Shipman welcomed to Columbia College's graduation ceremony with sustained jeers and boos.

Minutes later, students break out in loud chants of "Free Mahmoud": pic.twitter.com/QJit91wydm

— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) May 20, 2025

Since stepping in as acting president in March, Shipman has met with faculty that object to Columbia's capitulation to the Trump administration; mentioned the names of Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, another student who was marked for deportation but subsequently freed; and started a website for students who fear deportation.

But students' response on Tuesday suggested they've taken more notice of Shipman's summoning of the NYPD earlier this month and the school's agreement to the Trump administration's demands aimed at rooting out what the White House claims is "antisemitism"—including imposing a ban on masks, appointing an administrator to oversee Middle Eastern and Palestinian studies, and hiring dozens of "special officers" authorized to swiftly remove students from campus.

Students erupted in jeers and laughs when Shipman praised the Class of 2025 for being "curious, determined, and open-minded," and again chanted, "Free Mahmoud!" at another point in the speech.

LIVE: At @Columbia College commencement, the speech of acting president Claire Shipman is drowned out as graduates erupt into a “FREE MAHMOUD” chant. pic.twitter.com/EQ6yzxU7PO

— Jessica Schwalb (@jessicaschwalb7) May 20, 2025

A larger commencement ceremony is scheduled for Wednesday. Columbia University Apartheid Divest called on members of the school community to attend a protest action coinciding with the graduation.

"No commencement as usual under genocide," read a social media post announcing the protest.

Romania elections. Macron one step closer to Odessa

Defeated Romanian ultranationalist ‘will ask court to annul election’

The defeated ultranationalist candidate in Romania’s presidential election rerun has said he will ask the country’s top court to annul the vote on the same grounds – foreign interference – that led to the original ballot being cancelled last year. George Simion, who was defeated in Sunday’s runoff by the liberal mayor of Bucharest, Nicuşor Dan, said on Tuesday he would ask the constitutional court to void the ballot “for the same reasons they annulled the elections” last year.

The election, which Dan won by a margin of 53.6% to 46.4%, was the second time the vote had been held. The first, last November, was cancelled by the court after the first round amid allegations of campaign financing violations and a “massive” Russian interference campaign.

The ultranationalist, whose supporters carried out a parallel count at some polling stations, said votes were “correctly counted” but “international observers” had seen “foreign interference” and “social media and algorithms have been manipulated”. He claimed there was “irrefutable evidence” of meddling by France, Moldova and others in “an orchestrated effort to manipulate institutions, direct media narratives and impose a result that does not reflect the sovereign will of the Romanian people”.

Trump rolls out Golden Dome missile defense project and appoints leader

Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that his administration will move forward with developing the so-called “Golden Dome” missile defense system that he envisions will protect the United States from possible foreign strikes using ground and space-based weapons. Flanked by the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, in the Oval Office, Trump also said that he wanted the project to be operational before he left office. He added that Republicans had agreed to allocate $25bn in initial funding and Canada had expressed an interest in taking part. ...

What exactly the Golden Dome will look like remains unclear. Trump has not yet decided which of three options proposed by the defense department he wants to pursue. Pentagon officials recently drafted three proposals – small, medium and large – for Trump to consider. The proposals all broadly combine ground-based missile interceptors currently used by the US military with more ambitious and hi-tech systems to build a space-based defense program.

The option that Trump chooses will determine its timeline and cost. The $25bn coming from Republicans’ budget bill is only set to cover initial development costs. The final price tag could exceed $540bn over the next two decades, according to the congressional budget office. Trump said on Tuesday evening that he had settled on “architecture” for the project and suggested the total cost of putting it into service would reach $175bn, but gave no specifics. Gen Michael Guetlein of the US Space Force will oversee implementation of the project, Trump said.

The project is expected to end up largely as a partnership with major defense contractors, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, given it has the capacity to manufacture rockets to launch military payloads into orbit and satellites that can deliver next-generation surveillance and targeting tools.

Trump visits Capitol to urge House Republicans to pass ‘big, beautiful bill’

Donald Trump traveled to the Capitol on Tuesday to insist that the fractious House Republican majority set aside their differences and pass his wide-ranging bill to enact his taxation and immigration priorities.

In a speech to a closed-door meeting of Republican lawmakers in Congress’s lower chamber, the president pushed representatives from districts in blue states to drop their demands for a bigger State and Local Tax (Salt) deduction, and also sought to assuage moderates concerned that the legislation, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, would hobble the Medicaid health insurance program. ...

But it is unclear if the president’s exhortations had the intended effect ahead of the Monday deadline that House speaker Mike Johnson has set to get the bill passed through the chamber, which Republicans control by a mere three votes. Following his meeting, at least one key lawmaker said he remained opposed to the bill as written, while others announced no changes to their position. “As it stands right now, I do not support the bill,” said New York congressman Mike Lawler, one of the Republicans representing districts in Democratic-led states that are demanding a larger Salt deduction.

The next test of the bill’s prospects is scheduled for 1am on Wednesday, when the rules committee convenes for a procedural vote that, if successful, clears the way for consideration of the measure by the full House of Representatives.

Trump IGNORES JUDGE, Traffics Migrants To SUDAN

Judge orders US officials to keep custody of migrants flown to South Sudan

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to not let a group of migrants being flown to South Sudan leave the custody of US immigration authorities after saying they appeared to have been deported in violation of a court order.

US district judge Brian Murphy in Boston during a hastily arranged virtual hearing said that while he was not going to order the airplane to turn around, that was an option the Department of Homeland Security could employ to comply with his order.

Murphy warned that officials could be held in criminal contempt if he found they violated his previous order barring the swift deportation of migrants to countries other than their own before they could raise any concerns that they might face torture or persecution there.

“I have a strong indication that my preliminary injunction order has been violated,” Murphy told Elianis Perez, a lawyer with the Department of Justice.

Murphy, an appointee of Joe Biden, said any migrants covered by the injunction en route to South Sudan must remain in the government’s custody pending a further hearing on Wednesday.

Trump’s Brain Drain: Scientists Look to Move Abroad as DOGE Slashes Research Funding in U.S.

Majority of US companies say they have to raise prices due to Trump tariffs

A majority of US companies say they will have to raise their prices to accommodate Donald Trump’s tariffs in the US, according to a new report. More than half (54%) of the US companies surveyed by insurance company Allianz said they will have to raise prices to accommodate the cost of the tariffs. Of the 4,500 companies across nine countries, including the US, UK and China, surveyed by Allianz only 22% said they can absorb the increased costs.

The unpredictability of US trade policy has also dented exporters’ confidence. The survey found 42% of exporting companies now anticipate turnover to decline between -2% and -10% over the next 12 months, compared to fewer than 5% before 2 April “liberation day” – when Trump unveiled his tariff policy.

Though Trump has pulled back on many of the levies he initially proposed, key tariffs remain in place, including a 10% universal tariff on all US imports, a 30% tariff on Chinese imports and extra tariffs on specific industries like metal and auto parts.

Trump has insisted that tariffs will make America “very wealthy again”, though it appears that American companies and consumers are simply expecting to pay higher prices as the tariffs settle into place. In April, consumer expectations of inflation reached their highest point since 1981, according to the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. ...

Nearly eight out of 10 American companies said that they frontloaded shipments to China before Trump announced his tariffs, with 25% saying they had started to front-load before the November 2024 election. Inflation data from April showed that US price increases remained roughly level for the month. Economists say that it will take a while for tariff-related price increases to show up in data and companies have started to say they will pass some of the cost of tariffs onto consumers.

Elon Musk claims he will step back from political donations in near future

Elon Musk claimed on Tuesday that he would decrease the amount of money he spends on politics for the foreseeable future. If true, the reduction would represent a significant turnaround after the world’s richest person positioned himself as the Republican party’s most enthusiastic donor over the last year.

“I think, in terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” Musk said during a video interview with Bloomberg News at the Qatar Economic Forum.

Bloomberg’s Mishal Husain asked the Tesla CEO if he had decided how much to spend on midterm elections, which elicited Musk’s response. When asked why he was pulling back, Musk said flatly: “I think I’ve done enough” – drawing laughs from the audience, although it was unclear if he was joking.

The CEO of SpaceX spent almost $300m last year in support of Donald Trump, and his America Pac political organization was expected to be an influential backer of Republican candidates in the 2026 elections. Musk’s political donations and prominent role in the Trump administration as creator of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) have also caused international backlash, however, hurting both his popularity and sales of Tesla vehicles.

When Husain asked in a follow-up if the blowback to his politics was the reason Musk was leaning away from political contributions, Musk evaded the question while suggesting that he could change his mind. “If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it. I do not currently see a reason,” Musk said.

‘Plenty of time’ to solve climate crisis, interior secretary tells representatives

The US has “plenty of time” to solve the climate crisis,” the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, told a House committee on Tuesday. The comment came on his first of two days of testimony to House and Senate appropriators in which he defended Donald Trump’s proposed budget, dubbed the “one big, beautiful bill”, that would extend tax reductions enacted during Trump’s first term, while cutting $5bn of funding for the Department of the Interior.

In addition to slashing spending on national parks, historic preservation, and other key interior department programming, the budget proposal would cancels billions of dollars in infrastructure investments, environmental programs and research grants. It would also gut funding for renewable energy, including by rolling back clean tax credits from Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

Maine representative Chellie Marie Pingree, the ranking member of the House appropriations committee, said this would amount to “effectively gutting this critical sector. This disregards the climate change concerns that we have,” she told Burgum at Tuesday’s hearing.

Scientists have long warned that world leaders must urgently phase out fossil fuels and boost green technology to avert the worse possible consequences of the climate crisis. But Burgum said that is not the threat the Trump administration is worried about. “The existential threats that this administrations is focusing on are: Iran cannot get a nuclear weapon, and we can’t lose the AI arms race to China,” he said. “That’s the number one and number two. If we solve those two things, then we will have plenty of time to solve any issues related to potential temperature change.”

US oil firms pumping secret chemicals into ground and not fully reporting it

Colorado oil and gas companies have pumped at least 30m lbs of secret chemicals into the ground over the past 18 months without making legally required disclosures, according to a new analysis.

That’s in spite of first-in-the-nation rules requiring operators and their suppliers to list all chemicals used in drilling and extraction, while also banning any use of Pfas “forever chemicals” at oil and gas sites. Since the transparency law took effect in July 2023, operators have fracked 1,114 sites across the state, but as of 1 May chemical disclosures have not been filed for 675 of them – more than 60% of the total, the analysis says.

Chevron, the world’s third-biggest fossil-fuel company by market cap, is by far the most serious offender, operating about 375, or more than half, of the non-compliant wells.

“We thought that the Colorado law was going to break through the culture of secrecy that surrounds the use of potentially toxic chemicals in oil and gas production,” said Dusty Horwitt, an attorney and researcher who was lead author on the analysis, which is based on public disclosures. “But the lack of compliance has left the secrecy in place, putting people’s health at risk.”

The report, released Tuesday by the environmental groups Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), Physicians for Social Responsibility Colorado, FracTracker Alliance, and the Colorado Sierra Club, was shared exclusively with the Guardian.

Sea level rise will cause ‘catastrophic inland migration’, scientists warn

Sea level rise will become unmanageable at just 1.5C of global heating and lead to “catastrophic inland migration”, the scientists behind a new study have warned. This scenario may unfold even if the average level of heating over the last decade of 1.2C continues into the future. The loss of ice from the giant Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has quadrupled since the 1990s due to the climate crisis and is now the principal driver of sea level rise.

The international target to keep global temperature rise below 1.5C is already almost out of reach. But the new analysis found that even if fossil fuel emissions were rapidly slashed to meet it, sea levels would be rising by 1cm a year by the end of the century, faster than the speed at which nations could build coastal defences.

The world is on track for 2.5C-2.9C of global heating, which would almost certainly be beyond tipping points for the collapse of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets. The melting of those ice sheets would lead to a “really dire” 12 metres of sea level rise.

Today, about 230 million people live within 1 metre above current sea level, and 1 billion live within 10 metres above sea level. Even just 20cm of sea level rise by 2050 would lead to global flood damages of at least $1tn a year for the world’s 136 largest coastal cities and huge impacts on people’s lives and livelihoods.

Also of Interest

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

Biden's Fate and Israel's Sadistic Revenge

Gaza’s Graveyard of Illusions

The fraud of Starmer, Macron and Carney’s “opposition” to Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza

Russia’s Attritional Approach to Ukraine Negotiations Shows Gains in Trump-Putin Phone Call

Ukraine Negotiations Still Hover Around Its Root Cause

Rubio clashes with Democrats over decision to admit white South Africans

The Attempt To Find A Democratic Joe Rogan Or Beat The Right Online Will Fail

Georgia Dead Woman's Fetus Is Growing

Tax Revolt: Arjun Singh on the Roots of Trump’s Push for Massive $4.5 Trillion Tax Cut for the Rich

Health Insurance Company Targeted By Luigi Being Investigated For Fraud!

A Little Night Music

Doctor Ross - Cat Squirrel

Dr Ross - Call The Doctor

Dr Ross - Come Back Baby

Doctor Ross - Chicago Breakdown

Dr. Ross - Turkey Leg Women

Dr. Ross - Boogie Disease

Dr. Ross - My Bebop Gal

Dr Ross - Shake 'em on down

Dr Ross - The Sunnyland

Dr. Isaiah Ross - Feel So Good