Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features New Orleans jazz and blues singer Blue Lu Barker. Enjoy!

“The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread.
When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out "stop!"

When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.”

-- Bertolt Brecht

News and Opinion

The New York Times Finally Stops Avoiding The G-Word

The New York Times has published an op-ed by a genocide scholar who says that he resisted acknowledging the truth of what Israel is doing in Gaza for as long as he could, but can no longer deny the obvious.

It’s an admission that may as well have come from The New York Times itself.

In an article titled “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.”, a Brown University professor of Holocaust and genocide studies named Omer Bartov argues that “Israel is literally trying to wipe out Palestinian existence in Gaza,” and denounces his fellow Holocaust scholars for failing to acknowledge reality.

“My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people,” Bartov writes. “Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.”

It's becoming easier to find a climate denier among climate scientists than a genocide-denier among genocide scholars.

Extremely important piece in the NY Times --> pic.twitter.com/dgyezCDTtH

— Rutger Bregman (@rcbregman) July 15, 2025

And resist he did. In November 2023, Bartov wrote another op-ed for The New York Times saying “As a historian of genocide, I believe that there is no proof that genocide is currently taking place in Gaza, although it is very likely that war crimes, and even crimes against humanity, are happening.”

Apparently he is seeing the proof now and has stopped resisting what’s been clear from the very beginning. And it would seem the editors of the Gray Lady have ceased resisting as well.

The New York Times, which has an extensively documented pro-Israel bias, has frenetically avoided the use of the g-word on its pages from the very beginning of the Gaza onslaught. Even in its opinion and analysis pieces the NYT Overton window has cut off at framing the issue as a complex matter of rigorous debate, with headlines like “Accused of Genocide, Israelis See Reversal of Reality. Palestinians See Justice.” and “The Bitter Fight Over the Meaning of ‘Genocide’” representing the closest thing to the pro-Palestinian side of the debate you’d see. During the same time we’ve seen headlines like “From the Embers of an Old Genocide, a New One May Be Emerging” used in reference to Sudan.

In an internal memo obtained by The Intercept last year, New York Times reporters were explicitly told to avoid the use of the word “genocide”, as well as terms like “ethnic cleansing” and “occupied territory”.

“‘Genocide’ has a specific definition in international law,” the memo reads. “In our own voice, we should generally use it only in the context of those legal parameters. We should also set a high bar for allowing others to use it as an accusation, whether in quotations or not, unless they are making a substantive argument based on the legal definition.”

The New York Times is genocide propaganda. pic.twitter.com/pfB2O0s3za

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) January 9, 2025

Earlier this year the American Friends Service Committee cancelled its paid advertisement in The New York Times calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza, saying the outlet had wanted them to change the word “genocide” to “war” in order for their ad to be published.

So there has been a significant change.

To be clear, this analysis by Omer Bartov is not significant in and of itself. He is only joining the chorus of what has already been said by human rights organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, United Nations human rights experts, and the overwhelming majority of leading authorities on the subject of genocide.

What is significant is that even experts who’ve been resisting acknowledging the reality of the genocide in Gaza because of their bias toward Israel have stopped doing so, and that even the imperial media outlets most fiendishly devoted to running propaganda cover for that genocide have run out of room to hide.

The Israel apologists have lost the argument. They might not know it yet, but they have. Public sentiment has turned irreversibly against them as people’s eyes are opened to the truth of what’s happening in Gaza, and more and more propagandists are choosing to rescue what’s left of their tattered credibility instead of going down with the sinking ship.

Truth is slowly beginning to get a word in edgewise.

Keep pushing. Keep fighting. Keep resisting.

It’s working.

Renowned Genocide Scholar Says 'I Know It When I See It'—And He Sees It in Israel's Assault on Gaza

A leading scholar of the Holocaust and genocide warned Tuesday the continued "silence" of many in his field of study regarding Israel's massacre of Palestinians in Gaza "has made a mockery of the slogan 'never again''" as he outlined in a New York Times opinion piece how he came to conclude that Israel is committing genocide in the besieged enclave.

"I'm a Genocide Scholar," reads the essay's headline. "I Know It When I See It."

Like a number of other experts who were at first reluctant to designate the assault on Gaza a genocide—the term coined by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944—Brown University professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies Omer Bartov gradually came to recognize Israel's campaign of targeted starvation, bombings on civilian infrastructure, forced displacement, and other attacks as genocidal violence as he watched the early months of the war in late 2023 and early 2024.

By May 2024, he wrote at the Times, "it appeared no longer possible to deny that the pattern of [Israel Defense Forces] operations was consistent with the statements denoting genocidal intent made by Israeli leaders in the days after the Hamas attack," including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's threat to turn Gaza into "rubble" and his call for Israeli citizens to remember "what Amalek did to you"—a reference to the biblical passage calling on the Israelites to "kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings" in their fight against an ancient enemy.

At that point, about 1 million Palestinians had been ordered to the so-called "safe zone" of al-Mawasi—which was then targeted in numerous attacks.

Months after one top Israeli official called for the "total annihilation" of Gaza—home to more than 2 million people—Bartov concluded that the government's "actions could be understood only as the implementation of the expressed intent to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable for its Palestinian population."

He wrote that his interpretation of Israel's actions is now that Netanyahu's government wants "to force the population to leave the strip altogether" and "debilitate the enclave through bombings and severe deprivation of food, clean water, sanitation, and medical aid to such an extent that it is impossible for Palestinians in Gaza to maintain or reconstitute their existence as a group."

"My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people," wrote Bartov, noting that his assessment is that of an expert who grew up in a Zionist home, spent the first half of his life in Israel, and served in the IDF as well as researching the Holocaust and other war crimes.

"This was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could," wrote Bartov. "But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one."

He added that his conclusion is supported by the destruction of an estimated 174,000 buildings, or 70% of those in Gaza; the killing of more than 58,000 people, nearly a third of whom have been children and nearly 900 of whom were under one year old; and the extermination of more than 2,000 families in their entirety.

CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour noted that Bartov spoke to her last December about his conclusion that Israel is committing genocide.

"If you look at the pattern of what the IDF has been doing, not only has it been moving the population around, every safe zone... tends to get also bombed and shelled," he said at the time. "But also systematically destroying universities, schools, mosques, museums, and hospitals, of course—anything that makes for the health and also the culture of a group, and therefore, by now we have a population that is being completely debilitated."

In a new op-ed for @nytimes, professor of Holocaust and genocide studies @bartov_omer explains why he believes "Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people," something Israel denies: https://t.co/PQOctG5hhr

Back in December, I spoke with Professor Bartov about… pic.twitter.com/UebDmM57k4

— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) July 15, 2025

Bartov published his essay as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said it had recorded the deaths of 875 Palestinians who were killed while seeking aid, with the vast majority killed at or around aid hubs set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a U.S.- and Israel-backed privatized aid group that has been rejected by the U.N. due to its lack of neutrality.

"The latest deadly incident happened at around 9:00 am on Monday, July 14, when reports indicated that the Israeli military shelled and fired towards Palestinians seeking food at the GHF site in As Shakoush area, northwestern Rafah," said the OHCHR on Monday of an attack that killed at least two people and injured nine others—days after a hospital in Rafah received more than 130 patients, the majority of whom suffered gunshot wounds they'd sustained while trying to access food distribution sites.

Last May, former Human Rights Watch executive director Aryeh Neier—who was also reluctant to apply the term "genocide" to Israel's attack on Gaza—said Israel's "sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory" was what finally convinced him the assault is a genocide.

While backing the militarized GHF aid operation, Israel has continued to block humanitarian assistance from entering Gaza through crossings and has prevented experienced aid groups from distributing food to starving Palestinians.

Israel "has always insisted that any threat to its security must be seen as potentially leading to another Auschwitz" and has portrayed its attack on Gaza—which it and its allies in the U.S. and other Western countries have persistently claimed it is targeting Hamas—as a fight against an enemy comparable to the Nazis.

"The daily scenes of horror in Gaza, from which the Israeli public is shielded by its own media's self-censorship, expose the lies of Israeli propaganda that this is a war of defense against a Nazi-like enemy," wrote Bartov.

Progressive political strategist Waleed Shahid suggested Bartov's conclusions flew in the face of recent comments by U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who in March said the term "genocide" as it related to Gaza should be rejected as antisemitism.

Bartov warned that the refusal of many Holocaust scholars and the political establishment in the U.S.—the largest international funder of the IDF—to confront the reality of Israel's attack on Gaza could ultimately make it impossible "to continue teaching and researching the Holocaust in the same manner we did before."

"Just as worrisome is the prospect that the study of genocide as a whole will not survive the accusations of antisemitism, leaving us without the crucial community of scholars and international jurists to stand in the breach at a time when the rise of intolerance, racial hatred, populism, and authoritarianism is threatening the values that were at the core of these scholarly, cultural, and political endeavors of the 20th century," wrote Bartov.

He expressed hope that "a new generation of Israelis will face their future without sheltering in the shadow of the Holocaust, even as they will have to bear the stain of the genocide in Gaza perpetrated in their name."

"Israel," he added, "will have to learn to live without falling back on the Holocaust as justification for inhumanity."

Marco Rubio FREAKS OUT Over UN Rep’s Gaza Truth-Telling!

Israel Kills 88 Palestinians in Gaza Over 24 Hours in Latest Massacres

Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Tuesday that Israeli attacks killed at least 88 Palestinians and wounded 278 over the previous 24-hour period as relentless US-backed Israeli strikes continue to massacre women and children in the besieged territory.

The Health Ministry said that another five bodies were recovered from the rubble. “A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the streets, where ambulance and civil defense crews are unable to reach them at this time,” the ministry wrote on Telegram.

Officials at the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City told The Associated Press that strikes included the bombing of a building in the Shati refugee camp that killed a 68-year-old Hamas legislative official, meaning he was not a militant. The strike also killed a man, a woman, and their six children, who were sheltering in the same building. ...

Israeli troops have also continued to kill Palestinians seeking aid. According to the Health Ministry, at least six people were killed and 29 were wounded while trying to reach food over the past 24 hours.

Family of US citizen beaten to death by Israeli settlers calls on Trump administration to prosecute killers

Relatives of Sayfollah Musallet, a US citizen from Florida beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, are calling for the Trump administration to arrest and prosecute those responsible for his killing.

The 20-year-old from Tampa was visiting his family in an area near Ramallah, and died last week trying to protect their farm from invaders, they said at an emotional press conference in Florida on Monday afternoon.

His uncle Hasem Musallet paid tribute to the “loving, respectful” boy known as Saif who loved baseball and had just opened an ice-cream business in Tampa with several of his cousins. He decried what the family saw as indifference from the US government over the murder of one of its citizens. “Somebody needs to be held accountable,” he said.

Hiba Rahim, deputy executive director of the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), said Musallet’s family wanted Donald Trump, and the departments of justice and state, to prosecute his killers under US law. She also condemned a statement from the state department that said it had no comment on Musallet’s death “out of respect for the privacy of the family and loved ones during this difficult time”. Rahim said: “We’re not asking, and his family is not asking, for silence. We’re asking for accountability.

“If Sayfollah was killed by anyone else or in another country, there would already be investigations, there would already be attempts for arrest, and calls for arrest and outrage in Washington. “Where is the outrage from our government? Where is the accountability?”

CHINA & 20 Nations To Intervene & End Israel’s Genocide!

What Does Trump Really Want With Iran? (w/ Alastair Crooke)

Israel launches bombing raids in Syria and Lebanon

Israel has launched bombing raids against two of its neighbours, hitting government forces in southern Syria and what it said were Hezbollah targets in eastern Lebanon.

In Syria, the strikes hit forces loyal to the transitional government that had been sent south to the province of Sweida, which is near Israel. Syrian state media also reported Israeli strikes on Tuesday in the nearby province of Deraa.

Israel, which wants to weaken the new administration in Damascus to maintain its military dominance in the region, said it had struck several tanks in Sweida as a “warning”.

Syria’s foreign ministry condemned in a statement what it called “treacherous Israeli aggression” and said “a number of our armed forces and security personnel” as well as “several innocent civilians” were killed.

In Lebanon, Israeli aircraft bombed the Bekaa Valley region and killed 12 people, Lebanese state media reported, including a strike on a camp for displaced people. Reuters cited an unnamed Lebanese security source saying that five of the dead were Hezbollah fighters.

Iran’s New Chinese Air Defenses BLINDSIDE Israel w/ Brian Berletic, Carl Zha & KJ Noh

Europe gives Iran deadline to contain nuclear programme or see sanctions reinstated

The EU will start the process of reinstating UN sanctions on Iran from 29 August if Tehran has made no progress by then on containing its nuclear programme, the bloc has announced.

Speaking at a meeting of his EU counterparts, the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said: “France and its partners are … justified in reapplying global embargos on arms, banks and nuclear equipment that were lifted 10 years ago. Without a firm, tangible and verifiable commitment from Iran, we will do so by the end of August at the latest.”

Europeans have been largely elbowed aside from the Iranian nuclear issue by Donald Trump, who ordered the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites last month, and this intervention can be seen as an attempt to reassert Europe’s influence.

The end of August deadline starts a process that could lead to an armoury of sanctions being reimposed by 15 October, giving European signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal – the UK, France and Germany – a continuing lever in negotiations with Iran. The European powers want to see the return of the UN nuclear inspectorate to Iran, in part to prevent Iran trying to reconfigure its nuclear programme after the damage inflicted by the US strikes in June.

The way in which the 2015 nuclear deal was negotiated does not allow the other signatories, China or Russia, to veto the sanctions snapback, but the European states can defer the imposition of snapback beyond October to allow time for further consultation.

Russia Strikes Ukraine Again; US Won't Give Kiev Long Range Missiles; Germany Pays All Kiev's Bills

Marjorie Taylor Greene criticizes Trump over Ukraine arms shipments

Marjorie Taylor Greene has criticized Donald Trump over his new pledge to send “billions of dollars” worth of weapons to Ukraine, accusing him of breaking a campaign promise by continuing the very aid that Republicans spent years blocking under Joe Biden.

“MAGA did not vote for more weapons to Ukraine,” the Georgia congresswoman, one of Trump’s most staunch allies in Washington, wrote on X on Tuesday, referring to the “Make America great again” moniker adopted by Trump’s base of supporters. “MAGA voted for no more US involvement in foreign wars.”

Trump’s Oval Office announcement on Monday with the Nato chief, Mark Rutte, represented a pivot from his longstanding position of wanting to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict quickly, and a U-turn on the administration’s rhetoric towards European defence more broadly. ...

Greene’s criticism may not make a huge impact in Washington, where she is not a particularly influential figure despite her high profile within the Maga movement. But it could indicate another crack in Trump’s political coalition, which has already taken a beating during the last week over the administration’s refusal to release files concerning Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced late financier who is considered of the most prolific pedophiles of all times.

Greene, who said she has “never voted to send a single penny to Ukraine”, argued that she remains firmly opposed to any US involvement in foreign interventions. A March CBS/YouGov poll found that 68% of Republicans disapproved of continued military aid to Ukraine. Since 2022, many congressional Republicans have repeatedly tried to block or restrict Ukraine aid, starting with Kentucky senator Rand Paul’s delay of a $40bn package, which Greene voted against, too.

Tucker SOUNDS ALARM As Home Ownership Plummets

Two-thirds of DoJ unit defending Trump policies in court have quit

The US justice department unit charged with defending against legal challenges to signature Trump administration policies – such as restricting birthright citizenship and slashing funding to Harvard University – has lost nearly two-thirds of its staff, according to a list seen by Reuters.

Sixty-nine of the roughly 110 lawyers in the federal programs branch have voluntarily left the unit since Donald Trump’s election in November or have announced plans to leave, according to the list compiled by former justice department lawyers and reviewed by Reuters.

The tally has not been previously reported. Using court records and LinkedIn accounts, Reuters was able to verify the departure of all but four names on the list. Reuters spoke to four former lawyers in the unit and three other people familiar with the departures who said some staffers had grown demoralized and exhausted defending an onslaught of lawsuits against Trump’s administration. ...

The seven lawyers who spoke with Reuters cited a punishing workload and the need to defend policies that some felt were not legally justifiable among the key reasons for the wave of departures. Three of them said some career lawyers feared they would be pressured to misrepresent facts or legal issues in court, a violation of ethics rules that could lead to professional sanctions.

All spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal dynamics and avoid retaliation. A justice department spokesperson said lawyers in the unit were fighting an “unprecedented number of lawsuits” against Trump’s agenda. “The department has defeated many of these lawsuits all the way up to the supreme court and will continue to defend the president’s agenda to keep Americans safe,” the spokesperson said. The justice department did not comment on the departures of career lawyers or morale in the section.

"Farmworkers Are Terrified Right Now": ICE Operations Terrorize Immigrant Workers, Shatter Families

Inflation Rises: Is Tariff DOOM SPIRAL Here?

US inflation rose in June as Trump’s tariffs start to show in prices

Inflation accelerated in June as the impacts of Donald Trump’s tariffs slowly started to show in US prices. Business leaders have said for months that the high, volatile rates of Trump’s tariffs will force companies to raise consumer prices. Prices remained stable in the spring, particularly as many of Trump’s highest tariffs were paused; however, they started increasing in May and have continued to rise in June.

Annual inflation rose to 2.7% in June, up from 2.4% in May, according to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which tracks the prices of a basket of goods and services each month. Core CPI, which leaves out energy and food prices, ticked up slightly to 2.9%, compared with 2.8% in May. The prices of appliances, furniture and toys, products typically manufactured outside the US, all rose. Food prices increased by 3%, with the price of beef rising by more than 2% over the month, coffee up 2.2% and citrus fruit prices rising 2.3%. While the price of eggs has been dropping over the last few months, a dozen eggs are still 27% more expensive than last year.

Inflation remains far below the price peaks seen three years ago, when price increases reached as high as 9%, and even a year ago, when increases were closer to 3%. But tariffs have appeared to halt inflation’s downward path.

According to the Yale Budget Lab, Americans now face an average tariff rate of 18.7% – the highest rate since 1933. That includes 30% tariffs on China, a 50% tariff on steel and aluminum, 25% on auto parts and a universal 10% tariff on all imports. The levies currently in effect do not include those Trump is threatening to impose on other large US trading partners.

We all deserve to know what’s in the Epstein files, who’s implicated, and how deep this corruption goes.

Americans were promised justice and transparency.

We’re introducing a discharge petition to force a vote in the US House of Representatives on releasing the COMPLETE files. pic.twitter.com/Ja1xJ7Hiz1

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) July 15, 2025

Pro-Israel Right MELTS DOWN Over Tucker's Epstein Speech

US House speaker Mike Johnson calls for release of Epstein files amid backlash

Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, called for the justice department to make public documents related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, breaking with Donald Trump over an issue that has roiled the president’s rightwing base.

It was a rare moment of friction between Trump and the speaker, a top ally on Capitol Hill, and came as the president faces growing backlash from conservatives who had expected him to make public everything known about Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while in federal custody as he faced sex-trafficking charges.

Last week, the justice department announced that his death was a suicide and that, despite conspiracy theories to the contrary, there was no list of his clients to be made public nor would there be further disclosures about the case. Conservative allies of the president have since criticized him and the attorney general, Pam Bondi, for what they see as opaque handling of a case that Trump campaigned on getting to the bottom of.

“It’s a very delicate subject, but we should put everything out there and let the people decide it,” Johnson told Benny Johnson, a rightwing podcaster, in an interview released on Tuesday. “I agree with the sentiment that we need to put it out there.” ...

Earlier in the day, Republicans voted down an attempt by Democrats to insert language into legislation that would require files related to the Epstein case to be made public. But the minority party is determined to keep the issue alive, and Democrats on the House judiciary committee have demanded that its Republican chair, Trump ally Jim Jordan, hold a hearing with Bondi and her deputy as well as the leaders of the FBI to answer questions about Epstein.

Republicans complain to Canada over wildfire smoke despite supporting planet-heating bill

A group of Republican lawmakers has complained that smoke from Canadian wildfires is ruining summer for Americans, just days after voting for a major bill that will cause more of the planet-heating pollution that is worsening wildfires. In a letter sent to Canada’s ambassador to the US, six Republican members of Congress wrote that wildfire smoke from Canada had been an issue for several years and recently their voters “have had to deal with suffocating Canadian wildfire smoke filling the air to begin the summer”.

“Our constituents have been limited in their ability to go outside and safely breathe due to the dangerous air quality the wildfire smoke has created,” the group of House of Representative members from Wisconsin and Minnesota wrote on 7 July. “In our neck of the woods, summer months are the best time of the year to spend time outdoors recreating, enjoying time with family, and creating new memories, but this wildfire smoke makes it difficult to do all those things.”

The lawmakers urged Canada to take “proper action” to reduce the smoke and noted the historic friendship between Canada and America, without mentioning Donald Trump’s repeated demands for Canada to be annexed and become the 51st state of the US. “Our communities shouldn’t suffer because of poor decisions made across the border,” Tom Tiffany, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin and one of the letter’s authors, wrote on X.

However, all of the authors of the letter – Tiffany, Brad Finstad, Tom Emmer, Glenn Grothman, Michelle Fischbach and Pete Stauber – voted for the so-called “big, beautiful” Republican spending bill that, among other things, slashes support for renewable energy and provides new incentives for the production of fossil fuels. The reconciliation bill, signed by Trump on 4 July, has been called “the most anti-environment bill of all time” by green groups and will result in a surge in greenhouse gas pollution, according to experts. The legislation, combined with the president’s own executive actions, will cause an extra 7bn tonnes of planet-heating gases to be released in just the next five years, analysis of Princeton University data has found.

This pollution will worsen an already escalating climate crisis that is causing wildfires to become longer and fiercer. Scientists have found that extreme fire years are becoming far more common around the world as it heats up, with the area of land burned in the US west increasing eightfold since the 1980s. The climate crisis caused 15,000 people in the US to die from toxic wildfire smoke just in the 15-year period until 2020, recent research discovered.

Trump administration dashes hopes of anti-pollution plan for JD Vance’s home town

A Biden-era plan to implement a gas-powered blast furnace at a steel mill in Ohio, which would have eliminated tons of greenhouse gases from the local environment year over year and created more than a thousand jobs, has been put on hold indefinitely by the Trump administration. Experts and locals say the setback could greatly affect the health and financial state of those living around the mill.

For 13 years, Donna Ballinger has been dealing with blasting noises and layers of dust from coal and heavy metals on her vehicles and house, situated a few hundred yards from the Cleveland-Cliffs-owned Middletown Works steel mill in south-west Ohio. “I’ve had sinus infections near constantly. I have COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease],” she says. “When they’ve got the big booms going, your whole house is shaking.”

So when two years ago, the steel mill successfully trialed a hydrogen gas-powered blast furnace, the first time the fuel had been deployed in this fashion anywhere in the Americas, she was delighted. It cost an estimated $1.6bn, and the Biden administration, through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), coughed up $500m to help cover the cost of installing the technology.

Replacing a coal-powered furnace would have eliminated 1m tons of greenhouse gases from the local environment every year, according to Cleveland-Cliffs. It would also have saved the company $450m every year through “efficiency gains and reduced scrap dependency”, and created 1,200 construction and 150 permanent jobs in the town of 50,000 residents who have struggled for decades with manufacturing losses.

But last month, the Cleveland-Cliffs CEO, Lourenco Goncalves, announced the plan was on hold. He claimed the lack of development in hydrogen fuel – in part a result of the Trump administration’s freezing of a host of Biden-era spending plans – and the Federal Reserve’s refusal to lower interest rates – also a byproduct of Trump administration policies – had forced the company to throw out the project as initially devised.

House GOP Wants to Stop a Ban That Would Keep Toxic 'Forever Chemicals' Off Food Crops

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are pushing to block action that would protect farms from toxic "forever chemicals" found in fertilizers made from sewage sludge.

The provision, introduced as part of a government spending bill unveiled Monday, would bar the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from enforcing the findings from a January risk assessment, which found that the sludge contains dangerous amounts of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

According to the environmental advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the act could cause agricultural losses and pose serious risks to public health.

For decades, the federal government encouraged farmers to spread municipal sewage onto their farmland, as it was a good source of nutrients and a preferable alternative to putting the sludge in landfills.

Nearly 20% of U.S. agricultural land is estimated to use this sludge, commonly known as "biosolids," in fertilizer, and 70 million acres of farmland may be contaminated.

These biosolids contain large amounts of PFAS, which are absorbed through the roots of plants and contaminate plant and animal products that end up on store shelves. ...

The EPA's January study found that the risks associated with PFAS in these sewage sludge-based fertilizers "exceed EPA's acceptable thresholds, sometimes by several orders of magnitude." Even very small quantities of these chemicals, it found, could pose major risks.

The GOP bill, however, forbids the EPA from using any funding to "finalize, implement, administer, or enforce" that risk assessment.

"Preventing EPA from protecting public health and our food supply from toxic contamination epitomizes special interest politics at their worst," said PEER science policy director Kyla Bennett, a scientist and attorney formerly with the EPA. "If finalized, this ban will leave ill-equipped state agricultural agencies to deal with a rapidly spreading chemical disaster."

Republicans have faced pressure from chemical manufacturing groups to kill PFAS regulations. In 2023, a report from Food & Water Watch found that eight major companies, including Dow and DuPont, spent a combined $55.7 million to lobby against bills to rein in PFAS between 2019 and 2022. The American Chemistry Council, the industry's lobbying arm, spent over $58.7 million during that same period.

The rule banning action on PFAS is part of a broader effort by Republicans to gut environmental regulations. The bill released Monday slashes EPA spending by over $2 billion, nearly 25%.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has also weakened standards on PFAS in drinking water, which were adopted during the Biden administration.

"Across the country, farms have had to be condemned and livestock slaughtered due to PFAS pollution from fertilizers," said PEER staff counsel Laura Dumais, who filed a lawsuit against the EPA last year for its slow rollout of PFAS regulations. "Further delay in preventing more of these needless tragedies would be unconscionable."

Also of Interest

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

Imperial Presidency Watch: Congress Loses Control Over The Purse

Israeli weapons firm Rafael uses Gaza killing in marketing campaign

At Hague Group Emergency Summit, 30+ Nations Seek to 'Halt the Genocide in Gaza'

Craig Murray: A ‘Draconian’ UK Government

Trump Delivers Next Nothingburger To Ukraine

First Confirmed Judge of Second Trump Term Called a 'Direct Threat' to Fundamental Freedoms

How UnitedHealth Uses Legal Threats to "Terrorize People" Who Criticize Health Giant's Practices

The Duran: Q & A: Trump presidency at risk of unraveling

A Little Night Music

Blue Lu Barker - Don’t You Make Me High

Blue Lu Barker - He Caught That B & O

Blue Lu Barker - Georgia Grind

Blue Lu Barker - Trombone Man Blues

Blue Lu Barker - New Orleans Blues

Blue Lu Barker - He's so good

Blue Lu Barker - Nix On Those Lush Heads

Blu Lu Barker - Love That Man

Blue Lu Barker - I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate