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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Mississippi Fred McDowell

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features delta blues slide guitarist Mississippi Fred McDowell. Enjoy!

^{Mississippi Fred McDowell - Shake 'Em On Down}

"Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage."

-- Carl Bernstein

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News and Opinion

How The Media Normally Report On A Mass Atrocity

The Washington Post has published an article titled “Families shot down, held at ransom as they flee Darfur’s killing fields,” subtitled “Sudan’s RSF paramilitary and its allies have carried out mass ethnic killings and hostage taking in the captured city of El Fashir, survivors told The Post.”

The article opens with a paragraph humanizing the victims of the El Fashir massacres: “Families gunned down as they huddled for safety. Young children weeping over their mother’s body in the desert. Doctors seized for ransom and executed.”

It names the perpetrators, “the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces,” in the second paragraph.

It names the backers of the perpetrators in the third paragraph, saying that “The RSF is backed by the United Arab Emirates.”

It mentions the word “genocide” three separate times. “Ethnic killings” appears twice. The UAE is named repeatedly; even the fact that it is “a key U.S. ally” is explicitly highlighted.

Do you notice anything strange about this reporting?

Me neither. What stands out, reading this article here in the year 2025, is how completely and utterly normal it is.

This is how the media normally covers a mass atrocity as terrible as this. This is how they would have been covering Gaza this whole time if the entire western establishment wasn't aggressively protecting Israel. pic.twitter.com/tiAQobvIyj

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) November 2, 2025

It’s not fantastic or extraordinary journalism, it’s just normal for a mainstream western publication. The reporters talk to the victims, describe the massacres they were told about, explain the various power dynamics at play from a mainstream western perspective, name some US officials who are pushing for a halt to the RSF’s atrocities, and use appropriately strong language to describe the horrors they are documenting — including in the headline.

They do all the normal mainstream news reporter things. They cover a depraved mass atrocity the same way they’ve typically covered such things for generations.

None of this would stand out on its own, if we hadn’t spent two years watching the mainstream western press do absolutely none of these normal journalistic things in Gaza.

The passive-language “Gazans perish in explosion” headlines. The contortions to avoid naming the perpetrator and the governments that are backing its atrocities. The adamant refusal to use the word “genocide” except to frame it as a dubious claim being made by another party which Israel forcefully denies. The wildly biased discrepancy between the strength of language used to describe violence inflicted by Israelis versus violence inflicted by Palestinians.

If the western press had not been aggressively protecting Israel and its interests this whole time, all their reporting on Gaza over the last two years would have looked very much like the reporting we’re seeing on the genocide in Sudan. There’s a discrepancy in the reporting because there’s a discrepancy in the propaganda needs of the western empire.

It is good that the western press are doing actual journalism in Sudan and covering that genocide with the normal level of urgency and emphasis. If they had been reporting on Gaza in the same way these last two years, the west’s support for Israel would have completely collapsed by now.

Which is exactly why they haven’t been doing it.

Israeli Society ERUPTS Over 'Right To RAPE'

The grim task of recovering thousands of bodies from the rubble of Gaza

It has been described as one of the most gruelling recovery efforts in modern warfare. As negotiations over the fragile Gaza ceasefire continue, Palestinians have started to dig through 61m tonnes of debris, 20 times more than the combined mass of all debris generated by conflicts since 2008. Underneath, at least 10,000 people are thought to be buried. ...

Rescue teams have so far had to rely on rudimentary tools – shovels, pickaxes, wheelbarrows, rakes, hoes – and their bare hands. Requests to Israel to allow the entry of excavators and heavy machinery so they can work more effectively have received no response.

“The whole world has seen the equipment that was brought in to retrieve the bodies of Israeli hostages [including bulldozers and excavators],” said Dr Mohammed al-Mughir, the director of humanitarian support and international cooperation at the civil defence. “We also need the same equipment to retrieve our bodies.”

Gaza’s ministry of health and civil defence estimates about 10,000 people are still buried in the rubble. Some experts believe the number could be as high as 14,000. According to the health ministry, 472 bodies were recovered during the first 16 days of the ceasefire and taken to hospital morgues for identification. This number does not include the 195 bodies returned by Israel as part of the ceasefire agreement.

Even if Israel were to allow excavators and bulldozers into Gaza today, civil defence officials estimate it would take up to nine months to recover the majority of the bodies. The agency says recovery efforts so far have been limited to small houses and apartment blocks of one or two floors, where rescuers are able to reach bodies using the few tools at their disposal.

Classified US Report Finds ‘Many Hundreds’ of Alleged Israeli Human Rights Violations in Gaza

Progressive lawmakers and rights groups have long warned that by arming the Israel Defense Forces and providing the IDF with more than $21 billion, the US has violated its own laws barring the government from sending military aid to countries accused of human rights abuses and of blocking humanitarian relief.

On Thursday, a classified report by the US State Department detailed for the first time the federal government's own acknowledgment of the scale of alleged human rights abuses that the IDF has committed in Gaza since it began bombarding the exclave in October 2023.

The Office of the Inspector General's document, reported on by the Washington Post, which spoke to US officials about it, also detailed how allegations of human rights abuses against the Israeli military are made harder to prove by a vetting process that is only afforded to Israel—not other countries accused of violations.

The US officials said the long backlog of "many hundreds" of possible violations of the Leahy Laws, which bar US military assistance from going to units credibly accused of human rights abuses, would likely take years to review—calling into question whether the IDF will ever be held accountable for them.

"The lesson here is that if you commit genocide and war crimes, do as much as possible because then it becomes difficult to investigate everything," said journalist and Northwestern University professor Marc Owen Jones grimly in response to the Post's report.

The government report was described by the Post days after the State Department dismantled a website used to report human rights violations by foreign militaries that receive US aid, which was established in 2022 to ensure the US was in compliance with the Leahy Laws.

The Biden administration flagged at least two 2024 attacks by Israeli forces—one that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers and one known as the "flour massacre," in which more than 100 Palestinians were killed and nearly 800 were injured as they tried to get flour from aid trucks—as ones that may have used US weapons, signaling that continuing US aid to Israel would break the Leahy Laws.

A report by Amnesty International last year focused on several IDF attacks on civilian infrastructure—which killed nearly 100 people including 42 children—in which Israel used bombs and other weapons made by US companies such as Boeing.

But just a week after the Amnesty analysis, the Biden administration told Congress in a mandated report that it was "not able to reach definitive conclusions" on whether Israel had used US-supplied weapons in attacks such as the one on the World Central Kitchen workers.

After the report of the new analysis, said University of Maryland professor Shibley Telhami, former President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Antony Blinken "cannot hide from responsibility" after they persistently defended and funded Israel's attacks on Gaza.

But along with the long backlog of potential human rights abuses, the so-called Israel Leahy Vetting Forum, which dates back to 2020, is likely to prevent the State Department from reviewing the allegations against the IDF.

The government's protocol for reviewing allegations against Israel differs from that of other countries; a US working group is required to “come to a consensus on whether a gross violation of human rights has occurred," with representatives of the US Embassy in Jerusalem among those who participate in the working group.

“To date, the US has not withheld any assistance to any Israeli unit despite clear evidence,” Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned in the early weeks of Israel's war on Gaza over the Biden administration's military support, told the Post.

Shahed Ghoreishi, a former State Department communications official who was fired earlier this year after pushing for the agency to condemn ethnic cleansing and other abuses in Gaza, said it was "predictable" that the State Department declined to answer questions from the Post about the inspector general's report.

"There may be nothing that can excuse the brushing of crimes under the rug," said Ghoreishi, "but ducking questions and hoping it goes away (including no more State Department press briefings) is an abdication of responsibility to the American people."

The inspector general's report was compiled days before Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire agreement earlier this month; the deal is still formally in place, but Israel has continued carrying out strikes, killing more than 800 Palestinians since it was signed.

Alastair Crooke : Gaza update, Do Neocons Suddenly Love China?

Israel threatens to step up attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon

Israel has threatened to step up its attacks against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, a day after the Lebanese health ministry reported that four people had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. Despite the November 2024 ceasefire, Israel maintains troops in five areas in southern Lebanon and has kept up regular strikes.

The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, accused the Lebanese government of delaying efforts to dismantle Hezbollah. “Hezbollah is playing with fire, and the president of Lebanon is dragging his feet,” Katz said in a statement. “The Lebanese government’s commitment to disarm Hezbollah and remove it from southern Lebanon must be implemented. Maximum enforcement will continue and even intensify – we will not allow any threat to the residents of the north.”

Katz’s threats came as the Israeli Defense Forces confirmed it had carried out an airstrike in southern Lebanon overnight that it said killed four members of the militant group’s elite Radwan Force. According to the military, the strike in the town of Kfar Reman targeted the unit’s logistics chief, who, while not named, was said to have been involved in the transfer of weapons and in “attempts to restore terror infrastructure” in southern Lebanon. The IDF said the three other men killed were also members of the Radwan Force and that their activities had violated the ceasefire. ...

Once the dominant political and military power in Lebanon, Hezbollah was badly weakened by Israel’s war last year, which killed thousands of its fighters and Nasrallah. The conflict also left more than 1,100 women and children dead and devastated large parts of southern and eastern Lebanon. Hezbollah has since publicly committed to the ceasefire, refraining from attacks on Israel and not opposing the seizure of unmanned weapons caches in the south. Yet the group insists that the disarmament clause applies only to southern Lebanon, and has hinted that renewed conflict is possible if Israel moves more broadly against it.

On Thursday, Israeli ground troops carried out another deadly raid into southern Lebanon, prompting the Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun, to order the army to confront such incursions. Aoun had called for talks with Israel in mid-October, after the US president, Donald Trump, helped broker a ceasefire in Gaza. But Aoun later accused Israel of responding to his offer by intensifying its airstrikes.

Lebanese President Orders Army to Confront Israeli Incursions After Deadly Raid

For a country that’s the target of on-again, off-again Israeli invasions, the Lebanese military has historically had little to no involvement in actually fighting them. That may be about to change, however, following a deadly Israeli raid on the Lebanese border town of Blida overnight.

Israeli ground troops crossed the border and entered a municipal building, where they stayed for roughly two and a half hours. Locals reported hearing screams from the building, and after they withdrew, the body of a municipal worker was recovered.

The worker, identified as Ibrahim Salameh, was reportedly sleeping at the facility when the IDF arrived and killed him. The IDF confirmed the incident, but claimed the sleeping “suspect” posed an immediate threat to the invading troops.

Just one killing out of many during the ceasefire, but it seems like increasingly Lebanon is getting impatient, with President Joseph Aoun now instructing the Lebanese Army to “confront” any future incursions by Israeli ground troops.

Max Blumenthal: US Foreign Policy and Militarism: The effect on Venezuela, Gaza, Iran, & Ukraine

Ray McGovern : How the Russians View Ukraine

Russia Says It Will Respond If the US Starts Testing Nuclear Weapons

Russia on Thursday warned that it would respond if the US began testing nuclear weapons, comments that came after President Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he had ordered the US War Department to start tests.

It’s unclear from President Trump’s post if he meant the testing of nuclear-capable missiles, something the US regularly does, or actually detonating nuclear bombs, which the US hasn’t done since 1992. The president said that he ordered the Pentagon to “start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis” as other countries.

Russia has recently tested a nuclear-capable missile and a nuclear-capable underwater drone, but there have been no known recent detonations of nuclear weapons by any nation. Since the 1990s, all nuclear-armed states, except North Korea, which last detonated a nuclear bomb in 2017, have maintained a moratorium on detonating nuclear weapons.

Pentagon Has NO IDEA Who They’re Killing On Venezuelan Boats!

Any Trump Attack on Venezuela Would Be ‘Blatantly Unconstitutional’

US Rep. Ro Khanna on Friday demanded urgent congressional action to avert "another endless, regime-change war" amid reports that President Donald Trump is weighing military strikes inside Venezuela.

Such strikes, warned Khanna (D-Calif.), would be "blatantly unconstitutional."

"The United States Congress must speak up and stop this," Khanna said in a video posted to social media. "No president, according to the Constitution, has the authority to strike another country without Congress' approval. And the American people have voted against regime change and endless wars."

Khanna's remarks came in response to reporting by the Miami Herald and the Wall Street Journal on internal Trump administration discussions regarding possible airstrike targets inside Venezuela.

The Herald reported early Friday that the administration "has made the decision to attack military installations inside Venezuela and the strikes could come at any moment." The Journal, in a story published Thursday, was more reserved, reporting that the administration "has identified targets in Venezuela that include military facilities used to smuggle drugs," but adding that "the president hasn't made a final decision on ordering land strikes."

Citing unnamed US officials familiar with the matter, the Journal reported that "the targets would send a clear message to Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro that it is time to step down."

Following the reports, the White House denied that Trump has finalized plans for a military strike on Venezuela. Trump himself told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday that he has not made a final decision, signaling his belief he has the authority to do so if he chooses.

Last week, the president said publicly that land strikes are "going to be next" following his illegal, deadly strikes on boats in waters off Central and South America.

Trump has said he would not seek approval from Congress before attacking Venezuela directly.

A potentially imminent, unauthorized US attack on Venezuela and the administration's accelerating military buildup in the Caribbean have thus far drawn vocal opposition from just a fraction of the lawmakers on Capitol Hill, currently embroiled in a shutdown fight.

Just three senators—Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)—are listed as official backers of a resolution aimed at preventing Trump from attacking Venezuela without congressional authorization. Other senators, including Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), have spoken out against Trump's belligerence toward Venezuela.

"Trump is illegally threatening war with Venezuela—after killing more than 50 people in unauthorized strikes at sea," Sanders wrote in a social media post on Friday. "The Constitution is clear: Only Congress can declare war. Congress must defend the law and end Trump's militarism."

Dylan Williams, vice president of government affairs at the Center for International Policy, wrote Friday that "most Americans oppose overthrowing Venezuela's leaders by force—and an even larger majority oppose invading."

"Call your senators and tell them to vote for S.J.Res.90 to block Trump's unauthorized use of military force," Williams added. "The Capitol switchboard can connect you to your senators' offices at 202-224-3121."

A similar resolution led by Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) in the US House has just over 30 cosponsors.

Trump Admin Now Says Maduro IS HAMAS

Three killed in US military strike on alleged drug vessel in the Caribbean

The US military has carried out another lethal strike on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth said.

Hegseth said on Saturday the vessel was operated by a US-designated terrorist organization but did not name which group was targeted. He said three people were killed in the strike.

It’s at least the 15th such strike carried out by the US military in the Caribbean or eastern Pacific since early September.

In a posting on X, Hegseth said the vessel “was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics.”

The US military has now killed at least 64 people in the strikes.

USDA Tells Grocery Stores They Can’t Give Discounts to People Hit by Trump’s Food Stamp Freeze

As the Trump administration continued its illegal freeze on food assistance, the US Department of Agriculture sent a warning to grocery stores not to provide discounts to the more than 42 million Americans affected.

Several grocery chains and food delivery apps have announced in recent days that they would provide substantial discounts to those whose Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits have been delayed. More than 1 in 8 Americans rely on the program, and 39% of them are children.

But on Sunday, Catherine Rampell, a reporter at the Washington Post published an email from the USDA that was sent to grocery stores around the country, telling them they were prohibited from offering special discounts to those at greater risk of food insecurity due to the cuts.

"You must offer eligible foods at the same prices and on the same terms and conditions to SNAP-EBT customers as other customers, except that sales tax cannot be charged on SNAP purchases," the email said. "You cannot treat SNAP-EBT customers differently from any other customer. Offering discounts or services only to SNAP-eligible customers is a SNAP violation unless you have a SNAP equal treatment waiver."

The email referred to SNAP's "Equal Treatment Rule," which prohibits stores from discriminating against SNAP recipients by charging them higher prices or treating them more favorably than other customers by offering them specialized sales or incentives.

Rampell said she was "aware of at least two stores that had offered struggling customers a discount, then withdrew it after receiving this email."

She added that it was "understandable why grocery stores might be scared off" because "a store caught violating the prohibition could be denied the ability to accept SNAP benefits in the future. In low-income areas where the SNAP shutdown will have the biggest impact, getting thrown off SNAP could mean a store is no longer financially viable."

While the rule prohibits special treatment in either direction, legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold argues that it was a "perverted interpretation of a rule that stops grocers from price gouging SNAP recipients... charging them more when they use food stamps."

The government also notably allows retailers to request waivers for programs that incentivize SNAP recipients to purchase healthy food.

Can't follow the law when a judge says fund the program but have to follow the rules exactly when they say don't help poor people afford food. https://t.co/hjmUtfhQrV

— Clarence Thomas the Tank Engine (@TheRealJChubby) November 2, 2025

Others pointed out that SNAP is currently not paying out to Americans because President Donald Trump is defying multiple federal court rulings issued Friday, requiring him to tap a $6 billion contingency fund to ensure benefit payments go out. Both courts, in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, have said his administration's refusal to pay out benefits is against the law.

One labor movement lawyer summed up the administration's position on social media: "Can't follow the law when a judge says fund the program, but have to follow the rules exactly when they say don't help poor people afford food."

ICE Raids Are Only Half The Story

The luxury gap: Trump builds his palace as Americans face going hungry

On 15 October, Donald Trump welcomed nearly 130 deep-pocketed donors, allies and representatives of major companies for a dinner at the White House to reward them for their pledged contributions to a vast new ballroom now expected to cost $300m. That the federal government had shut down two weeks earlier scarcely seemed to matter.

But two weeks later, the shutdown is starting to bite – and throw Trump’s architectural folly into sharp relief. On Saturday, with Congress still locked in a legislative stalemate, a potential benefit freeze could leave tens of millions of low-income Americans without food aid. Democrats accuse Trump’s Republican party of “weaponising hunger” to pursue an extreme rightwing agenda.

Images of wealthy monarchs or autocrats revelling in excess even as the masses struggle for bread are more commonly associated with the likes of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette of France, who spent lavishly at the court of Versailles, or Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos of the Philippines, who siphoned off billions while citizens endured deepening poverty. But now America has a jarring split-screen of its own, between an oligarch president bringing a Midas touch to the White House and families going hungry, workers losing pay and government services on the brink of collapse. ...

Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “There is a glaring gap between the life of Donald Trump, which is gold-plated and luxurious, and the life of so many Americans who are now being hit by the government shutdown. “You have to go back in history to examples in the 1920s or the Gilded Age in the late 19th century to find this kind of opulence that’s not just going on but being advertised. That goes along with all the other efforts to enrich Donald Trump and his family and his friends. It’s a shocking display of the use of public power for private gain.”

It is hard to imagine a more resonant symbol than the ballroom. Last month, Trump left presidential historians and former White House staff aghast by demolishing the East Wing without seeking approval from the National Capital Planning Commission, which vets the construction of federal buildings. He also fired all six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, an independent agency that had expected to review the project. He claimed the destruction was a necessary step towards building a long-needed ballroom which, at 90,000 sq ft, would be big enough to hold an inauguration and dwarf the executive mansion itself. It will be funded not by the taxpayer but the new masters of the universe.

"Denying People the Right to Food": Millions Could Go Hungry as Trump Admin Holds Up SNAP Benefits

Republicans argue ‘big-hearted president’ Trump is keen to end shutdown

Top Republicans are portraying Donald Trump as a “big-hearted president” who is desperate to reopen the US government, even as he delays food assistance funding for millions of low-income Americans but steams ahead with construction of his $300m gilded White House ballroom.

As the government shutdown entered its 33rd day, the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, presented Trump as a man angry and desperate to break the impasse so as to ease mounting pain for ordinary Americans. “He’s just desperate for the government to open, he’s tried everything he can,” Johnson said, adding that Trump was a “big-hearted president, he wants everybody to get their services”.

The speaker’s claims, made in an interview with Fox News Sunday two days after Trump hosted a lavish, Great Gatsby-themed soiree at Mar-a-Lago, gave a slanted take on the president’s position. Trump continues to exert an iron grip on the shutdown, resisting political and even federal court pressure to ease the burden on vulnerable Americans while protesting he has no power to end the impasse.

Two federal court judges ruled on Friday that the Trump administration must use $5bn in contingency funds to keep paying food assistance Snap benefits for up to 42 million low-income Americans. The payments stopped Saturday under the shutdown, posing the risk of hunger for millions of people. Despite the two court orders, it remains unclear when or whether the administration will restart the payments. Trump has said he is waiting for clarification from the federal judges on where the money should come from.

The federal court orders require that partial payments of Snap start as early as Wednesday. Asked by CNN’s State of the Union whether that deadline could be met, the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said: “Could be”. He said that the administration would not be appealing Friday’s rulings. Instead of authorising use of the contingency funds, Trump has instead exhorted fellow Republican senators to break the impasse by ending the Senate filibuster. The mechanism requires 60 votes in the 100-vote chamber for most kinds of legislation – including an end to the shutdown – to pass.

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California poised to approve Prop 50 as voters signal displeasure with Trump

California’s Proposition 50 began as a warning from the nation’s largest blue state to its largest red one: don’t poke the bear. But when Texas moved ahead with a rare, mid-decade gerrymander, pushed by Donald Trump as Republicans seek to shore up their fragile House majority in the midterm elections, California made good on its threat. Now, California voters appear poised to approve a redistricting measure placed on the ballot in August by Democrats and the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who have cast it as a chance to check Trump’s power.

“California will not sit idle as Trump and his Republican lapdogs shred our country’s democracy before our very eyes,” Newsom said at a rally, formally announcing the initiative, known as the Election Rigging Response Act. Proposition 50 asks voters to temporarily scrap the state’s independently-drawn congressional district lines in favor of new maps carved up to help Democrats win five additional safe seats – a tit-for-tat response to Texas, where Republicans secured five new, friendlier districts earlier this year.

Voting has been underway for weeks in the Golden State. As of Saturday, nearly 6m ballots had been returned, about one in four of the total mailed out, according to Political Data Inc, a firm that tracks voter data. Voting ends on Tuesday, 4 November. Early returns and polling suggest the ballot measure is on track for a comfortable victory. Though it can be difficult to predict turnout in an off-year special election, several recent surveys showed it passing by more than 20 points.

“Democrats have won the messaging war in California because they’ve successfully framed it as an anti-Trump campaign,” said Dave Wasserman, the senior elections analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “Republicans just did not cobble together the resources or the momentum to stop it.” Opponents of the effort initially promised a formidable fight, but their campaigns were vastly outraised and support from national Republicans never materialized. In the final weeks, Republicans had largely retreated from the airwaves.

Bill Ackman Campaigns Against Mamdani In SAUDI ARABIA

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No high-level US representatives will go to UN climate talks, Trump officials say

The Trump administration has confirmed that no high-level representatives will be sent by the US to upcoming UN climate talks in Brazil, underscoring the administration’s hostile stance towards action on the climate crisis. The US has always sent delegations of various sizes to UN climate summits over the past three decades, even during periods under George W Bush and in Donald Trump’s first term, where there was scant desire to address the global heating crisis.

But the talks in Belém next month are set to be devoid of an official American presence to an extent never seen before. Trump has called the climate crisis a “hoax” and a “con job” and has said the US will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, which calls for countries to limit the dangerous global temperature rise.

“The Green New Scam would have killed America if President Trump had not been elected to implement his commonsense energy agenda – which is focused on utilizing the liquid gold under our feet to strengthen our grid stability and drive down costs for American families and businesses,” Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement to the Guardian. The “scam” reference relates to the climate policies of Joe Biden.

“President Trump will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries,” she added. Earlier this year, the US state department shuttered the office that typically deals with climate issues. The position of climate envoy, which operated under Biden, has also been scrapped.

Senate declines to halt plan to kill off half-million barred owls by Fish and Wildlife Service

The US Senate rejected an effort on Wednesday to halt a contentious US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) plan to kill nearly half a million barred owls in order to save their cousin, the northern spotted owl. John Kennedy, the Republican senator from Louisiana, had hoped to block the proposal by bringing the matter to a vote with a joint resolution under the Congressional Review Act. The effort failed with 25 votes to 72 votes.

“The barred owls are not hurting anybody. They’re just doing what nature teaches them to do. We’re going to change nature?” Kennedy said in a speech before the Senate. “We’re going to control our environment to this extent? We’re going to pass DEI for owls?”

Barred owls have been expanding their habitat west, increasing competition for the spotted owl. The more aggressive barred owls come from eastern North America and are slightly larger and better able to adapt than the spotted owl. The spotted owl has been imperiled over the years, facing major habitat loss as logging and development destroyed old growth forests in the Pacific north-west.

The USFWS introduced the controversial plan to cull as many as 450,000 of the raptors in designated areas in the Pacific north-west during Joe Biden’s administration, arguing that barred owls pose a “significant threat” to the survival of the spotted owl. Under that management strategy, two trained individuals must positively identify barred owls and “removal specialists” will shoot the animals.

Experts acknowledged it created an “ethical dilemma” and animal welfare and conservation groups were at odds over the issue. In 2024, more than 80 US animal welfare groups called the plan “colossally reckless”. Some Republicans became prominent critics as well arguing it was wrong and costly.

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Also of Interest

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

‘There Is No Ceasefire’ Say Gazans as Israeli Strikes Kill, Wound Hundreds

The New Cold War Is Taking Form

Ukraine – Hail Mary Operation To Unblock Pokrovsk Has Failed

SNAP, the Nation’s Largest Food Aid Program, Is About To See Cuts. Here’s What You Should Know.

Trump policies spur economic anxiety in US Republican heartland: ‘Tariffs are affecting everything’

Patrick Lawrence: My Bigotry Is Better Than Yours

Larry C. Johnson & Paul Craig Roberts: It’s HAPPENING: Iran & Russia UNITE — Trump Can’t Believe It!

Trump Throws "Great Gatsby" Party at Mar-a-Lago as Food Stamps End for Millions

Trump Threatens to Go "Guns-a-Blazing" into Nigeria over "Killing of Christians"

Fox News TRICKED By AI

FULL Republican Civil War EXPLODES Over Tucker, Fuentes, Israel

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A Little Night Music

Mississippi Fred McDowell - You Gotta Move

Mississippi Fred McDowell - Kokomo Me Baby

Mississippi Fred McDowell - Goin Down to the River

Mississippi Fred McDowell - When I Lay My Burden Down

Mississippi Fred McDowell - My Baby She Gonna Jump and Shout

Mississippi Fred McDowell - Freight Train Blues

Mississippi Fred McDowell - Louise

Mississippi Fred McDowell - White Lightnin'

Mississippi Fred McDowell - I Walked All The Way From East St. Louis

Mississippi Fred McDowell - Goin' Down To The River

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