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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Hammie Nixon

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Tennessee jug band harmonica player Hammie Nixon. Enjoy!

^{Sleepy John Estes & Hammie Nixon - I Aint Gonna Sell It}

"Detective: Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?
Sherlock Holmes: To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.
Detective: The dog did nothing in the night-time.
Sherlock Holmes: That was the curious incident."

-- A. Conan Doyle

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News and Opinion

Sometimes The Media Ignoring A Major Story Becomes The Story

One of the craziest things happening right now is how there’s been report after report confirming that Jeffrey Epstein really was an Israeli intelligence operative, based on publicly available documents, and yet it’s had no measurable impact on mainstream media or politics.

Over the last month and a half, Drop Site News has published four reports about Epstein’s intelligence ties under the headlines “Jeffrey Epstein Helped Broker Israeli Security Agreement With Mongolia”, “Jeffrey Epstein and the Mossad: How The Sex-Trafficker Helped Israel Build a Backchannel to Russia Amid Syrian Civil War”, “Jeffrey Epstein Helped Israel Sell a Surveillance State to Côte d’Ivoire”, and the most recent report titled “Israeli Spy Stayed for Weeks at a Time With Jeffrey Epstein in Manhattan”.

In the latest article, Drop Site’s Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussein write, “we’re left wondering why the rest of the media, which has demonstrated no lack of excitement when it comes to the saga of Jeffrey Epstein, has all of a sudden lost its reporting capacity, in the face of reams of publicly available newsworthy documents.”

“A question for editors reading this newsletter: What are you doing?”, Grim and Hussein write. “From a place of competition, we’re glad the media are sitting on their collective hands and we’re proud to have broken this series of stories, which give us a glimpse of a world that is often hidden from public view. But it’s also a topic that would benefit from the collective attention of our national media. Here’s hoping some will join in.”

Sometimes the biggest news story of the day is the fact that all mainstream news outlets are completely ignoring a major news story. It is interesting how often such instances involve the state of Israel.

The Member States Complicit in GENOCIDE (w/ Francesca Albanese) | The Chris Hedges Report

Israeli president condemns ‘serious’ attack by settlers on West Bank villages

Dozens of masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, injuring four Palestinians and attacking Israeli soldiers in the latest incident of rising settler violence. The settlers attacked the Palestinian villages of Beit Lid and Deir Sharaf, setting vehicles on fire and damaging property belonging to a Bedouin community, with charred remains of cars left behind the next day.

The al-Juneidi dairy factory, a big employer in the area, was also damaged in the attacks, and four of its trucks laden with products were set alight.

Israeli settler violence has surged since the war in Gaza started two years ago, with at least 1,001 Palestinians killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem by settlers and Israeli soldiers. According to the UN, 260 attacks took place in October, the deadliest month for settler violence since it started keeping track in 2006.

Human rights groups and the UN have warned that settler violence is taking place in a “permissive environment” and with the backing of key Israeli ministers. The UN human rights office said settlers were seeking to “accelerate displacement of Palestinians from their land, raising concerns of forcible transfer”.

In a rare statement on Wednesday, the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, condemned the latest attacks, saying the “shocking and serious” incident had been carried out by a “handful” of perpetrators. He called for authorities to “act decisively to eradicate the phenomenon and to strengthen the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] fighters and security forces who protect us day and night”. His remarks were echoed by the top Israeli military official in the West Bank, Maj Gen Avi Bluth, who called the violence “unacceptable”. The statements were unusual for Israeli officials, who have largely ignored settler violence against Palestinians over the past two years even as it has grown more widespread.

Turkey is 'preparing to secure Gaza' - Netanyahu is angry about it

How many times has Israel violated the Gaza ceasefire? Here are the numbers

One month into the declaration of a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, Israel has violated the agreement with near-daily attacks, killing hundreds of people.

Israel violated the ceasefire agreement at least 282 times from October 10 to November 10, through the continuation of attacks by air, artillery and direct shootings, the Government Media Office in Gaza reports.

The office said Israel shot at civilians 88 times, raided residential areas beyond the “yellow line” 12 times, bombed Gaza 124 times, and demolished people’s properties on 52 occasions. It added that Israel also detained 23 Palestinians from Gaza over the past month.

Israel has also continued to block vital humanitarian aid and destroy homes and infrastructure across the Strip.

Max Blumenthal : The MAGA Divide: Israel, Epstein, and Kirk Split Trump’s Base

Trump writes to Israeli president calling for Netanyahu pardon

Donald Trump has repeated a request to Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, for a pardon for Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial in three separate corruption cases.

The Israeli prime minister has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in the ongoing court cases. No rulings have been delivered, and his supporters have dismissed the trials as politically motivated.

In a letter released by Herzog’s office on Wednesday, Trump says he is writing to the president at a “historic time, as we have, together, just secured peace that has been sought for at least 3,000 years”.

“I hereby call on you to fully pardon Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been a formidable and decisive War Time Prime Minister … While I absolutely respect the independence of the Israeli Justice System … I believe that this ’case’ against Bibi … is political, unjustified prosecution,” he writes.

Trump has already suggested a presidential pardon for Netanyahu in a series of social media posts and a speech to the Israeli parliament last month. Despite the largely ceremonial role of the Israeli presidency, Herzog has the authority to pardon convicted criminals under unusual circumstances.

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Putin’s Calculus: Why Russia Might Welcome a Long War

US military force grows and waits off coast of Venezuela

US strikes against boats in Caribbean ‘disregard international law’, French minister says

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is facing questions from his fellow G7 foreign ministers about the legality of the US strikes in the Caribbean on ships it says it suspects of carrying drugs. The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, criticised the military operations, saying they could contribute to instability in the region, but his suggestion that the attacks were unlawful was also a rare criticism of the Trump administration. ...

“We have observed with concern military operations in the Caribbean region because they disregard international law and because France has a presence in this region through its overseas territories, where more than a million of our compatriots reside,” Barrot told reporters at the start of the gathering. “They could therefore be affected by the instability caused by any escalation, which we obviously want to avoid.” ...

On Wednesday Rubio pushed back against criticism over the legality of the strikes, saying Europeans don’t get to dictate how Washington defends its national security. Speaking to reporters before departing Canada, Rubio said no one had raised the operations with him during the G7 meeting. However, he defended targeting what he called “narco-terrorists” and said drugs are also shipped via Venezuela to Europe, so the United States should be thanked for taking them out. ...

The US vice-president, JD Vance, has also previously pushed back against claims the attacks amounted to a war crime, saying: “I don’t give a shit what you call it.”

Trump is serving a foreign country

Series of Reports Ignored by Media Show Jeffrey Epstein’s Extensive Work With Israeli Intelligence

As the US House of Representatives appears poised to vote for a resolution demanding the release of files relating to the late sex criminal and financier Jeffrey Epstein, a new series of investigations is digging into an area of the disgraced financier's life that has largely evaded scrutiny: his extensive ties with Israeli intelligence.

Epstein's relationship with the Israeli government has long been the subject of speculation and conspiracy theorizing. But the extent of the connections has long been difficult to prove. That is, until October 2024, when the Palestinian group Handala released a tranche of more than 100,000 hacked emails from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who led the country from 1999 to 2001.

The emails span the years 2013-16, beginning just before Barak concluded his nearly six-year tenure as Israel's minister of defense. Barak is known to have been one of Epstein's closest associates, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that he visited the financier's estates in Florida and New York more than 30 times between 2013 and 2017, years after Epstein had been convicted for soliciting a minor for prostitution.

“Not Mossad — But Serving Its Interests”

Asked whether Epstein’s Israeli work was ideological or business, Murtaza Hussain says: “Probably both.” He wasn’t a formal Mossad agent but clearly an asset advancing Israeli security goals. On the power dynamic, Hussain notes: “It’s… pic.twitter.com/ShOhBKcrDL

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) November 11, 2025

Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein's most prominent victims, who died earlier this year, alleged in her posthumous memoir that a figure, described only as "the Prime Minister," but widely believed to be Barak, violently raped her on Epstein's private Caribbean island when she was 18. In past court filings, Giuffre accused Barak of sexually assaulting her. Barak has categorically denied those allegations and said he was unaware of Epstein's activities with minors during the time of their friendship.

Emails between Barak and Epstein have served as the basis for the ongoing investigative series published since late September by the independent outlet Drop Site News, which used them to unearth Epstein's extensive role in brokering intelligence deals between Israel and other nations.

The emails reveal that between 2013 and 2016, the pair had "intimate, oftentimes daily correspondence," during which they discussed "political and business strategy as Epstein coordinated meetings for Barak with other members of his elite circles."

The investigation comes as President Donald Trump's extensive ties to Epstein face renewed scrutiny in Congress. On Wednesday, just a day after Drop Site published the fourth part of its series, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a new trove of documents from Epstein's private estate.

Among them were emails sent in 2011 from Epstein to his partner and co-conspirator Ghislane Maxwell, in which he said the then private-citizen Trump “spent hours at my house” with one of his sex trafficking victims, referring to Trump as a “dog that hasn’t barked.”

Murtaza Hussain, one of the Drop Site reporters who has dug into Epstein's Israel connections, told Democracy Now! on Wednesday that the focus on Trump, while important, has diverted attention from other key tendrils of Epstein's influence.

"There's been a lot of justifiable focus on Epstein's very grave crimes and facilitation of the crimes of others related to sex trafficking and sex abuse," Hussain said. "But one critical aspect of the story that has not been covered is Epstein's own relations to foreign governments, the US government, and particularly foreign intelligence agencies."

The first report shows that Epstein was instrumental in helping Barak develop a formal security agreement between Israel and Mongolia, recruiting powerful friends like Larry Summers, who served as an economist to former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, to serve on a Presidential Advisory Board for the Central Asian nation's economy.

Epstein helped to facilitate an agreement for Mongolia to purchase Israeli military equipment and surveillance technology from companies with which the men had financial ties.

Another report shows how Epstein helped Israel to establish a covert backchannel with the Russian government at the height of the Syrian Civil War, during which they attempted to persuade the Kremlin to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a major national security priority for Israel, which had become substantially involved in the conflict.

This process was coordinated with Israeli intelligence and resulted in Barak securing a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In one message, Barak explicitly thanked Epstein for "setting the whole thing together."

Epstein also worked alongside Barak to sell Israeli surveillance tech, which had previously been used extensively in occupied Palestine, to the West African nation of Côte d’Ivoire.

In 2014, the pair architected a deal by which the nation's government, led by President Alassane Ouattara, purchased technology used to listen in on phone calls and radio transmissions and monitor points of interest like cybercafes.

In the decade since, the report says, "Ouattara has tightened his grip on power, banning public demonstrations and arresting peaceful protestors," while "his Israeli-backed police state has squashed civic organizations and silenced critics."

On Tuesday, just before the House Oversight Committee dropped its latest batch of documents, the series' latest report revealed that an Israeli spy, Yoni Koren, stayed at Epstein's New York apartment for weeks at a time on three separate occasions between 2013 and 2015. Koren served as an intermediary between the American and Israeli governments, helping Barak organize meetings with top intelligence officials, including former CIA Director Leon Panetta.

Drop Site'sreporting has fueled speculation of the longstanding theory that Epstein may have worked as an agent of Mossad, Israel's central intelligence agency. Hussain said that the evidence points to the idea that Epstein was not a formal Mossad agent, but was working as an asset to advance its most hawkish foreign policy goals.

He marveled at the fact that throughout each of these stories, “it’s not Epstein chasing Barak—it’s Barak chasing Epstein," and that at times, "it looked like Mossad was working for Epstein instead of Epstein working for Mossad.”

In a foreword to their latest report, Hussain and co-author Ryan Grim expressed bewilderment at the lack of media attention paid to the publicly available files revealing Epstein's role as a semi-official node in Israel's intelligence apparatus.

While Epstein's relationship with Trump has routinely been front-page news for many outlets, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal have not published a story focused on Epstein's role in Israeli intelligence.

"We’re left wondering why the rest of the media, which has demonstrated no lack of excitement when it comes to the saga of Jeffrey Epstein, has all of a sudden lost its reporting capacity, in the face of reams of publicly available newsworthy documents," the reporters asked. "A question for editors reading this newsletter: What are you doing?"

In the interview, Hussain said he and Grim "are going to continue drilling down on this and not shying away from the political implications of his activities."

Trump knew about Epstein’s conduct, newly released emails suggest

Damning new emails that suggest Donald Trump knew about the conduct of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released Wednesday, including one in which Epstein said “of course [Trump] knew about the girls” procured for his sex-trafficking ring, and another that said Trump “spent hours” with one victim at Epstein’s house.

The release of the three messages by Democrats on the House oversight committee is likely to heap significant pressure on the White House to publish in full the so-called Epstein files reportedly detailing the long-running scandal that has overshadowed Trump’s second term in office.

Later on Wednesday, the committee’s Republican majority countered by releasing its own tranche of 23,000 documents, accusing Democrats of “cherry picking” the memos “to generate clickbait”. Trump, meanwhile, fired off a post to his Truth Social platform in which he said Democrats “are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects”. ...

The Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, who has wavered on the release of the full tranche of Epstein investigation records, has said he will swear in Arizona’s newly elected representative Adelita Grijalva, set to be the 218th signature needed on a discharge petition that would force a vote.

“Republicans are running a pedophile protection program. They are intentionally hiding the Jeffrey Epstein files,” Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, said on Tuesday, accusing Johnson of delaying Grijalva’s swearing-in for seven weeks to defend Trump.

US House to vote next week on bill compelling release of Epstein files

Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, said on Wednesday he would put the bill compelling the release of government files related to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on the House floor next week. “We are gonna put that on the floor for [a] full vote next week, [as] soon as we get back,” Johnson told reporters, as the chamber gathered to debate legislation to reopen the government.

Johnson, who opposes the bill, made the announcement just hours after swearing in Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva, who took her oath of office seven weeks after she won a late September special election to succeed her father, the longtime representative Raúl Grijalva, who died in March.

Grijalva’s swearing-in cleared the path for the vote to release the Epstein files, as she became the 218th and final signature on a discharge petition that automatically triggers a House floor vote on legislation demanding the justice department release the files. In her floor remarks on Wednesday, Grijalva said: “Justice cannot wait another day. Adelante.” ...

Republicans are reportedly bracing for “a significant chunk of the conference” to vote for the bill, according to Politico. Don Bacon of Nebraska, Tim Burchett of Tennessee and Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania have expressed they would do so.

Richard D. Wolff & Michael Hudson: Trump Is Blowing It Up: Dollar Is on the Edge of TOTAL COLLAPSE!

Judge orders release of hundreds arrested during Chicago immigration raids

A federal judge has ordered the release of hundreds of people who were arrested over the last few months in the Chicago area amid the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids across the city. On Wednesday, US district judge Jeffrey Cummings ordered the justice department to produce a list showing which of the 615 possible class members are still in custody by 19 November, the Chicago Tribune reports.

According to Cummings, he would allow the members’ release on a $1,500 bond as long as they have no criminal history or prior removal order. The ACLU of Illinois said that the order will mean the immediate release of 13 people who have been detained by federal officials. As part of Wednesday’s order, Cummings also prohibited the government from pressuring detainees to agree to voluntary deportation while their cases are pending, the Chicago Tribune added.

The order comes after Donald Trump’s “Operation Midway Blitz” launched a series of aggressive immigration raids across Chicago during which federal agents have been accused of using excessive force against protesters including deploying tear gas and pepper spray.

In a statement to the Guardian, the ACLU’s Illinois chapter hailed Cummings’ decision, with its deputy legal director, Michelle Garcia, noting the 13 immediate releases. “In addition, more than 600 additional individuals may be released in a week on bond or ankle monitoring, while the parties determine if their arrests violated the consent decree,” Garcia added, referencing a 2022 agreement that had been previously established concerning warrantless arrests in the Chicago area.

The ACLU and the National Immigrant Justice Center had filed a lawsuit over allegations that federal agents violated the 2022 agreement by issuing warrantless arrests amid the latest immigration crackdowns across the city. Garcia went on to say: “Most importantly, the court committed to enforcing our agreement with the federal government – a step that creates a pathway for even more of the hundreds of people illegally arrested and detained during Operation Midway Blitz to be released. The court is holding [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and [Customs and Border Protection] accountable for breaking the law.”

WH REFUSES To Publish Job Loss Data

Longest US government shutdown in history set to end after House passes bill

The longest US government shutdown in history is set to end on Wednesday after more than 42 days, following the House of Representative’s passage of a bill negotiated by Republicans and a splinter group of Democrat-aligned senators. The legislation restarts federal operations but does not include the healthcare funding the minority party demanded.

The compromise sets the stage for government operations to return to normal through January, while leaving unresolved the issue of expiring tax credits for Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare health plans, which most Democrats demanded be extended in any deal to reopen the government.

After it was unveiled over the weekend, the Senate approved the compromise on Monday, and the House followed suit two days later by a margin of 222 in favor and 209 against, with two not voting. Donald Trump will sign the bill Wednesday night, the White House said.

“The Democrat shutdown is finally over thanks to House and Senate Republicans,” House Republican leaders said in a statement. “There is absolutely no question now that Democrats are responsible for millions of American families going hungry, millions of travelers left stranded in airports, and our troops left wondering if they would receive their next paycheck. It was the Democrat Party that voted 15 times to keep the government closed and force the longest shutdown in US history … Now that Republicans have succeeded in ending the Democrat shutdown, we look forward to continuing our important legislative work delivering results for the American people.” ...

House Democrats later put out a statement: “The American people deserve better than the chaos, cruelty and corruption that has been unleashed on the country by Donald Trump and Republicans since the beginning of his presidency. Forty-three days ago, Donald Trump and Maga extremists shut down the government because they did not want to provide affordable healthcare to working- class Americans. During the Republican shutdown, the Trump administration and GOP enablers have visited tremendous pain on the American people, including hardworking federal employees, law enforcement personnel, air traffic controllers, Snap recipients and more – all because Republicans have no interest in stopping healthcare costs from skyrocketing …

Democrats' Treachery Ends the Shutdown

The Democratic Party’s history is an indication that true opposition was never part of their plan in ending the shutdown. The election results ought to have emboldened them and given confidence that they could withstand any criticism for allowing the shutdown to continue. That logic would apply only if the democrats were a real opposition political party instead of a money laundering operation and a brand to be marketed at opportune moments. The party doesn’t work for the people, but instead for the democrats’ wing of the ruling class oligarchy. Helping people without jobs or SNAP benefits would be the very antithesis of their true mission. Contrary to what this columnist wrote earlier, the democrats do in fact have reasons to exist. The duopoly system needs equilibrium. It requires that the two parties play different roles at different times. At this juncture, democrats were required to go through the motions, to pretend they want to fight when they really don’t. One can only imagine the levels of cynical plotting among Senate democrats that resulted in the pretend fight. Leadership had to determine who would be hurt the least and figure out how Schumer might go about pretending to oppose what he had concocted.

The biggest question is about what democratic voters will do. This double cross was not the first. Will they continue to hang on to their discredited party even as they express disgust or will they walk away and disengage politically? Democratic Party leadership is counting on disgust with Trump to save them so that they can once again be a partner in duopoly deal-making.

Schumer is still the Senate Minority Leader and will remain so for as long as he wants the position. Any one of his members could call for a vote on his leadership. Even Bernie Sanders demurs when asked if Schumer’s time is up. Expecting any democrats to show courage and deviate from their political script is to be in denial about the realities of U.S. politics.

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Former AOC staffer running for Pelosi’s seat promises to root out corruption – and Trump’s ballroom

Rooting out corruption in government is at the center of Saikat Chakrabarti’s campaign for Congress. And if elected next year, the 39-year-old former Silicon Valley engineer – now running to succeed Nancy Pelosi in her long-held San Francisco seat – says he would put it on display for every American to see.

As part of his anti-corruption agenda, Chakrabarti says he would introduce legislation to turn Donald Trump’s gilded White House ballroom into the “Smithsonian Museum on Corruption and Authoritarianism”. Looking ahead to a post-Trump Washington, Chakrabarti envisions filling the 90,000 sq ft structure, to be built in place of the now-demolished East Wing, with exhibits dedicated to the “modern dangers posed by the current wannabe dictator, the ongoing threat of authoritarianism, assaults on the rule of law and the pervasive corruption of the billionaire class”.

“There’s going to have to be this moment of reckoning in the whole country after this Trump administration where we actually call out everything that just happened,” he said in an interview previewing the proposal, first shared with the Guardian. “We need to teach the history about how we got there and how we don’t get there again.”

Chakrabarti, who previously served as the chief of staff to congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is among the Democrats vying to represent the deep-blue district Pelosi will vacate when she retires at the end of her 20th term in January 2027. California state senator Scott Wiener has also entered the race, and other Democrats may join now that Pelosi has said she will not seek re-election.

Since launching his campaign in February, initially as a challenge to the 85-year-old Pelosi, Chakrabarti has positioned himself as a progressive disruptor, aiming to tap into the bubbling discontent with the party’s establishment. On the campaign trail, he has emphasized his tech background – a founding engineer at the $100bn payments processing company Stripe – as both a credential and a lens for tackling corruption. Drawing on his Silicon Valley experience and tech fluency, he says he would be well-equipped as a member of Congress to hold powerful tech leaders accountable, particularly those with business before the government.

Miriam Adelson TARGETS Massie

Wall Street FULLY HYSTERICAL Over Zohran Lina Khan Hire

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World still on track for catastrophic 2.6C temperature rise

The world is still on track for a catastrophic 2.6C increase in temperature as countries have not made sufficiently strong climate pledges, while emissions from fossil fuels have hit a record high, two major reports have found. Despite their promises, governments’ new emission-cutting plans submitted for the Cop30 climate talks taking place in Brazil have done little to avert dangerous global heating for the fourth consecutive year, according to the Climate Action Tracker update.

The world is now anticipated to heat up by 2.6C above preindustrial times by the end of the century – the same temperature rise forecast last year. This level of heating easily breaches the thresholds set out in the Paris climate pact, which every country agreed to, and would set the world spiralling into a catastrophic new era of extreme weather and severe hardships.

A separate report found the fossil fuel emissions driving the climate crisis will rise by about 1% this year to hit a record high, but that the rate of rise has more than halved in recent years. The past decade has seen emissions from coal, oil and gas rise by 0.8% a year compared with 2.0% a year during the decade before. The accelerating rollout of renewable energy is now close to supplying the annual rise in the world’s demand for energy, but has yet to surpass it.

“A world at 2.6C means global disaster,” said Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics. A world this hot would probably trigger major “tipping points” that would cause the collapse of key Atlantic Ocean circulation, the loss of coral reefs, the long-term deterioration of ice sheets and the conversion of the Amazon rainforest to a savannah.

“That all means the end of agriculture in the UK and across Europe, drought and monsoon failure in Asia and Africa, lethal heat and humidity,” said Hare. “This is not a good place to be. You want to stay away from that.”

Western US states fail to agree on plan to manage Colorado River before federal deadline

State negotiators embroiled in an impasse over how to manage the imperiled Colorado River were unable to agree on a plan before a federally set deadline on Tuesday, thrusting deliberations deeper into uncertain territory. Stakeholders have spent months working to iron out contentious disagreements over how to distribute water from this sprawling basin – which supplies roughly 40 million people in seven states, 5.5m acres (8.9m hectares) of farmland, dozens of tribes and parts of Mexico – as the resources grow increasingly scarce.

Long-term overuse and the rising toll from the climate crisis have served as a one-two punch that’s left the system in crisis. Enough progress was made to warrant an extension, according to a joint statement issued by federal officials and representatives from the seven western states. But the discussions – and the deadline set for them – were set to an urgent timeline; current guidelines are expiring and a new finalized agreement must be put in place by October 2026, the start of the 2027 water year.

Time is running short to schedule several steps required to implement a plan, including public engagement and environmental analysis. Final details are due by February 2026. “There are external factors that make this deadline real,” said Anne Castle, a water policy expert and a former chair of the Upper Colorado River Commission. “It’s unfortunate for all the water users in the Colorado River basin that the states have been unable to come to an agreement on the next set of operating guidelines for the river.”

It’s unclear whether a new deadline has been set or how discussions will proceed. If negotiators are unable to create a plan, it’s still possible the federal government will step in, an outcome experts say could lead to litigation and more delays.

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Also of Interest

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

Chris Hedges: The US Banana Republic

‘Regime change’ in Venezuela Is a Euphemism for US-Inflicted Carnage and Chaos

The Trans-Caspian Pipeline Is Resurrected as the U.S. Plots a Return to Central Asia

Why Trump’s 50 Year Mortgage Scheme Is an Even Worse Idea Than You Imagined

Economists Call BS on ‘Crazy’ Trump Tariff Dividend Promise

Northern lights visible across US as geomagnetic storm lights up skies

Trump “Knew About The Girls”: Calls Grow For Full Epstein Files After Release of Emails

Trump Named In Latest Epstein Emails! What you Need To Know!

Rep. Adelita Grijalva Speaks out on Epstein Files & More After Being Sworn in 7 Weeks Late

Israeli Owned Corporate Landlord Behind Mass US Evictions

University LIED About Paving Over Charlie Kirk Assassination Site!

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A Little Night Music

Hammie Nixon - She Keeps Me Worried and Bothered All the Time

Hammie Nixon - Viola Lee Blues

Hammie Nixon - Sugar Mama

Hammie Nixon - Brownsville Blues

Son Bonds & Hammie Nixon - All Night Long

Sleepy John Estes & Hammie Nixon - Mary Comes On Home

Hammie Nixon - You're Gonna Look Like a Monkey When You Get Old

Hammie Nixon - Yellow Yam Blues

Hammie Nixon - Tappin' That Thing

Hammie Nixon - Bottle up and Go

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