---

---

The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: The Neville Brothers

---

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features New Orleans band The Neville Brothers. Enjoy!

^{The Neville Brothers – Fire On The Bayou}

"As long as hierarchy persists, as long as domination organises humanity around a system of elites, the project of dominating nature will continue to exist and inevitably lead our planet to ecological extinction."

-- Murray Bookchin

---

News and Opinion

On Becoming The First Species To Go Extinct From Politeness

We’re on track to become the first species to go extinct due to politeness. Gonna follow the dinosaurs out the door because it was too uncomfortable and confrontational to tell a few billionaires and empire managers to fuck off.

As Howard Zinn put it:

“As soon as you say the topic is civil disobedience, you are saying our problem is civil disobedience. That is not our problem…. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. And our problem is that scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the schoolboys march off dutifully in a line to war. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.”

Or as Utah Phillips put it, “The earth is not dying, it is being killed. And the people who are killing it have names and addresses.”

They have names and addresses, but we don’t stop them. We let them wave armageddon weapons around for global power agendas and let them destroy our biosphere for profit, and who knows where they’re headed with all this AI stuff with zero regulations or accountability. They just get to play games with the lives of every organism on this planet, completely unimpeded.

We don’t allow this for any good reason. We just don’t want to be rude. Stopping them would feel like a bit much, you know? A bit too much shrill woke-policing. Nobody likes a humorless scold.

What a ridiculous reason for the world to end.

So, no. No to this. Your right to extend your fist ends at my nose. You don't get to just add this giant burden to the already severely overburdened ecosystem we all depend on for survival in order to expand your chatbot project. The collective is entitled to stop you. By force. https://t.co/lcXO0q2pAM

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) November 14, 2025

I like to think about the Fermi paradox
sometimes. You know, the apparent contradiction between the fact that we can’t detect any signs of extraterrestrial life in our galaxy and the fact that the Drake equation
suggests we should be seeing some due to the sheer number of stars in the Milky Way.

People have come up with all kinds of theories to resolve this paradox. Maybe the ETs are keeping signs of their existence hidden from us for some reason. Maybe there has been life on other planets many times throughout our galaxy’s history, but whenever life advances up to a certain level of intelligence it always self-destructs by cannibalizing its own biosphere or annihilating itself with nuclear weapons.

One theory I like to contemplate is the possibility that there is life on other planets and that those life forms will one day evolve high levels of intelligence, but we’re not seeing any signs of extraterrestrial technology because humans are the first life forms to arrive at this stage.

Isn’t that trippy to imagine? If WE’RE the grown-ups here? If we are the eldest sibling in our galactic family? The aliens never came to rescue us with technologies from a civilization millions of years more advanced than ours because there ARE no civilizations more advanced than ours. We got here first.

Imagine how silly it would be if we went extinct due to politeness, and then other civilizations came here millions of years later and found out that’s what happened to their galaxy’s firstborn intelligent life. If they showed up and found a bunch of ruins on a poisoned planet, with a sign that says “Sorry, we tried to stay alive but we didn’t feel entitled enough to make Sam Altman stop being a dick.”

What an embarrassment that would be. We’d be the laughing stock of the Milky Way. Whole insults would be made out of us.

“Someone needs to put a stop to this nonsense, but I don’t want to make a scene.”

“Ah, quit being such a little homo sapien!”

What a dopey legacy for a species to leave behind.

Let’s turn things around before it comes to that, shall we?

Amb. Chas Freeman: Israel’s Strategy Is Collapsing | EU Seems Paralyzed | Ceding the Future to China

Human Rights Group Warns US Gaza Plan Will Impose ‘Unlawful Collective Imprisonment’ of Palestinians as New Details Emerge

A prominent international human rights organization is warning that the United States' plan for postwar Gaza will impose "unlawful collective imprisonment" on the Palestinian civilians who have survived two years of genocide.

In November, several news outlets reported on the Trump administration's plan to carve Gaza in two: a so-called “green zone” controlled by Israel and a “red zone” controlled by the militant group Hamas.

The US would construct what it called “Alternative Safe Communities” for Palestinians to live in the Israeli-controlled portion of Gaza, which is over half of the territory under the current "ceasefire" agreement.

The New York Times described these communities as "compounds" of 20,000 to 25,000 people, where Israeli officials reportedly argued they should not be allowed to leave.

The initial reporting raised fears that the US and Israel were constructing what would amount to a "concentration camp," where Palestinians would be forced to live in squalid conditions without freedom of movement.

On Wednesday, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor released new details on how Palestinians, currently facing mass displacement from their homes in the portion of the strip not occupied by Israel, would be corralled into the green zone under the US proposal.

The Geneva-based group issued a stark warning about the plan, which it said carried "grave risks, including the effective displacement of Palestinians from their homes and the transformation of large parts of Gaza into closed military zones under the direct control of the Israeli army."

Euro-Med's report explains that the transfer of Palestinians would be carried out using "various pressure tactics."

"This is done by creating a coercive environment in the red zone and making access to relative protection and basic services conditional on relocating to designated areas within the green zone, following extensive security screening and vetting," the report says. "This removes any genuine element of consent and places the process squarely within the scope of forced displacement prohibited under international humanitarian law."

It also provides new details on the conditions Palestinians would be subject to once they've arrived: "The plan includes the establishment of 'cities' of prefabricated container homes (caravans) in the green zone, each housing around 25,000 people within an area of no more than one square kilometer and enclosed by walls and checkpoints."

This means these Palestinian cantons would be over three times as densely populated as the Tel Aviv District, the most crowded in Israel, which has about 8,130 people per square kilometer.

"Entry and exit would be permitted only through security screening, effectively converting these sites into overcrowded detention camps that impose severe restrictions on residents’ freedom of movement and daily life," the report continues.

This is not the first proposal to use the promise of safety to lure Palestinians into an enclosed space without the right to leave.

Earlier this year, following US President Donald Trump's call for the people of Palestine to be forcibly removed from the Gaza Strip, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz proposed the creation of a massive “humanitarian city” built on the ruins of Rafah that would be used as part of an “emigration plan” for hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

Under that plan, Palestinians would have been given “security screenings” and once inside would not be allowed to leave. Humanitarian organizations, including those inside Israel, roundly condemned the plan as essentially a “concentration camp.”

Euro-Med said that the design laid out in the new US plan "mirrors the historical model of ghettos, in which colonial and racist regimes confined specific groups to sealed areas surrounded by walls and guard posts, with movement and resources controlled externally, as seen in Europe during World War II and in other colonial contexts."

Israel-backed Gaza militia leader killed as Trump plan fails, with Ali Abunimah

Yasser abu Shabab, leader of Israel-backed militia, killed in Gaza

The leader of an Israeli-backed militia in Gaza has been killed, dealing a major blow to Israel’s efforts to build up its own Palestinian proxies to confront Hamas. Yasser abu Shabab, a Bedouin tribal leader based in the Israeli-held zone of the devastated territory, is thought to have died from wounds sustained in a violent clash with powerful and well-armed local families, according to local media and sources in Gaza.

Abu Shabab was the commander of the Popular Forces, the biggest and best-armed of several militia that emerged in Gaza during the later stages of the two-year conflict. All appear to have benefited from Israeli support as part of a strategy of arming proxies to degrade Hamas and control the population. The exact timing of Abu Shabab’s death is unknown but it appears to have been in the last 48 hours.

The Popular Forces said in a statement that their leader died of a gunshot wound as he intervened in a family quarrel, and it dismissed as “misleading” reports that Hamas was behind his killing. Sources in Gaza and reports on social media and in Israel earlier suggested that Abu Shabab, who was in his 30s and had been expelled by his own clan, died in a clash after refusing to release a hostage taken by his men from a powerful and heavily armed local family.

Relatives of the hostage were said to have mounted an attack on the Popular Forces base, which led to casualties on both sides. Abu Shabab was reportedly badly injured and died of his wounds in Gaza. A spokesperson for Hamas, which had called Abu Shabab a collaborator and promised to hunt him down, denied any involvement in the killing.

In June, Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that Israel had armed anti-Hamas clans and factions in Gaza. There has been no official comment from his government on Abu Shabab’s death.

Irish authorities asked to investigate Microsoft over alleged unlawful data processing by IDF

Irish authorities have been formally asked to investigate Microsoft over alleged unlawful data processing by the Israeli Defense Forces. The complaint has been made by the human rights group the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) to the Data Protection Commission, which has legal responsibility in Europe for overseeing all data processing in the European Union.

It follows revelations in August by the Guardian with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew outlet Local Call that a giant trove of Palestinians’ phone calls was being stored on Microsoft’s cloud service, Azure, as part of a mass surveillance operation by the Israeli military.

The ICCL alleges that the processing of the personal data “facilitated war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide by Israeli military”. Microsoft’s European headquarters are located in Ireland. Joe O’Brien, the executive director of ICCL, said: “Microsoft’s technology has put millions of Palestinians in danger. These are not abstract data-protection failures.” He said that the cloud services “enabled real-world violence” and it was “essential that the DPC move quickly and decisively” in view of the “threat to life posed by the issues at the heart of this complaint”.

He added: “When EU infrastructure is used to enable surveillance and targeting, the Irish Data Protection Commission must step in – and it must use its full powers to hold Microsoft to account.”

A cache of leaked documents reviewed by the Guardian revealed that Unit 8200, the Israeli military’s spy agency, had opened talks as far back as 2021 to move vast amounts of top secret intelligence material to the US company’s cloud service. The documents showed how Microsoft’s storage facility had been used by Unit 8200 to store an expansive archive of everyday Palestinian communications, facilitating targeted airstrikes and other military operations.

Vanessa Beeley | Hezbollah In A Cauldron: Israel Pushing Lebanon To Brink Of War

Israeli Airstrikes Pound Southern Lebanon a Day After US-Led Ceasefire Talks

Yesterday, the US hosted a ceasefire monitoring committee meeting in the southern Lebanese coastal town of Naqoura. It was seen as historic because both Lebanese and Israeli officials attended, the first direct talks between the two nations in over 40 years.

Hopes this might cool tensions, however, didn’t last particularly long, as the next morning, Israel was carrying out airstrikes against multiple towns in southern Lebanon, and issued an evacuation order for the civilian populations in those towns.

New York mayor issues order targeting Israel divestment weeks before Mamdani takes office

New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, has issued two executive orders he says are meant to combat antisemitism, less than a month before he hands over the keys to the mayoralty to Zohran Mamdani, an outspoken critic of Israel.

The first order prohibits city agency heads and staff from engaging in “any policy that discriminates against the state of Israel, Israeli citizens based on their national origin, or individuals or entities based on their association with Israel”. It also prohibits officials overseeing the city pension system from making decisions in line with the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, which Mamdani has said he supports.

A second order directs the New York City police commissioner, currently Jessica Tisch, to evaluate proposals for regulating protest activity occurring close to houses of worship. That comes after demonstrations last month outside an Upper East Side synagogue hosting an event promoting immigration to Israel sparked claims of antisemitism.

The measures are seen as an effort to curb Mamdani, a democratic socialist, who will take office as the city’s first Muslim mayor on 1 January and whose support for the Palestinian cause has sparked opposition within the city’s Jewish community. The city’s pension investments amount to more than $250bn, with about $300m in Israeli bonds and assets, according to the mayor’s office. Mamdani has been critical of the city investing in funds based in Israel.

Brad Lander, the city’s outgoing comptroller, stopped investment in Israeli bonds, drawing accusations of support for BDS, including from Adams. Lander insisted he was merely ending preferential treatment for Israel, noting the city did not own any other sovereign debt. Mamdani will have the power to reverse the orders, which are certain to further fuel long-running debates around when criticism of Israel slides into antisemitism.

Larry C. Johnson & Col. Larry Wilkerson: Putin Hits Back HARD—Calls Out Trump & EU |Ukraine’s Future

Macron reportedly warned Zelenskyy US may ‘betray Ukraine on territory’

Emmanuel Macron has reportedly warned Volodymyr Zelenskyy that “there is a chance that the US will betray Ukraine on territory, without clarity on security guarantees”, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported, quoting a leaked note from a recent call with several European leaders. Der Spiegel said it had obtained an English summary of Monday’s call, featuring what it said were direct quotations from European heads of government in which they expressed fundamental doubts about Washington’s approach to the talks.

The French president described the current tense phase of the negotiations as harbouring “a big danger” for Ukraine’s embattled president, according to the summary. Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, reportedly added that the Ukrainian leader needed to be “very careful”.

“They are playing games with both you and us,” Merz was reported as telling him – a remark the magazine concluded was a reference to a diplomatic mission to Moscow this week by President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The magazine said other leaders also voiced their concerns, with Finland’s Alexander Stubb, who has bonded with Trump over golf, reportedly warning “we must not leave Ukraine and Volodymyr alone with these guys”. Even the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte – who in public is very complimentary of Trump – reportedly said he agreed with Stubb “that we need to protect Volodymyr”. Der Spiegel said it spoke with “several” participants of the call, who confirmed it took place, and two of them reportedly said the remarks were “accurately reproduced”.

Israel Pushing Trump Into War With Venezuela To Silence Maduro!

"Alejandro Was Murdered": Colombian Fisherman's Family Files Claim Against U.S. over Boat Strike

Pentagon announces it has killed four men in another boat strike in Pacific

The Pentagon announced on Thursday that the US military had conducted another deadly strike on a boat suspected of carrying illegal narcotics, killing four men in the eastern Pacific, as questions mount over the legality of the attacks.

Video of the new strike was posted on social media by the US southern command, based in Florida, with a statement saying that, at the direction of Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, “Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel in international waters operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization”.

“Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was carrying illicit narcotics and transiting along a known narco-trafficking route in the Eastern Pacific. Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed,” the statement added.

Pepe Escobar : Will Russia and China Help Venezuela?

Experts urge release of boat strike video as US admiral denies ‘kill them all’ order

Top Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Congress on Thursday said that the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, had not ordered the military to kill surviving members of a deadly attack on a boat alleged to be carrying drugs in the Caribbean, but differed over whether the double strike was appropriate.

The allegation that Hegseth ordered the killing of survivors sparked bipartisan concern in Washington that he or others involved may have committed a war crime. On Thursday, US navy admiral Frank Bradley, who commanded the attack, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Dan Caine, appeared before the House and Senate’s armed services and intelligence committees for a closed briefing in which they showed video and discussed the attack with lawmakers.

“What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service,” Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House armed services committee, said after exiting the meeting. However, he said Bradley “confirmed that there had not been a ‘kill them all’ order, and there was not an order to grant no quarter”.

The Republican chair of the Senate intelligence committee, Tom Cotton, defended what he called “righteous strikes” and said Hegseth had not explicitly ordered that all onboard be killed.

The comments came days after the Washington Post reported that Hegseth had verbally given such an order before the attack, which resulted in the death of two people who had survived an initial airstrike targeting the vessel off the coast of Trinidad.

Suspected DC National Guard Shooter was a CIA ‘Child Soldier’ in Afghanistan

Appeals court allows Trump’s national guard deployment in DC to continue

A US appeals court on Thursday handed a victory to Donald Trump in his effort to keep national guard troops in Washington DC, pausing a lower court order that would have ended the deployment in the coming days. In a written order, the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit lifted an injunction that said the troops needed to leave the nation’s capital by 11 December.

The DC circuit’s order, while not a final judgment, allows Trump to continue a deployment he began this summer and has ramped up in response to a 26 November shooting of two national guard members near the White House. The order came in a lawsuit filed by the DC attorney general, Brian Schwalb, a Democrat and the capital city’s top legal officer.

More than 2,000 national guard soldiers have been in Washington since Trump’s initial deployment in August, part of the president’s contentious immigration and crime crackdown targeting Democratic-led cities. ...

Trial courts around the country have ruled against the troop deployments. The US supreme court is expected to soon weigh in on the legality of Trump’s use of the national guard in Chicago, a decision with repercussions for other cities.

Grand jury declines to re-indict Letitia James after judge dismissed first case

A grand jury declined to indict Letitia James on Thursday, according to a source familiar with the decision, a decision that came less than two weeks after a judge ruled that a similar mortgage fraud case brought by federal prosecutors against the New York attorney general was unlawful.

The move by the justice department to present the case again to a grand jury was seen as a signal of its determination to prosecute James, who has been one of Donald Trump’s top political foes ever since she successfully brought a fraud lawsuit against him in New York.

Feds Descend on New Orleans for Immigration Sweeps in "Catahoula Crunch" Operation

Several people arrested in New Orleans amid ICE ‘siege’: ‘It’s racial profiling’

Dozens of people have been detained across the New Orleans area as the Trump administration’s latest sweeping federal immigration crackdown in a Democratic-led city entered its second day. The city’s immigrant communities remain terrified and traumatized, advocates said, with many in hiding as people have been arrested in public spaces including parking lots outside Home Depots and Lowe’s hardware stores, at bus stops, shopping malls and in residential areas around the city.

Rachel Taber, an organizer with Unión Migrante, shared a video with the Guardian of masked border patrol agents questioning and then handcuffing a man in the parking lot of the Lowe’s on Elysian Fields on Wednesday. Agents ask the man where he was born. “I’m a US citizen,” he responds. “But where were you born,” the agent asks again, before repeating the question in Spanish. An unmarked white pickup truck is visible in the background. The man declines to answer any more questions, and the agent tells his colleague to handcuff him.

Taber has not been able to find out yet what happened to that man, but said she had learned of three incidents where US citizens were detained and held for questioning, before being later released after proving their citizenship. The Guardian approached the Department of Homeland Security to comment on those reports. CNN also reported the case of a 22-year-old US-born mother who was chased home by federal agents in an SUV from the grocery store in Marrero. She told CNN: “I kept yelling at them, ‘I’m legal! I’m a US-born citizen! Please, leave me alone! I’m going home, my daughter is in the house. My baby is waiting for me!’”

“They’re not picking up criminals,” said Taber. “They’re picking up people off the streets, whoever they can catch – these are moms and dads coming home from work, ambushed getting out of their cars.” Taber was aware of 14 arrests on Wednesday and four so far on Thursday, including one in which federal agents smashed a man’s car windows in a Walmart parking lot before taking him into custody. “It’s like psychological warfare. They’re attacking people who haven’t committed any crime, it’s just the color of their skin. It’s just straight racial profiling.”

---

---

SCOTUS Approves Racist Texas Gerrymander, Handing Trump Midterm Advantage

US supreme court approves redrawn Texas congressional maps

Texas can use a redrawn congressional map that adds as many as five Republican-friendly congressional districts, the supreme court ruled on Thursday, handing Donald Trump a major win in his push to boost Republican seats ahead of next year’s midterm elections. In an unsigned order, the 6-3 conservative majority court granted a request by Texas to lift a lower court’s ruling that struck down the state’s new map in November. The supreme court’s three liberal justices dissented.

“The district court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections,” the supreme court said in an order explaining its decision. The lower district court had previously found that Texas had likely sorted voters based on their race – an unlawful practice called racial gerrymandering – when it adopted the new maps, and ordered the state to use the maps it had adopted after the 2020 census for next year’s election.

In a sharply worded dissent, Justice Elena Kagan objected to the decision by the supreme court’s majority, arguing that it disrespected the work of the lower court, whose ruling actually was authored by a judge appointed by Trump. “We are a higher court than the district court, but we are not a better one when it comes to making such a fact-based decision,” Kagan wrote in a dissent joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“This court’s stay guarantees that Texas’s new map, with all its enhanced partisan advantage, will govern next year’s elections for the House of Representatives. And this court’s stay ensures that many Texas citizens, for no good reason, will be placed in electoral districts because of their race. And that result, as this court has pronounced year in and year out, is a violation of the constitution,” she continued.

---

---

Global race to secure critical minerals for weapons threatens climate, warns report

The accelerating global arms race is hindering climate action as critical minerals that are key to a sustainable future are being diverted to make the latest military hardware, according to a report

The study from the Transition Security Project – a joint US and UK venture – reveals how the Pentagon is stockpiling huge stores of critical minerals that are needed for a range of climate technologies including solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and battery storage.

It found that since the US president, Donald Trump, passed his “one big beautiful bill” earlier this year, the Pentagon – through its National Defense Stockpile programme – has earmarked billions of dollars to secure a growing list of critical minerals for use in military hardware – from precision-guided weaponry and advanced communication systems to an emerging arsenal of military technologies such as “AI-driven autonomous warfare platforms”.

Khem Rogaly, co-director of Transition Security Project, said: “The Pentagon’s trillion dollar budget supports a global infrastructure designed for US military domination, not national security. Using precious resources to feed the expanding military industrial complex, rather than addressing the existential threat of the climate crisis, demonstrates the global insecurity produced by the Pentagon.”

The report warns this new arms race is halting attempts to tackle the climate crisis as countries scramble to secure critical minerals for the next generation of weapons. The study found that at least 38 minerals and metals, including lithium, cobalt, graphite and rare earth elements that form the basis of the energy transition are being stockpiled by the Pentagon with potentially devastating effects on climate action.

John is, of course, correct.

The @DeptofDefense does not do climate change crap.

We do training and warfighting. https://t.co/eK5Xyf7fN4

— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) March 9, 2025

New England warming faster than most places on Earth

The US region called New England is widely known for its colonial history, maple syrup and frigid, snow-bound winters. Many of these norms are in the process of being upended, however, by a rapidly altering climate, with new research finding the area is heating up faster than almost anywhere else on Earth.

The breakneck speed of New England’s transformation makes it the fastest-heating area of the US, bar the Alaskan Arctic, and the pace of its temperature rise has apparently increased in the past five years, according to the study. “The temperature is not only increasing, it’s accelerating,” said Stephen Young, a climate researcher at Salem State University, who conducted the study, published in the Climate journal, with his son Joshua Young.

“It’s really sped up in recent years, which surprised me. Our climate is moving in a new direction, after being relatively stable in the past 10,000 years. Along with the Arctic and parts of Europe and China, the north-east US is one of the fastest-warming regions in the world. New England is now heading towards being like the south-eastern US.”

For the study, the Youngs analyzed three datasets on day and night temperatures, as well as snow cover on the ground, that have helped shape New England – the north-eastern region that encompasses Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut – since 1900. They found that New England has heated up by 2.5C (4.5F) on average from 1900 to 2024. This is far in excess of the global average, with the world warming by around 1.3C in this time due to the release of heat-trapping gases from the burning of fossil fuels. “That is very fast, which is worrying,” said Young.

Inside the climate group working everywhere but DC: ‘You can still have huge wins’

With a president who has called climate change a “hoax”, refused to send a delegation to international climate talks, and packed the federal government with former fossil fuel industry employees, this can feel like a dark moment for climate action in the US. But shifting one’s focus to local and state law makes for a very different outlook. Analysts have estimated that 75% of the commitments that the US made at the Paris climate agreement – which Donald Trump pulled the nation out of as soon as he took office – can be reached entirely without federal support.

It’s this conviction in the power of local governance that animates Climate Cabinet, an organization focused on supporting pro-climate candidates in under-the-radar races at the state or city level. Climate Cabinet uses data science to comb through the more than 500,000 public offices that US citizens have the opportunity to vote on every cycle, identifies candidates who could make a real impact on the climate, and offers them financial and policy support.

The organization was founded by Caroline Spears, who was inspired while working for one of the country’s largest solar companies. As an analyst, it was her job to look at all the markets in which her company wanted to build, and make sense of why they were able to make progress in some states and not others. She watched as the company built dozens of projects in Massachusetts and zero in the far sunnier state of Arizona. “This was during Trump’s [first term] – so these two states had the same federal backdrop – but their ability to actually build clean energy was vastly different,” Spears said. “That was solely because of state and local policymaking in those two states.”

This realization convinced Spears that local policy was already playing a larger part in climate action than most people realized, and that it was time to better leverage that impact. Since Spears founded Climate Cabinet in 2020, the organization has supported more than 500 candidates – running in everything from public school board races in Virginia to state house races in Minnesota – and recorded a roughly 75% win rate. In 2025, that rate was even higher: Climate Cabinet candidates won in 42 of 45 endorsed races, including in a Virginia district where a former climate adviser to the Biden administration won by fewer than 700 votes. Today, Climate Cabinet estimates that its candidates have governing power over the emissions of more than 813 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent a year.

“We are supporting people who are running for office in an exceptionally challenging time to be a public face and a public servant,” said Spears. “These are people who often have a track record of voting for climate and clean energy, and it’s an exceptionally brave thing to do at this time. Our job in this moment is to help them get that done.”

Senator Suggests Trump Pardon Spree Is Yet Another Grift

A Democratic US senator suggested during a television appearance late Wednesday that President Donald Trump's flurry of pardons for fraudsters and other white-collar criminals—from disgraced politicians to former corporate executives—is yet another cash grab concocted by the president's inner circle and lobbyists with ties to the White House.

“My sense is that somebody is getting rich, ultimately,“ Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told MSNBC's Chris Hayes shortly after Trump pardoned a former entertainment venue executive who was indicted by the president's own Justice Department over the summer.

"There is a cabal of administration officials and MAGA-friendly lobbyists that are in league together," Murphy continued. "They all huddle together at these elite restaurants and clubs in Washington, DC, and they likely hatch deals in which, if somebody pays a MAGA-affiliated lobbyist a couple hundred thousand dollars, then maybe you’ll be able to get a pardon.”

"There's clearly a whole group of people around him that are making millions of dollars, and they're handing out favors to folks in the form of pardons in order to make sure that they get their pockets lined," the senator added. "That's just, like, bread and butter corruption."

The pardons Trump is handing out are a huge, growing scandal that not enough people are talking about. This is a money making operation - for for Trump, his family, his crypto pals, and the Trump-affiliated lobbyists and grifters who the pardon seekers pay. pic.twitter.com/FwLRyHDMqN

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) December 4, 2025

Since the start of his second term, Trump has used his pardon power to rescue well-connected executives and political allies from accountability, invariably claiming—without evidence—that the Biden administration manufactured the charges.

Many of those pardoned have been accused or convicted of white-collar crimes; "fraud" appears 57 times on the Justice Department page listing the names and offenses of those who have received clemency from the president this year.

Trump's willingness to unthinkingly pardon fraudsters has spawned a lucrative business for lobbyists and consultants linked to the administration. NBC News reported earlier this year that "two people directly familiar with proposals to lobbying firms said they knew of a client’s offer of $5 million to help get a case to Trump."

Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, reportedly had a lobbyist working to secure his pardon, which came in late October.

"I don't know who he is," Trump said when asked about the decision, adding that "a lot of people asked me" to pardon Zhao, who pleaded guilty in 2023 to "failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program."

Trump also made history with what's believed to be the nation's first-ever presidential pardon of a corporation: HDR Global Trading, the owner and operator of crypto exchange BitMEX. The company was sentenced earlier this year to a $100 million fine for violating anti-money laundering laws.

In a report published in September, Murphy detailed how corporate pardons "are happening throughout the federal government, in the form of rescinded orders, dropped cases, and the first-ever presidential pardon for a corporation." The watchdog group Public Citizen estimates that the Trump administration has halted or dropped more than 160 corporate enforcement cases since the start of the president's second term.

"Corporate pardons are just one of the ways that Trump is replacing democracy and rule of law with authoritarian power and rule by personal favor," Murphy wrote in his report. "If we are going to save our democracy, we need to act now."

---

Also of Interest

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

Murder for Christmas?

The Knives Are Out For Hegseth

Trump Ukraine Plan AOA (Alive on Arrival)

The Richest Men in the World Are Media Moguls

Senate GOP Sends Trump Bill Handing Over Arctic Refuge to Big Oil

Why small farmers can’t fix our hunger problem

‘Biggest band that ever lived’: inside the Grateful Dead art show

---

A Little Night Music

Neville Brothers – Little Liza Jane

Neville Brothers – Big Chief

The Neville Brothers – Brother John / Iko Iko

The Neville Brothers - Yellow Moon

The Neville Brothers - Bird on a Wire

The Neville Brothers - Voodoo

The Neville Brothers - Ball Of Confusion

Gregg Allman w/ The Neville Brothers - Midnight Rider

The Neville Brothers - Hey Pocky Way

The Neville Brothers - Rivers Of Babylon

The Neville Brothers - Brother Jake

The Neville Brothers - Congo Square

The Neville Brothers - Full Concert - 08/14/94 - Woodstock 94

---