Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Louisiana swamp blues guitarist and singer Otis "Lightnin' Slim" Hicks. Enjoy!

"They built an entire empire around extracting resources and labor from the global south to supply the citizenry of the imperial core with bread and circuses that are just barely cheap enough to keep them from guillotining the billionaires who own and run everything."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Israel And Its Supporters Are Causing Attacks On Jewish Institutions

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt gave a bizarre appearance on CNN in response to an attempted car bombing of a Michigan synagogue by a man whose Lebanese family members were killed by Israeli forces.

“We are seeing Jewish people, the Jewish state, blamed for the war in the Middle East,” Greenblatt said. “That is wrong. It is wrong to scapegoat, it is wrong to hold Jewish people accountable for something you don’t like on the other side of the planet. And we really need leaders on all sides in politics, running for office, podcasters, to stop with the conspiracies, to stop with the accusations, and then tell us ‘but we oppose antisemitism’. You don’t get to say you’re opposed to hate if you’re trafficking in hateful conspiracy theories.”

Now, at first glance it this might read like Greenblatt is taking the entirely reasonable position that it is wrong to blame Jewish Americans for the actions of the Israeli government.

But take a closer look at his use of the phrase “the Jewish state”.

What Greenblatt is actually doing here is claiming it’s an antisemitic conspiracy theory to blame the state of Israel for its war crimes, while simultaneously lumping all Jewish people in with the actions of that state. That’s what he’s doing when he says “Jewish people, the Jewish state” in the same breath while talking about Israeli acts of mass military violence.

Greenblatt: "We are seeing Jewish people, the Jewish state, blamed for the war in the Middle East. That is wrong. It is wrong to scapegoat, it is wrong to hold Jewish people accountable for something you don't like on the other side of the planet. We really need leaders on all… pic.twitter.com/fq8DyPz7Oq

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 13, 2026

It’s so obnoxious how genocide apologists like Greenblatt make a living actively telling everyone that Jews and Judaism are inseparable from the acts of the Israeli government, but whenever there’s an extremist attack by someone who doesn’t distinguish between western Jews and the state of Israel it gets blamed on the pro-Palestine left.

Pro-Palestine leftists perform endless verbal gymnastics to avoid conflating Jewish people with the state of Israel, while Israel and its supporters conflate them constantly. Yet we’re always the ones who get blamed whenever there’s a terror attack on a Jewish institution by someone enraged by Israel’s actions.

Zionists are the ones doing everything they can to make sure people see the state of Israel as synonymous with Jews and Judaism. That is what they are doing every time they claim a criticism of Israel’s actions is hate speech against Jews. They are claiming that the nation and its government are one and the same as the entirety of the Jewish faith and its adherents.

Pro-Palestine leftists have been doing the exact opposite. We go to great pains to make sure all our arguments are carefully worded to avoid being interpreted as an attack on the Jewish faith, making it clear that our grievance is with the state of Israel and the political ideology of Zionism which supports that state’s abusive nature. And then Israel apologists come in and smear those meticulously crafted arguments as a hateful attack on all Jews everywhere.

Zionists are therefore responsible for the growing perception that our Jewish neighbors and countrymen are culpable for the abuses of the Israeli government. When more attacks on Jewish institutions occur (and they will), it is Israel and its supporters who will hold the blame for this, not the pro-Palestine left.

I am not saying attacks on Jewish institutions should happen. I am not saying it will be good when they do happen. I’m saying it will happen, and when it happens it will be a terrible thing. And it will be the fault of Israel and its supporters.

We’ve been running around like crazy trying to stop this, falling all over ourselves to thwart the Zionist efforts to conflate Jews with Israel, but our voices aren’t strong enough. We’re not the ones getting loudly amplified by every mass media outlet, they are. It’s not people like me getting invited to appear on CNN to talk to Wolf Blitzer, it’s people like Jonathan Greenblatt.

So when we lose the narrative war on this front and the next extremist attack occurs, it won’t be our fault. It will be theirs. It will be the fault of Israel and its apologists. We fought them as hard as we could to prevent this, but they won. And the consequences of this will therefore rest squarely on their shoulders.

Combat Vets Davis & Ritter Can the US Force Hormuz Open?

Trump’s call for allied deployment to strait of Hormuz meets muted response

Countries including the UK, Japan, China and South Korea have said they are still considering their options but without making commitments after the US president, Donald Trump, urged them to send warships to the strait of Hormuz to secure the vital shipping route.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump called on the UK, China, France, Japan, South Korea and other countries to send ships to the waterway, the world’s busiest shipping route, which is being violently blockaded by Iran. In his post, Trump alleged that “many countries, especially those who are affected by Iran’s attempted closure of the Hormuz strait, will be sending war ships, in conjunction with the United States of America, to keep the strait open and safe”. In a later post, Trump extended his call to all “the countries of the world that receive oil through the Hormuz strait” to send naval support.

The effective closure of the strait of Hormuz by Tehran, in retaliation for airstrikes by the US and Israel, has proved catastrophic for global energy and trade flows, causing the largest oil supply disruption in history and soaring global oil prices. However, the international response to Trump’s call for the dispatch of warships has so far proved vague and reluctant, with countries unwilling to commit to a military response that could prove treacherous for their navies.

Tehran has said any oil tanker heading for the US, Israel or its allies is a legitimate target in the war and will be “immediately destroyed”. Sixteen tankers have been attacked in the strait of Hormuz since the war started at the end of February and Iran has threatened to lay explosive mines in the waterway. So far, the US has not sent its own navy ships to escort tankers through the strait.

A statement by the UK Ministry of Defence said it was in discussions with allies over “a range of options to ensure the security of shipping in the region”. A senior Japanese politician told the news channel NHK TV that Japan would not rule out sending warships to the region to secure the shipping lane but said the threshold for doing so was “very high”. South Korea, heavily dependent on energy flows through the strait, said it had taken note of Trump’s comments but would communicate closely with the US and review the situation before making any decisions on how to help secure the shipping route.

Larry Johnson: U.S. Attack on Kharg Island Will Destroy the Gulf States

US not ready to seek deal to end war with Iran, Donald Trump says

Donald Trump has warned he is not ready to seek a deal to end the US-Israeli offensive against Iran, saying that though he thought Tehran was keen to negotiate a ceasefire, the US would fight on for better terms. Trump’s comments came as Iran launched fresh missile and drone attacks on countries in the Gulf and on Israel, and Israeli and US warplanes launched new waves of strikes on Iran.

Trump, speaking on Saturday to NBC News, said the US may bomb targets on Kharg Island, which is the site of Iran’s principal oil export facility, once more “just for fun”, after US warplanes targeted military installations there on Friday. “Iran wants to make a deal, and I don’t want to make it because the terms aren’t good enough yet,” Trump said, adding that US forces would step up attacks on the Iranian coast north of the strait to clear a path for oil shipments.

But the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, on Sunday disputed that claim. “We have never asked for a ceasefire, and we have never asked even for negotiations,” Araqchi told CBS’s Face the Nation programme. “We are ready to defend ourselves for as long as it takes.” Experts say it will be extremely difficult for the US to reopen the strait through military means alone as long as Iran retains the ability to hit or harass shipping with missiles, drones or small boats.

The Israeli military announced a wave of strikes against targets in western Iran, after Iran’s Revolutionary Guards called Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, a criminal and vowed that they would pursue and kill him.

Scott Ritter: Trump Sends 2,500 Marines into DEATH TRAP as Iran WIPES OUT US Bases...& Israel!

Oil Execs DIRE WARNING TO Trump: Worst Is Yet To Come

Oil company shares soar to all-time highs as Middle East war turbocharges price per barrel

Shares in big oil companies have soared to all-time highs since the war in Iran began and sparked historic price rises on global oil and gas markets. The combined market value of the six stock market-listed western “super majors” has soared by more than $130bn in the two weeks since the first US-Israeli attacks on Iran.

The energy supply shock caused by the conflict has resulted in record stock market valuations for London-listed Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, as well as US oil companies ExxonMobil and Chevron. The market shock is expected to deliver multibillion-dollar windfalls for the industry, even as sites in the Middle East are hit by the conflict.

US oil companies can expect a $63.4bn boost, according to consultancy Rystad Energy. Separately, analysts at Goldman Sachs have predicted a combined £5bn windfall for BP and Shell. Shell was valued at an all-time high of £190bn on the London Stock Exchange on Friday, up by about 12% since 27 February.

Global green group 350.org called on governments to introduce windfall taxes on the world’s biggest oil companies because “working people shouldn’t be paying the price while oil majors treat the war in the Middle East like a winning lottery ticket”.

Clémence Dubois, the group’s global campaigns manager, said: “The right response is a strong windfall tax, which should be redirected to support households and accelerate the transition to clean energy that reduces our dependence on the very fuels driving climate disruption and global instability.”

Missile HITS Israel As Interceptors RUN LOW

TRITA PARSI - How Washington Underestimated Iran

‘Bit of treachery’: US attack on IRIS Dena undermines Indian security ties

The distress call came in to Sri Lanka’s maritime rescue coordination centre just after 5am. The ship in trouble, they determined, was well within Sri Lanka’s obligation for rescue, being just over 19 nautical miles off the coast of the southern city of Galle.

The navy swiftly mobilised and, by 6am, the first search and rescue boat was on its way, another soon close behind. It was hard to see through the thick morning mist but officers onboard kept their eyes peeled for a ship in the distance.

Instead they found a spooling slick of oil on the sea’s surface. Dozens of survivors held on to life rafts and bodies bobbed in the waves, but the vessel was nowhere to be seen. IRIS Dena, an Iranian warship on its way to a friendly port call in Sri Lanka, already sat on the bottom of the Indian Ocean.

India’s former chief of naval staff, Adm Arun Prakash, said the attack on Dena was legal as it took place in international water but was nonetheless “shocking” on multiple fronts. “The US navy could have sunk this ship anywhere on the way back to the Persian Gulf,” said Prakash. “We are supposed to be friends and partners of the USA. To bring the war to right to our doorstep was a perverse act.”

The ethics of targeting a ship that had about 130 people onboard, was in the region as a guest of India and posed no immediate threat to the US, “leaves a very bad taste in my mouth”, he added. “It’s a bit of treachery of the US to attend a peaceful function side-by-side with Iranian navy, where there’s a lot of camaraderie, and then the moment the Iranian ship pops out of harbour, it’s sunk,” he said. “They could have delayed this action to spare India this embarrassment.”

Yanis Varoufakis: Iran War Collapses U.S. Neoliberal Economy

WHO Condemns Israeli Attacks on Lebanese Health Care Workers That Have Killed at Least 31

The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a statement condemning the trend of Israeli forces deliberately targeting Lebanese health care workers in the ongoing war against southern Lebanon, calling it a “tragic development” in the escalating crisis.

A late Friday attack on a hospital in the border village of Burj Qalawiyeh left at least 17 medical staff dead and a number of others wounded. This was one of the most flagrant incidents, but is part of a growing trend, with the Lebanese Health Ministry reporting that 37 distinct Israeli strikes on health care workers in the country had left at least 31 workers killed and 51 others wounded.

The Israeli narrative is, as ever, “Hezbollah.” Though they offered no evidence to support the assertion, the IDF is claiming that Hezbollah is in some way using ambulances for military operations in resistance of the ongoing Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon.

Though no evidence is available of Hezbollah using ambulances to carry out military attacks, there is actually substantial evidence of the IDF using ambulances themselves to carry out ground raids against Hezbollah, with a large raid against Hezbollah in Nabi Chit involving IDF commandos in Lebanese ambulances.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Are We Drifting Toward a Global War?

Trump BEGS Allies For Help in War He Insists He Won

Israeli police kill two young Palestinian boys and their parents in West Bank

Israeli police have killed two young Palestinian brothers and their parents in the occupied West Bank, shooting all four in the head and face as the family returned from a Ramadan shopping trip. Mohammed, five, Othman, seven, who was blind and had special needs, their mother, Waad Bani Odeh, 35, and father, Ali Bani Odeh, 37, were driving through their home town of Tamoun late on Saturday when Israeli forces opened fire.

Israeli forces target Palestinians with near total impunity in the occupied West Bank, where the last attack that led to a homicide indictment was a 2019 shooting, according to legal data compiled by the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din. Since then Israeli forces have killed more than 1,400 people, including more than 320 children and over 30 women, UN figures show. Israeli settlers killed at least 44 other Palestinians.

The Bani Odeh family were killed just hours after Israeli settlers shot and killed Amir Moatasem Odeh, 28, in Qusra south of Nablus. The attackers also stabbed his father, Moatasem Awda, who was taken to hospital in serious condition.

There has been a surge of Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank since Israel and the US launched their war on Iran at the end of February.

MAGA Media DESPERATE To Shut Down Lindsey Graham's WAR PROPAGANDA

Republican rebukes FCC chair’s threats to revoke broadcast licenses over Iran war

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, Brendan Carr, is facing pushback from a Republican lawmaker after warning on Saturday that broadcasters could lose their licenses if they run what the federal agency deems “fake news” over the Iran conflict. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said in an interview on the Sunday Briefing on Fox News that he was not in favor of the government control of private enterprise or efforts to meddle with freedom of speech protected under the constitution.

“I’m in big support of the first amendment,” Johnson said. “I do not like the heavy hand of government, no matter who’s wielding it. So no, I would rather the federal government stay out of the private sector as much as possible. The federal government’s role is to protect our freedoms, protect our constitutional rights.”

Carr, a Trump appointee to the FCC, is facing pushback against comments made Saturday in which he said licenses held by broadcasters could be revoked. “Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions – also known as the fake news – have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr wrote on X. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”

Democrats criticized Carr’s warning-shot. Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, said: “It’s illegal for the government to censor free speech it just doesn’t like about Trump’s Iran war. This threat is straight out of the authoritarian playbook.”

Carr later doubled down on that threat in an interview with CBS News. “People have gotten used to the idea that, you know, licenses are some sort of property right, and there’s nothing you can do that can result in losing their license,” Carr said. “I try to sort of help reorient people that, no, there is a public interest, and broadcast is different."

First-round of French local elections sees strong showing for National Rally and LFI

The first-round of the French municipal elections have seen a strong showing for Marine Le Pen’s far-right the National Rally (RN), as well as for Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s radical left, with both parties likely to increase their local presence ahead of next year’s French presidential race. The French local elections, which now go to a final round runoff on 22 March, are seen as a crucial test of the political temperature before next year’s presidential election. Emmanuel Macron’s two terms in office come to an end in spring 2027 and there is uncertainty about who will next lead the EU’s second-largest economy. For years, French local mayors and councillors – particularly in large cities – have been dominated by the historic, traditional parties: Socialists on the left and Les Républicains on the right.

The first-round results on Sunday showed a significant increase in votes in certain towns and large cities for the radical left La France Insoumise (LFI), whose leader Mélenchon is expected to make a fourth bid for president next year. The LFI, which has not historically had a large local presence, scored high in the north, in the town of Roubaix, where it could win the mayor’s position. It also had significant scores in cities including Toulouse, Lille and Limoges, having mobilised young voters.

Anti-immigrationRN, which has traditionally fared less well in local elections, also celebrated scoring symbolically high in the first round alongside its allies. In France’s second biggest city, Marseille, Franck Allisio, the RN candidate who ran a campaign based on bringing “order” to the streets amid drug gang crime, scored level with the incumbent leftwing mayor, Benoît Payan, at about 35.4%, projections showed. There will now be a tense final-round runoff.

Much in Marseille will now depend on whether Payan’s left coalition, which includes the Socialists and Greens, could form an agreement with the LFI to try to hold the RN back. The LFI reached the second round on around 12%, as did the traditional right’s candidate, similarly on 12%. In Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, the mayoral candidate for a left coalition including Socialists and Greens, was in the lead ahead of the rightwing former culture minister Rachida Dati, projections showed. Paris, which has been run by the left for 25 years, will now face a second-round runoff. Sophia Chikirou, the LFI candidate, also made it to the final round in Paris, as did the centrist Pierre-Yves Bournazel.

Chikirou said: “We exist, our voices count.” Her party wanted to stop the right from winning Paris, she said, adding she was open to forming an “anti-fascist front”.

Wyoming’s new six-week abortion ban prompts lawsuit

Wyoming’s Republican-dominated legislature passed a six-week abortion ban this week, prompting a new lawsuit and some lawmakers to call it “an insult to voters and our institution”. Mark Gordon, Wyoming’s governor, signed the bill while simultaneously warning of its constitutional hurdles, noting that prior abortion bans were struck down by the state’s all Republican-appointed supreme court this January. Almost immediately, an identical set of plaintiffs filed suit against the new bill.

This bill effectively makes abortion illegal after six weeks of pregnancy, a time when many women have not yet learned that they are pregnant. Any person violating the law would face a felony punishable by prison sentence of up to five years.

Earlier abortion bans, including the US’s first proposed ban on abortion pills, were previously tossed out by the Wyoming supreme court – which cited Wyoming’s constitutional guarantee that adults can make their own healthcare decisions. Democratic representative Mike Yin views this now annual cycle of abortion bans as “both an insult to voters and our institution”, and doesn’t think the new bill holds much water. Yin said: “I don’t see why the court would see this ban any different than a full ban.”

The bill’s main sponsor, Republican speaker of the house Chip Neiman, said on the house floor that he was not troubled by the bill’s legal complications. Instead, he argued that legislators had a moral obligation to further anti-abortion legislation. “I know a lot of folks get out there and get all shook up about how we’re creating legislation that gets tied up in court,” Neiman said. “But I’ll tell you what, the only person that gets broke down is the person that doesn’t do anything.”

Katie Knutter, executive director at Wellspring Health Access, one of the plaintiffs and the state’s only functioning procedural abortion clinic, noted that the bill will pause services at her clinic. She also said that between a previous legislative pause and the clinic surviving an arson attack, Wellspring is used to navigating chaos. “This is what happens when you fight for abortion care in more politically conservative, hostile-to-abortion-access states,” Knutter said, adding that given Wyoming’s vast rural geography, their average patient travels 250 miles to receive care, and roughly a third are from out of state.

Hacked data shines light on homeland security’s AI surveillance ambitions

Hacked data from the Department of Homeland Security’s technology incubator shows it funding a variety of companies that would expand its surveillance capabilities with artificial intelligence, the Guardian can reveal.

The projects at the Office of Industry Partnership (OIP) include automated surveillance in airports; adapters allowing agents to use phones for biometric scanning; and an AI platform that ingests all 911 call data nationally and builds “geospatial heat maps” to “predict incident trends”, which appears to be a form of predictive policing.

The data throws new light on the department’s surveillance ambitions in the wake of the agency’s unprecedented $165bn funding boost in last year’s tax and spending bill, and controversies over agents’ apparent gathering of visual and biometric data on protesters in Minneapolis. The data was gathered by a pseudonymous “cyber-hacktivist”, and provided to reporters by transparency nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets.

Although some of the data was already publicly available, the leak also exposed more than 6,000 companies that bid with the agency – not all of whom were funded for their projects – offering a window on the full scope of the private sector’s appetite for homeland security work, and the technologies the DHS considered but did not pursue. Those parts of the data that were already public match the data provided in the leak.

Jeramie Scott, a senior counsel and director of the Surveillance Oversight Project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said: “It very much feels like sometimes these people are watching dystopian science fiction movies and thinking, ‘Oh, that looks good!’”

Pot. Kettle. Black.

Cory Booker calls both parties ‘feckless’ for ceding war powers to Trump

Democratic US senator Cory Booker has criticized both his own political party as well as its Republican counterpart for being “feckless” in ceding congressional war powers to Donald Trump, saying that their decision could embolden the president to unilaterally attack Cuba, North Korea and other countries.

“I’m going to be one of those Democrats [who] say I think both parties have been feckless in allowing the growth of the power of the presidency,” Booker said on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.

The New Jersey senator said nothing Barack Obama did while in the White House – or that even Trump did before his first presidency ended in defeat to Joe Biden – was “in any way related to what we’re seeing right now”.

Booker’s comments alluded to US military strikes Trump has ordered in Nigeria, Venezuela and Iran since Christmas. He called the war that the US and Israel started in Iran on 28 February – when a missile strike killed Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – “the biggest military engagement of our country since the war in Afghanistan”. Meanwhile, during that stretch, Trump has also renewed threats to seize Greenland for the US by military force if necessary. ...

“It is outrageous and never conceived of that we could have this level of a military engagement without the people’s house, Congress, doing something about it.”

Trump policies set to increase rates of lung disease and death

Donald Trump’s policies are likely to drive soaring rates of lung disease and premature death, according to a wide-ranging new study by pulmonary specialists and public health experts. The analysis, published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, examines policies adopted during Trump’s second term across 10 areas, including healthcare access, environmental regulation, workplace protections and vaccine uptake.

The moves are likely to increase lung disease incidences, worsen existing illness and undermine care for patients already suffering, threatening children and adults’ pulmonary health, the researchers say. Taken together, they amount to “an attack on Americans’ lungs” that could mean millions “die needlessly in the years ahead”, warned Adam Gaffney, a pulmonary physician and professor at Harvard Medical School who led the report.

Among the most immediate concerns highlighted in the report are healthcare cuts included in Trump’s second-term tax and spending package. Known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), it slashed over $1tn from health programs, marking the largest federal healthcare rollbacks in American history. The cuts could jeopardize access to care for millions relying on Medicaid, lowering vaccination rates for respiratory illnesses, diminishing emergency treatments and decreasing medication access, the analysis says.

“Let’s say you have a patient with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease who loses coverage, stops going to their primary care physician, stops seeing a pulmonologist, no longer has someone to prescribe their inhalers,” said Gaffney. “The simple fact is that modern medicine saves lives, and when you take it away, it does harm.”

Over the past year, the Trump administration has also rolled back or weakened dozens of air pollution standards, including those limiting soot, airborne mercury and tailpipe emissions. These may increase profits for some companies but will lead to new asthma cases and more hospitalizations for respiratory illness, threatening the lung health of hundreds of thousands, the study warns.

Germany misses climate targets as emissions barely fall in 2025

Greenhouse gas emissions in Germany have again missed targets set by the Climate Protection Act and barely fell at all in 2025. Emissions decreased by just 0.1% last year compared to the previous year, according to data from the German Environment Agency.

The country’s emissions in 2025 were equivalent to 649m tonnes of CO2, worse than those forecast by the expert group Agora Energiewende, which anticipated a 1.5% drop year-on-year.

In 2024, a more significant drop of 3.4% was recorded. Germany’s environment minister, Carsten Schneider, criticised the lack of improvement at a conference in Berlin on Saturday.

The Social Democrat said that despite an increasing acceptance of electric cars and heat pumps, overall progress was “too slow” and urged citizens to accelerate their adoption of renewable power sources for both environmental and security reasons.

Despite this, both Schneider and the German Environment Agency remained optimistic that the country could achieve the 2030 climate target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 65%, compared with 1990.

As His Iran War Drives Up Oil Prices, Trump Orders Restart of California Offshore Drilling

State leaders and environmental advocates responded with outrage after the Trump administration on Friday ordered the restarting of a California pipeline that caused one of the largest oil spills in the state’s history, a move that comes as oil prices have skyrocketed following President Donald Trump’s launching of an illegal war against Iran and Iran’s subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

After Trump issued an executive order on Friday authorizing the Department of Energy (DOE) to ramp up oil and gas development under the Defense Production Act, Energy Secretary Chris Wright ordered Sable Offshore Corp. to restart operations on the Santa Ynez Unit and Pipeline System, which include an offshore rig and a network of offshore and onshore pipelines along the Santa Barbara coast. Among them is a pipeline that ruptured in 2015, spilling around 450,000 gallons of oil into Refugio State Beach and killing hundreds of marine mammals and sea birds.

“Californians have repeatedly rejected dangerous drilling off our coast for decades,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said in a statement on Saturday. “Now, after dragging the US into a war with Iran and driving up oil prices, the Trump administration is trying to exploit this crisis to further enrich the oil industry at the expense of our communities and our environment.”

In his statement, Wright emphasized the defense benefits of resuming drilling, arguing that “today’s order will strengthen America’s oil supply and restore a pipeline system vital to our national security and defense, ensuring that West Coast military installations have the reliable energy critical to military readiness.”

The DOE added that “Sable’s facility can produce approximately 50,000 barrels of oil per day, a 15% increase to California’s in-state oil production, that can replace nearly 1.5 million barrels of foreign crude each month.”

Yet, far from a novel response to an unexpected emergency, the order is actually an escalation in a preexisting battle between California and the Trump administration over the future of the pipeline system. The state’s Attorney General Rob Bonta sued to stop the administration from a federal takeover of two of the pipelines in January.

Sable also faces several lawsuits due to its attempts to restart the system after it purchased it from ExxonMobil in 2024, and has not yet cleared all of the state permitting requirements, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

“In its latest brazen abuse of power, the Trump administration is attempting to seize exclusive federal control over two of California’s onshore pipelines,” Bonta said on social media Friday evening. “We will not stand by as this administration continues their unlawful all-out assault on California and our coastlines, and we are reviewing all of our legal options.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom also spoke out against Wright’s announcement.

“Trump knew his war with Iran would raise gas prices,” he wrote on social media. “Now he wants to illegally resurrect a pipeline shut down by courts and facing criminal charges. And it won’t even cut prices. I refuse to let Trump sacrifice Californians, our environment, or our $51 billion coastal economy.”

The Center for Biological Diversity noted that this order would mark the first time that the Defense Production Act was used to force an oil company to restart out-of-use Infrastructure and to disregard the state permitting process.

“This is a revolting power grab by an extremist president. Trump is misusing this Cold War-era law just to help a Texas oil company skirt vital state laws that protect our coastline, and Californians will pay the price,” Talia Nimmer, an attorney for the center, said. “Mandating a restart of these defective oil pipelines won’t curb high gas prices, but it will put coastal wildlife at huge risk of another oil spill. Overriding state law to let an oil company restart pipelines sets a radically dangerous precedent. It’s clear that no state is safe from Trump.”

The center also promised to push back against the order.

“Directing a private oil company to push its project through without safety checks and adherence to California laws that keep our coast safe is appalling and illegal,” Nimmer said. “We’re exploring all legal avenues. This dangerous action should be swiftly blocked by the courts.”

Also of Interest

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

From Gaza to Iran, the pattern is the same: precision weapons, chosen blindness, and dead children. The cost of failing to regulate AI warfare is already too high

Craig Murray: Joy at Death & Destruction

Not so diplomatic: Witkoff, Kushner, and Trump’s march to war in Iran

Max Blumenthal: How FBI & Israel Got Trump to Attack

‘War leader’ Trump fixates on trivial matters as Iran death toll mounts

War On Iran: The Saudis’ Alternative Crude Export Outlet Is Also A Trap

Iran War: US Being Driven From Iraq, Tells Americans to Leave; Iran Keeps Pounding Israel, Gulf States; Trump Calls on Other Countries Including China to Send Warships, Effectively Threatens to Use Nukes; FCC Threatens to Pull Broadcast Licenses Over War Reporting

DAY 14: WAR ON IRAN

Drones Are Weapons Of The Weak #3: The Americas

How the Gas Crisis Impacts the Most Populous Country

‘Serious Threat to the First Amendment’ as Trump Admin Wins First Antifa Terror Charge

Mining made this US tribal area a toxic wasteland. This Indigenous nation brought it back to life

Airport CHAOS Reported as Israelis SCRAMBLE TO FLEE War

A Little Night Music

Lightnin' Slim - Mean Ole Lonesome Train

Lightnin' Slim - Ligtning's Bad Luck

Lightnin' Slim - Bad Feeling Blues

Lightnin' Slim - G.I. Blues

Lightnin' Slim - Rooster Blues

Lightnin' Slim - Hoodoo Blues

Lightnin' Slim - That's All Right

Lightnin' Slim - Nothin' But The Devil

Lightnin' Slim - It's Mighty Crazy