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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Louisiana Red

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues singer, slide guitarist and harmonica player Iverson "Louisiana Red" Minter. Enjoy!

^{Louisiana Red – Thirty Dirty Women}

"[The Iran war was] planned years in advance, and would have been rolled out regardless of what impotent meat puppet happened to be wheeled into office in January 2025."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

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News and Opinion

Biden Official: Biden Was Preparing To Bomb Iran If Re-Elected

Former senior Biden advisor Amos Hochstein said during an interview on Sunday that the Biden administration had been preparing to bomb Iran if they had won re-election in 2024.

Hochstein was asked by Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan, “In July 2024 Secretary Blinken claimed Iran was one or two weeks away from having enough fissile material breakout capacity to eventually make a weapon if Iran had decided to do so. There were indirect negotiations that the Biden administration did, but it went nowhere. So when President Trump argues that he did what no other president would, is it just simply that the bill was coming due and it fell on his watch?”

“I do think there’s a certain element to that, and that’s why I was supportive of President Trump joining in in June to take the strikes that we had thought internally in the Biden administration, we may have to take if there was a second term,” Hochstein replied. “We thought that the spring, summer of 2025 was probably, we may have to be there in the same place. And we did, we did war games. We did some practice runs on what it would look like to look into it, because that may have had to happen under our watch as well.”

Hochstein, for the record, is an Israel-born IDF veteran who reportedly played a major role in the Biden administration encouraging Israel’s horrific bombardment of Lebanon in September 2024. And his narrative that an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities “may have had to happen” under a theoretical second Biden term is false.

In March of last year, US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard testified before Congress that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and supreme leader Khomeini [sic] has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003,” contradicting both the claims of President Trump and of Antony Blinken the year before.

But even if you accept that Iran was a nuclear risk, there was nothing stopping the Biden administration from simply restarting the nuclear deal that the Obama administration secured with Tehran in 2015. The JCPOA was working fine while it was in place; anyone who says otherwise is a lying warmonger. Trump and his handlers torched the JCPOA in 2018 because it was the primary obstacle preventing them from getting to war with Iran, and the Biden administration refused to reverse this move because they wanted war too.

Democratic partisans have been pointing to Trump's war for weeks to chide Hasan Piker and anyone else they blame (read: everyone but themselves) for losing in 2024. But it turns out the Biden admin was planning to attack Iran if they won a 2nd term. https://t.co/UE9C6EiQN3

— Branko Marcetic (@BMarchetich) April 20, 2026

The Democrats were beating the drums of war for Iran well ahead of the 2024 election. Here’s an excerpt from the official 2024 Democratic Party platform explicitly attacking Trump for not going to war with Iran in his first term:

“All of this stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s fecklessness and weakness in the face of Iranian aggression during his presidency. In 2018, when Iranian-backed militias repeatedly attacked the U.S. consulate in Basra, Iraq Trump’s only response was to close our diplomatic facility. In June 2019, when Iran shot down a U.S. surveillance aircraft operating in international airspace above the Straits of Hormuz, Trump responded by tweet and then abruptly called off any actual retaliation, causing confusion and concern among his own national security team. In September 2019, when Iranian-backed groups threatened global energy markets by attacking Saudi oil infrastructure, Trump failed to respond against Iran or its proxies. In January 2020, when Iran, for the first and only time in its history, directly launched ballistic missiles against U.S. troops in western Iraq, Trump mocked the resulting Traumatic Brain Injuries suffered by dozens of American servicemembers as mere ‘headaches’ — and again, took no action.”

Kamala Harris, who controversially replaced the dementia-addled Biden as the Democratic candidate late in the race, labeled Iran the number one enemy of the United States. In their 2024 debate, Harris repeatedly slammed Trump for being too soft on America’s enemies and announced that she “will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel.”

I’ve seen a lot of people trying to argue that Trump’s depravity in Iran proves everyone should support Democrats, but it’s clear the Democratic Party is just the more polite-looking face on the same evil power structure.

The war with Iran was always planned. Analysts like Brian Berletic and Richard Medhurst have been laying out solid arguments that this American war is more about attacking the economic and energy interests of Russia and China in a last-ditch effort to retain planetary hegemony than it is about assisting Israel. This places the United States on a dangerous trajectory toward increasingly hostile escalations between nuclear-armed powers.

These moves were planned years in advance, and would have been rolled out regardless of what impotent meat puppet happened to be wheeled into office in January 2025.

You don’t get to vote out an empire. Whether or not the US will continue working to dominate the planet will never be on the ballot. We will continue seeing reckless US wars of immense human consequence until the empire falls, or until the American people bring the revolutionary change to their country that the world so desperately needs.

Iran SEIZES Ships! Trump EXTENDS Ceasefire! w/Mohammad Marandi

Trump announces extension of Iran ceasefire until ‘discussion concluded’

Donald Trump unilaterally announced an extension of the two-week ceasefire with Iran on Tuesday amid frantic efforts to bring the two sides back to the negotiating table. Hours after announcing that he “expected to be bombing”, the US president said he would extend the ceasefire until Iranian negotiators submitted a proposal for peace.

“Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and, upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform. “I have therefore directed our Military to continue the Blockade and, in all other respects, remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”

The declaration came in a topsy-turvy day in which an expected trip to Islamabad by JD Vance, the vice-president, had been put on hold and Trump ramped up his bellicose rhetoric, saying the US military was “raring to go”.

Trump’s sharp about-turn drew a withering early response from Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament who has emerged as the Islamic regime’s lead negotiator in recent talks. Ghalibaf’s personal adviser dismissed the ceasefire extension as “a ploy to buy time for a surprise strike”, adding that “the time for Iran to take the initiative has come”.

Robert Pape: “Trump Has DOOMED Us!” Iran Will DESTROY Presidency

Ray McGovern: The Way a Long Iran War Destroys Israel and the Entire GCC

‘He talks too much’: how Trump’s erratic commentary is the real block to an Iran deal

Donald Trump’s blend of threats and hubristic commentary, often casually dismissive of Iran, has, as much as the continuation of the US naval blockade of Iranian ports, been a key stumbling block to restarting peace talks between the two countries under Pakistan’s mediation in Islamabad. However much the Iranian foreign ministry insists it will not respond to every social media utterance issued by the US president on Iran, and sometimes there are as many as seven a day, Tehran cannot ignore them all, even if they contradict what the Iranians are being told in private about Trump’s true intentions.

Just as Trump has to handle his querulous political base and the stock market, so the Iranian leadership has to reassure a domestic constituency by pushing back against Trump’s claims of Iranian humiliation and desperation, or his insistence that Iran has climbed down on the key issue of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Trump, for instance, last Friday responded to a tweet by Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, that Iran would lift some of the restrictions in the strait of Hormuz by effectively hailing Iran’s defeat, instead of reciprocating by lifting the US blockade, as Iran had expected.

Later, in one of many phone interviews that day, Trump said: “They [Iran] want me to open it. The Iranians desperately want it opened. I’m not opening it until a deal is signed.” In another unfiltered interview, he said: “They have agreed to everything,” adding specifically: “They have agreed to never close the strait of Hormuz again.” A day later, Iran closed the strait, leaving the impression that Trump, not for the first time, underestimated Iran’s resolve.

One Iranian diplomatic outpost in Ghana pointed out on Tuesday: “In the past 24 hours the president of the United States has: — Thanked Iran for closure of Hormuz; threatened Iran; blamed China; praised China; declared the blockade a success; confirmed Iran restocked through the blockade; promised a deal with Iran; promised bombs will fall on Iran.” The embassy described Trump as a one-man WhatsApp chat group. At the weekend, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Saeed Khatibzadeh, said of Trump: “He talks too much.”

School Boy Foreign Policy: Trump's Iran Gamble Reverts To JCPOA 2.0

‘War Could Break Out at Any Time’: Trump Extends Ceasefire But Continues Blockade of Iran

President Donald Trump on Tuesday afternoon extended a two-week ceasefire for his and Israel’s war on Iran, but the US leader also said that a naval blockade of the Mideast nation will continue, and fears of fresh attacks remain high.

Two weeks after threatening to take out the “whole civilization” of Iran just hours before the ceasefire agreement was reached, Trump took to his Truth Social platform again to announce the extension, without a clear timeline.

Two weeks after threatening to take out the “whole civilization” of Iran just hours before the ceasefire agreement was reached, Trump took to his Truth Social platform again to announce the extension, without a clear timeline.

“Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and, upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal,” Trump wrote. “I have therefore directed our Military to continue the Blockade and, in all other respects, remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”

Trump has imposed the blockade in response to Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman that’s a key trade route, including for fossil fuels. As part of the blockade, the president said Sunday, US forces seized Touska, a nearly 900-foot Iranian-flagged cargo ship.

Trita Parsi, co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, concluded Tuesday that Trump’s cave “reflects the outcome I have argued is the most likely: No deal, no sanctions relief, no nuclear compromise, no return to war, while Iran continues to control the strait. Not a stable situation, but one in which Trump pockets the central thing he sought—exiting the war—while Iran is bereft of the main thing it was looking for: sanctions lifting.”

While a spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said that he welcomes Trump’s announcement as “an important step toward de-escalation and creating critical space for diplomacy and confidence-building between Iran and the United States,” and encouraged all parties “to build on this momentum,” comments out of Iran suggested limited progress.

Drop Site News co-founder Jeremy Scahill reported Tuesday that “an Iranian official tells me that, as of this moment, Iran’s position remains unchanged: Lifting of the naval blockade is a condition for a second round of talks.”

According to Reuters chief national security reporter Phil Stewart, an adviser to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of Iran’s Parliament, said that Tuesday’s extension means nothing and could even be a ploy to buy time for a surprise strike, plus the US continuing its blockade is the same as bombardment and must be met with military force.

Noting Stewart’s reporting on social media, Center for International Policy senior fellow Sina Toossi noted that reporting and warned that “after coming under surprise attack twice, some in Tehran are calling for Iran to take initiative and strike first, including at US vessels or tankers ready to exit Hormuz.”

Toossi also stressed that “trust between the sides remains at zero and renewed war could break out at any time.”

“Let’s be real, Pakistan isn’t deciding whether the US goes to war with Iran,” he added. “They’re a conduit, not a driver. More a convenient excuse and diplomatic cover than having any sort of actual influence over Trump on Iran.”

Ahead of the extension, Toossi had published an op-ed in The Guardian arguing that “having fought what they see as an existential war with the US and Israel and held their ground, Iranian officials see little reason to rush into major concessions. The priority is not a sweeping deal, but reducing the risk of war while preserving core sources of power, from Hormuz to its nuclear program.”

“In the short term, that may simply mean extending the ceasefire rather than reaching a substantive agreement. Beyond that, the likelier outcome is an interim arrangement, or a broad memorandum-of-understanding-style framework that defers key details, rather than a decisive breakthrough,” he continued. “In this view, the conflict is not being resolved but managed—and with time, Iran believes its position will strengthen as the global fallout from energy disruption makes renewed escalation a cost no one is willing to bear.”

A Tuesday report from the climate advocacy group 350.org estimates that during the first 50 days of the Iran war, consumers and businesses worldwide have paid an additional $158.6-166.9 billion due to soaring fuel costs.

Additionally, thousands of people have been killed in Iran and across the region, and at least tens of thousands of Iranian civilian infrastructure sites have been damaged since the US and Israel first launched attacks in February.

Trita Parsi: IRAN WILL CONTINUE TO ESCALATE

Iran ATTACKS Ships in Hormuz, FORCES Trump to Cave on Ceasefire as Blockade COLLAPSES

Report Details Israeli Use of Sexual Violence to Force Palestinians From West Bank Homes

A report published Tuesday by an international human rights consortium details how Israeli soldiers and settlers are weaponizing sexual violence to facilitate the forced expulsion of Palestinians from the illegally occupied West Bank.

The report, published by the West Bank Protection Consortium (WBPC) —which is led by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and funded by donors including 13 European nations—found that “more than 70% of displaced households interviewed identified threats to women and children, particularly sexualized violence, as the decisive reason for leaving” their homes in the West Bank of Palestine.

The West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem, has been occupied by Israel since 1967 and is the site of an accelerating campaign of US-backed deadly ethnic cleansing dating back to 1947.

Palestinians interviewed for the report described “escalating patterns of sexual harassment in Area C”—the roughly 60% of the West Bank that, under the 1995 Oslo II Accord, is under full Israeli control—“including sexualized insults and gestures, indecent exposure, intimidation, threats of sexual violence, and surveillance of intimate spaces such as bedrooms.”

BREAKING: A new report by the NRC-led West Bank Protection Consortium documents sexualised violence and gender-based abuse by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, part of a broader pattern of coercion driving displacement across the West Bank. pic.twitter.com/GN5mwcUf3G

— Norwegian Refugee Council (@NRC_Norway) April 20, 2026

“Participants in multiple locations described settlers exposing themselves, making threats of rape, and stalking women as they walked to latrines,” the report continued.

“Men and boys also experience sexualized humiliation, forced nudity, and sexualized threats,” the publication notes. “In Wadi al-Seeq, after the community was forcibly displaced, three men reported that settlers detained them and attempted to sexually assault one man with a broomstick while he was blindfolded. They described forced stripping, beatings, burning and being urinated on, and said perpetrators circulated images of the abuse.”

“Similar abuses have also been reported elsewhere,” WBPC continued. “In the Bethlehem governorate, testimony collected during a key informant interview described two 15-year-old boys herding cattle whom settlers attacked, beat, blindfolded, and stripped. The account said one boy was urinated on and the other sustained a leg fracture.”

“In another Palestinian Bedouin community in the Jordan Valley... a violent settler raid was reported in which witnesses state that a Palestinian man was subjected to severe sexual assault in front of his family,” the report states. “Testimonies further indicate that women and girls were beaten, children were threatened with death, and threats of rape were made.”

Allegra Pacheco, WBPC’s chief of party, said in a statement Monday that “this is how communities are emptied: not in a single moment, but through repeated attacks, fear inside the home, and pressure that makes ordinary life impossible.”

IDF Soldier DESECRATES Jesus Statue in Lebanon

Two Israeli soldiers jailed over smashing of Jesus statue in Lebanon village

Two Israeli soldiers have been removed from combat duty and sentenced to 30 days in jail after one used a sledgehammer to smash a statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon while the other filmed him, the Israel Defense Forces have said.

An image circulating on social media on Monday showed an Israeli soldier using a sledgehammer to strike the head of a statue of a crucified Jesus that had fallen from its cross in a Christian village in southern Lebanon, near the border with Israel, prompting outrage among Christian communities worldwide.

The IDF said it had removed from combat duty both the soldier who damaged the statue and the one who filmed the act, sentencing them to 30 days in military prison.

This type of punishment is relatively rare in the Israeli military, according to rights groups.

In 2025, the conflict-monitoring group Action on Armed Violence said it had found Israel had closed down or left unresolved 88% of cases of alleged misconduct in Gaza and the West Bank. In a recent case, charges were dropped against soldiers accused of sexually abusing a Gaza detainee.

Thy bulldozer is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my genocide.

Rabbi who boasts of bulldozing Palestinian homes will light torch for Israel’s national day

An extremist rabbi known for razing civilian homes in Gaza will light a torch at Israel’s independence day celebration on Tuesday, a role human rights campaigners said marked the embrace of genocide as the official “spirit of the nation”.

Avraham Zarbiv is one of 14 people chosen for their “extraordinary contribution to society and the state”, alongside a scientist, a Michelin-starred chef, a leading doctor, members of the security forces and entrepreneurs. A reservist who drives an armoured bulldozer, Zarbiv rose to prominence through videos documenting his personal campaign of destruction in Gaza, often accompanied by inflammatory rhetoric.

“You will have nothing left,” he declares in one voiceover, as the camera pans across a landscape of shattered buildings. “We will flatten you and destroy you.”

The footage spread so widely on social media that his name entered the lexicon of Hebrew slang. “To Zarbiv” now means to destroy, a neologism that the 54-year-old has embraced, making it the title of a lecture earlier this year.

Zarbiv’s selection for the ceremony marks an official endorsement of the dehumanisation of Palestinians and systematic destruction of Palestinian life, according to the rights group B’tselem. It said: “This selection sends a clear message to the citizens of Israel and the entire world – in Israel, genocide, ethnic cleansing and war crimes are the ‘spirit of the nation’.”

Two US officials who died after Mexico drug raid reported to be CIA agents

Mexico has launched an investigation into a possible breach of its constitution as it was reported that two US embassy officials who died in a car accident while returning from a raid on a drug lab with local officials in the border state of Chihuahua were CIA operatives.

The accident happened early on Sunday, as the officials were driving back from the scene of the raid. Their vehicle skidded off the road and plunged down a 200 metre ravine in the mountains near Chihuahua’s border with the state of Sinaloa.

Since then, state officials have provided seemingly conflicting accounts of whether and how the Americans were involved in the raid, while Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, said neither she nor her cabinet had been aware of the operation. Mexico’s national security law does not allow for joint operations without prior approval from the federal government.

While the US embassy acknowledged the death of the embassy personnel on Sunday, it has yet to comment on subsequent reporting that they were from the CIA.

“We’re investigating what these people were doing and what agency they were from,” said Sheinbaum in her daily press conference on Tuesday. “So far the information we have is that they were working together [with the state government], and so the attorney general will have to investigate to know if this was in violation of the constitution and the law of national security.”

Trump's approval rating on the economy falls

Donald Trump’s approval rating on the economy has decreased from March to April as prices climb due to the Iran war, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released today.

Only 30 percent of respondents approve of his handling of the economy, down from 38 percent in March, the AP reported. Only 32% approve of his leadership on Iran, which has remained at the same levels since last month. And only 33 percent of US adults approve of his overall job performance, a dip from 38 percent in March.

Trump, who has repeatedly boasted about lowering prices, had particularly low ratings on the cost of living, with only about 25% approval.

Trump officials consider sending 1,100 Afghans who aided US forces to Congo

The Trump administration is in discussions to potentially send up to 1,100 Afghans who helped US forces during the war in Afghanistan to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a non-profit confirmed on Tuesday.

The resettlement talks, first reported by the New York Times, come after Donald Trump’s decision to stop an initiative that allowed Afghans who assisted US war efforts to apply to resettle in the US.

This group of more than 1,000 Afghans, who have been waylaid in Qatar for a year, reportedly includes interpreters as well as relatives of US military members. The group also includes more than 400 children.

According to the Times, the US evacuated these Afghans to Qatar for their protection because they supported US military efforts in their home country, which, since the US military withdrawal, is once again under Taliban control.

The DRC, meanwhile, is suffering from an enormous displacement crisis following decades of conflict and instability. According to the UN Refugee Agency, 8.2 million people were displaced as of September 2025, with this number expected to reach 9 million by year’s end.

Texas can require public schools to display Ten Commandments, court rules

Texas can require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms, a US appeals court ruled Tuesday in a victory for conservatives who have long sought to incorporate more religion into schools.

It sets up a potential clash at the US supreme court over the issue in the future.

The fifth circuit court of appeals said in the decision that the law did not violate either the establishment clause or the free exercise clause of the first amendment.

The law is among the pushes by Republicans, including Donald Trump, to incorporate religion into public schools. Critics say it violates the separation of church and state while backers argue that the Ten Commandments are historical and part of the foundation of US law.

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Virginia voters approve new congressional maps in blow to Trump

Voters in Virginia on Tuesday approved new congressional maps intended to boost Democrats’ chances of retaking the House of Representatives, in the latest blow to Donald Trump’s effort to use mid-decade redistricting to preserve his control of Congress.

The tit-for-tat redistricting battle began last year after Trump pressed Texas’s Republican-controlled legislature to redraw that state’s congressional maps in a bid to oust as many as five Democratic House lawmakers in the November midterm elections.

California voters retaliated by approving new maps that could flip five Republican-held seats, and in Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, the newly elected Democratic governor, backed an effort to redraw her state’s maps following her January inauguration.

Under the new maps, Democrats are now favored to win in 10 of Virginia’s 11 districts. In the current delegation, Democrats hold six seats and Republicans five.

The referendum, which changes the state constitution to set aside through the 2030 census a nonpartisan redistricting process voters authorized six years ago, must still be approved by the state legislature for a second time. It is also the subject of an ongoing challenge before the state supreme court, which could still issue a ruling disqualifying its results.

AIPAC Dem MERCILESSLY BOOED at Michigan Convention - w/ Jose Vega

House Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick resigns amid ethics investigation

Democratic US representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick said she is resigning effective immediately, after a House committee found she violated ethics rules. The panel was set to issue its recommended punishment for the Florida representative on Tuesday.

Cherfilus-McCormick was indicted by a federal grand jury in November for allegedly funneling more than $5m worth of federal disaster funds from her company into her 2021 congressional campaign.

“The Ethics Committee refused my new attorney’s reasonable request for time to prepare my defense,” Cherfilus-McCormick said in a statement. “By going forward with this process while a criminal indictment is pending, the Committee prevented me from defending myself.” She also said the process had been a “witch-hunt” and that, instead of playing “political games” she is stepping down to devote time to “fighting for my neighbors in Florida’s 20th district”.

Though she pleaded not guilty to the charges leveled against her, Cherfilus-McCormick, 47, was facing pressure from members of Congress from both parties, who vowed to bring an expulsion vote against the Florida Democrat.

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Clean energy generation exceeded rise in global electricity demand in 2025

All of last year’s growth in global electricity demand was met from renewable sources, while fossil fuel power generation remained flat, research has found, marking what many hope could become a turning point in the drive to phase out planet-heating fossil fuels.

Solar power generation rose by nearly a third in 2025, marking a new record and faster growth. In the decade from 2015, solar output grew tenfold, roughly doubling every three years, according to the thinktank Ember. More than half of the increase came from China, which has surged ahead in renewable energy and is also the world’s biggest exporter of clean energy components.

Solar power met three-quarters of the increase in electricity demand in 2025, with the remainder mostly met by wind power. Electricity generation from fossil fuels fell by 0.2%.

Globally, renewable energy accounted for 34% of electricity generation in 2025, outstripping coal which took a 33% share.

The report also highlighted battery storage as a key factor. About 14% of last year’s additional solar generation was used at other times of day, thanks to large increases in the uptake of batteries, which have fallen sharply in price in the past decade.

Wildlife and humans thriving in Unesco-protected sites

Wildlife and humans are thriving within sites recognised by Unesco, research has found, allowing for the recovery of threatened species and habitats around the world. While wildlife populations have crashed globally by nearly three-quarters since 1970, those within Unesco-protected areas have remained largely stable.

“It’s good news, it shows that these sites are extremely resilient in the face of a changing world,” said Tales Carvalho Resende, one of the co-authors of the report People and Nature in Unesco Sites, published on Tuesday.

But the sites are also under severe threat: more than 300,000 sq km of tree cover, an area larger than the Republic of the Congo, has been lost within Unesco-designated sites since 2000, mostly owing to agricultural expansion and logging. About 90% of Unesco sites globally are also judged to be under “high levels” of environmental stress, chiefly extreme heat.

One in four designated sites could reach critical climate tipping points by 2050, according to Unesco. These include the disappearance of glaciers, collapse of coral reefs and forests drying out, turning from carbon sinks into carbon sources.

Many of the world’s “charismatic megafauna”, whose populations have plummeted in recent decades under an onslaught of poaching, the encroachment of agriculture and other stresses, have found havens in Unesco-designated sites, where they often receive far greater protection than in non-designated areas. About a third of the world’s remaining elephants, tigers and pandas are in Unesco sites, as are about one in 10 of the remaining great apes, giraffes, lions, rhinos and dugongs.

Trump’s latest border wall plans to slice through Big Bend national park

Tractors suddenly appeared at the entrance to Chispa Road near the US-Mexico border in rural Big Bend, Texas, in late March. Contractors informed Yolanda Alvarado, a cattle rancher, that they were starting work to upgrade the rough county dirt road there into a “highway” – the first step needed for semi trucks to haul the 30-foot steel pillars used to build Donald Trump’s border barrier.

“That fence line, that’s where the wall is going to be,” said Alvarado, hopping out of the front seat of her flatbed truck at the gate to the family property located directly along the path of the proposed wall. The ranch house, a rough hour-long drive along the road, sits atop a bluff overlooking the Rio Grande floodplain with the rugged hills of Chihuahua in Mexico stretching out to the south. “Over there by those pens, that’s where my grandparents are buried,” said Alvarado, whose family has been ranching in west Texas for five generations. “The wall will cut us in half.”

For her, the tractors were the first concrete evidence of what she and other residents had feared since it was announced in February that new parts of the border wall would be built in Big Bend. This rugged part of west Texas, long spared a constructed barrier due to its remoteness, rugged cliffs in parts and low rates of migrant crossings, has come into Trump’s crosshairs. The US president wants to fast-track construction throughout the border region. “We never thought anyone would be so stupid to build a wall out here,” said Alvarado, whose family received a letter from the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency in February notifying them that their property had been identified as a site for border wall construction. “It’s not just about our property, it’s about the wildlife, it’s walling off the river. It’s going to disrupt this whole ecosystem,” she said.

In February, CBP updated its interactive Smart Wall Map that depicted the status of barrier plans to indicate a “primary border wall system” within Big Bend nationalpark and nearby Big Bend ranch state park – two of the state’s largest and most cherished public lands. The proposed wall would sever wildlife migration routes, cut off public access to the Rio Grande and damage the region’s fragile ecosystem and tourism economy, as has happened to varying degrees in other parts along the border.

The local counties have a mix of political shades while leaning broadly Republican. But there has been an unprecedented bipartisan effort to oppose the wall. Conservative judges and sheriffs, environmentalists and grassroots organizers, local business owners and ranchers alike have united to oppose what they see as excessive federal government overreach and an action they believe can devastate the lands and livelihoods of residents. “We are tied to the land here in west Texas,” said Alvarado, who currently spends much of her time speaking at town hall meetings, educating fellow landowners and trying to inform the public about the border wall. “This is not going down easy.”

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Also of Interest

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

What went wrong in Israel? A genocide scholar examines ‘what Zionism became’

Iran War: Fraying Nerves, Nonsense Negotiations, Psyops, and Ominous Notes

Is Trump Re-fighting Vietnam In Iran?

Israel Reports Killing ‘Militants’ in Lebanon Despite Ceasefire as Troops Continues Demolitions

DAY 52: Trump Extends Ceasefire as World Remains on Edge

‘Day of Ordinary Terror’: Israeli Attack on West Bank School Kills Man, Child

Michigan Dems Came Down Hard On Student Protests Against the Gaza Genocide. It Just Blew Up in Their Face.

‘Stop sucking up to America’: Japan’s youth rises up to protect pacifist constitution

Germany Wants to Double Down on Failed Policies

‘We were terrified they were going to kill us’: fishers who survived US boat strike speak out

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A Little Night Music

Louisiana Red - I Done Woke Up

Louisiana Red - I´m Louisiana Red

Louisiana Red - I'm a Roaming Stranger

Louisiana Red - No Future

Louisiana Red - Freight Train to Ride

Louisiana Red - Ride on Red, Ride On

Louisiana Red - Little Boy

Louisiana Red - Too Poor to Die

Louisiana Red - Alabama Train

Louisiana Red, Hubert Sumlin, Carey Bell, Sunnyland Slim, Robert Stroger, Odie Payne – Labour Blues

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