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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Jaybird Coleman

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features country blues harmonica player and guitarist Jaybird Coleman. Enjoy!

^{Jaybird Coleman - Coffee Grinder Blues}

"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of."

-- Confucius

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News and Opinion

There’s No Good Reason Why Poverty Should Still Exist

The other day I saw another great example of the way people in capitalist societies tend to reframe their dumb luck as the result of their own hard work and resourcefulness.

At the end of the last season of the surivalist competition Alone Australia, the winner Trent Felton was asked if he felt he’d just gotten lucky catching dozens of fish while all the other contestants starved, and he insisted that his success was actually due to the fact that he had made the wise decision to work hard obtaining food.

“My strategy when I went out there was food,” said Felton. “I’ve been a big fan of the show for a long time, and I’ve never really seen anyone leave ‘cause their shelter’s not quite up to scratch or anything like that, so from day one priority for me was food.”

Oh you made food a priority, did you Trent? On the show about obtaining food to survive in the wilderness? Wow, I bet your opponents wish they’d thought of that.

He’d just watched the same show we all watched. He saw all his other co-contestants taking far more extraordinary measures than he ever had to take in order to obtain fish and other nourishment, building boats to try to change their luck with the fish, constantly moving their gill nets and trying all kinds of lures and bait and still getting nothing.

But he couldn’t just be humble and say “Yeah, I was dropped off at the only decent fishing spot on the show during a season where fishing was the only way contestants were allowed to harvest animal protein. I got lucky.” He had to pretend his fortune was actually the result of his hard work and his clever “obtain food” strategy.

This is such a perfect example of the phenomenon we discussed the other day where people who’ve managed to thrive under capitalism assume the system is working fine because survivorship bias and just-world fallacy cause them to believe that everyone’s getting exactly what they deserve. If I have more than I need it’s because I worked hard to obtain it. If you have less than you need it’s because you didn’t work hard enough.

Our whole insane society runs on this premise. Those who got lucky say their fortune is the result of their own hard work and cleverness, so they should enjoy tax cuts and generational wealth while the less fortunate are sleeping on the sidewalk.

Meanwhile those who’ve been working their fingers to the bone just to survive in this shitshow know that money doesn’t actually reward hard work. In our society, money rewards being born into the right family, being cruel enough to exploit the working class, being sociopathic enough to externalize the costs of industry onto the environment, and being ruthless enough to crush anyone who is in competition with you.

Which is why we find ourselves ruled by a plutocratic class of psychopaths today, who preside over a tiered society of haves and have-nots whose continued stratification is foundational to the system under which we live. Sure, as an individual you might one day get lucky and move from the lower tier to the higher one, but such instances are just the “poor girl marries a prince” stories of our day. The odd exception to the general rule doesn’t change the fact that our entire civilization depends on the permanent existence of an impoverished underclass.

Those with clear eyes and humble hearts understand that there’s no good reason why we should be living comfortably while others struggle and suffer, and that we must do whatever we can to help create a more equitable society which uplifts those who are more needful than ourselves. We reject the temptation to tell ourselves stories about why we shouldn’t have to share our good fortune with those less fortunate, and we join hands with our brothers and sisters in humanity to help build a healthy world.

We have more than enough resources to care for everyone, if we would only redesign our systems to advance the interests of humanity over the interests of capital. There is no valid reason why poverty should continue to exist. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to themselves, either intellectually in their heads or morally in their hearts.

As Buckminster Fuller said many years ago, “It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary. War is obsolete. It is a matter of converting high technology from weaponry to livingry.”

He was correct then, and he is correct now. We can still have a world like this. It’s not too late to change.

Chas Freeman: U.S. Alliances Collapse & Israel Commits Suicide

Houthis claim attack on Saudi base as fighting flares with Yemeni forces

Houthi fighters have said they used drones and missiles to attack a military base in southern Saudi Arabia, as Yemen’s Riyadh-backed government described the rebels’ swift advance along the Red Sea coast as a “painful” development in a new front in the Iran war. The overnight attack at the southern Sharurah base targeted “weapons depots and command and control centres that are managing the aggression against our nation and people”, the Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree wrote on X. The date of the operation was not specified.

The Saudi civil defence force said a projectile had fallen in al-Tawwal governorate near the border with Yemen along the Red Sea, injuring two people and damaging a mosque and several other buildings. The statement blamed the Houthis. It also said sirens had sounded in Sharurah governorate but no damage was reported. Yemeni government forces said they had struck Houthi fighters in the Red Sea city of Mocha and later attacked other Houthi positions in the south-west of the country. “Air force of the armed forces targeted positions and barracks of the terrorist Houthi group with three airstrikes” in the Taiz region, the Yemeni military said on Sunday.

Sultan al-Arada, a member of the ruling presidential council, described the collapse of government forces in Mocha and elsewhere on Yemen’s west coast as “painful and regrettable”. Al-Arada, who is also the governor of Yemen’s central Marib province, said in a televised interview broadcast late on Saturday night that forces “are currently regrouping and will return to the battle in one form or another”. The renewed fighting in Yemen has killed more than 500 people, according to sources on both sides.

The clashes follow a week-long Houthi offensive that culminated in the group capturing the remainder of Yemen’s Red Sea coast and several strategic islands, cementing their hold on the Bab al-Mandab strait at the sea’s southern entrance. The waterway has become an important artery for Saudi oil exports after Iran largely cut off shipments through the Gulf with its blockade on the strait of Hormuz in response to the US-Israeli assault on the country.

Iran TAKES OUT $40 Million US Aircraft, HITS UAE Tanker in Two-Front Strike!

85,000+ Yemeni Civilians Displaced by Renewed Fighting Kicked Off by Trump’s Iran War

The United Nations agency for migration issues said Sunday that 85,818 Yemeni people have been forcibly displaced in recent days by renewed fighting between Houthi forces and the Saudi-backed government as the Houthis seized control of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a key waterway for global oil shipping.

More than 2,000 people fled to Djibouti in recent days, and more are expected to arrive as fighting continues to escalate along the western coast of Yemen and Taiz province, near the port city of Mocha, which the Iran-allied Houthis seized from government forces on Thursday.

Nearly 56,000 people have been forced to leave their homes in Taiz, where heavy ground fighting and counterattacks have been taking place.

Abdusattor Esoev, chief of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Yemen, told Al Jazeera that the capture of Mocha, where the UN has maintained a strong infrastructure in recent years, has caused difficulty for aid agencies trying to reach people in need of food, water, medicines, and other humanitarian aid.

“Behind every number is a family who’s lost everything,” said Amy Pope, director general of IOM. “Many have been displaced multiple times. People are crossing the sea with nothing because they have no other choice left. Yemen is a country torn by poverty and conflict, and it cannot carry this crisis alone.”

Everyone is talking about the geopolitical and economic consequences of Ansar Allah taking Bab al-Mandab, but as always there is a human cost that no one cares about. 45,000 people have been displaced in the Mokha area. They join the 5.2 million internally displaced there. There are also 18.3 million acutely food-insecure in the country. This war must end.

— Shaiel Ben-Ephraim (@academic_la) September 12, 2026

Pope called on donor countries to rapidly scale up support for Yemenis arriving in Djibouti and for 5.2 million people who have been internally displaced in Yemen over 12 years of conflict since the Houthis seized the country’s capital, Sanaa, in 2014.

More than 900 people have been killed in this month’s escalation, Al Jazeera reported.

A UN-brokered truce in 2022 temporarily halted major battles.

In July, the Houthis declared a blockade on Saudi ships in the Red Sea, which Saudi Arabia had been using to ship oil due to Iran’s effective blockade in the Strait of Hormuz—a retaliatory measure Iran took in response to the war that the Trump administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began in February.

As Common Dreams reported last week, the Houthis see the war being perpetrated by President Donald Trump as a “golden opportunity” to advance against the Saudi-backed Yemeni government.

The Houthis also launched missile and drone strikes on southern Saudi Arabia in recent days.

Mohammed al-Basha, founder and lead analyst of the Basha Report Risk Advisory, told Al Jazeera that Saudi Arabia is likely providing air support to the Yemeni government forces and is under pressure to launch a wider military campaign.

Trump reportedly refused a request from Saudi Arabia to launch airstrikes against the Houthis last week, and said Saturday that the Houthis had reached out to Washington, asking the Trump administration not to intervene in the conflict.

The renewed conflict in Yemen has sparked intensified calls for the White House to end its war on Iran, which has also led to casualties across the Middle East, including in Lebanon.

A woman named Aman Murshed told Al Jazeera on Saturday that her family, including five children, has been displaced in a refugee camp for five years in Taiz, and they were forced to flee again this past week.

“The last four years were calm, and our hopes of returning home grew stronger,” she said at the al-Malika camp in al-Maafer district in Taiz. “But suddenly, fighting erupted near our camp three days ago, and we found ourselves fleeing again toward an unknown destination. The only priority was to carry the children and flee as quickly as possible, because any delay could mean death. It was around 5:00 am, and there were no cars in the camp or the surrounding area since it is on the front line. So, we walked for more than two kilometers until we found a pick-up truck that brought us to this camp for free.”

Mohammed Ali, a journalist in Taiz, told Al Jazeera that “the broader US-Iran conflict effectively brought an end to the 2022 truce, as the Houthis have been attempting to advance to take control of the Bab al-Mandeb strait to serve Iran’s agenda.”

“The warring sides are escalating, but it is civilians who pay the price,” he said. “A single visit to one of the camps for displaced families is enough to see the severe toll this escalation has taken on the Yemeni people.”

Larry Johnson: Saudi Pipeline Shutdown After Attacks:Asian Refiners Brace for Sour Crude Price Shock

Pro-Israel Group Condemned for Demanding UK Ban on Doctors Without Borders

Doctors Without Borders on Saturday condemned allegations made by a British pro-Israel lobby group, which called on Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to investigate and potentially proscribe the group, whose medical providers and other humanitarian workers provide lifesaving aid in 70 countries and have worked in Palestine during Israel’s assault there.

As The Telegraph reported, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKFLI) wrote to Mahmood as well as the Charity Commission and Fundraising Regulator, calling on the Labour government to investigate Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

The group claimed at least two of MSF’s workers who were killed by Israeli forces, physiologist Fadi Al Wadiya and driver Nasser Hamdi Abdelatif Al Shalfouh, had connections to terrorist groups in Gaza.

Palestine Islamic Jihad published a poster earlier this year naming Wadiya as a “martyr commander,” and UKFLI claimed Al Shalfouh was a sniper for a Hamas battalion.

MSF acknowledged the poster regarding Wadiya in February and said the medical group “had no indication that Fadi Al Wadiya might have been involved in military activity of any kind prior to his killing by the Israeli Forces.”

“If the Israeli authorities had any reliable information about Fadi’s involvement in military activity, they never shared it with MSF either prior to his killing or when we reached out immediately after he was killed to ask for clarifications around the circumstances of his death,” the group added. “We would never knowingly employ people engaging in military activity. Any employee who engages in military activity would pose a danger to our staff and patients.”

UKFLI sent its report on MSF to Mahmood asking her to ban the group, as the Labour government proscribed the protest group Palestine Action last year, labeling it a terrorist group under the Terrorism Act. The government took that action after members of the group vandalized planes at a military base.

The designation put Palestine Action on the same legal footing as Al Qaeda in the UK and made membership of the group—or even expressions of support for it—punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

The demand for the same designation for MSF, said former British Army general Charlie Herbert, was “absolutely grotesque.”

This is grotesque. Absolutely grotesque. There is no more impartial an organisation than @MSF. From Afghanistan to Sierra Leone, they never once failed to impress with their neutrality, impartiality and absolute commitment to humanitarian support. This is complete madness.

— Charlie Herbert (@Charlie533080) September 12, 2026

MSF doctors and healthcare workers have treated thousands of Palestinians in Gaza since Israel began its onslaught there in October 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack. At least 15 people working with the organization have been killed by Israeli forces. The group is also currently providing humanitarian and medical aid in Sudan as the civil war there has displaced millions of people and collapsed the healthcare system; in Yemen as the conflict between the Houthis and Saudi-backed government troops has escalated; and in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is facing an Ebola outbreak as well as humanitarian crises exacerbated by years of conflict.

“I work in aid, and when people ask who to support I always say MSF,” said researcher and activist Philip Proudfoot. “MSF, wherever I’ve been, are right there on the front, in dangerous conditions, in isolated outposts, providing life-saving support. They’re heroes. UK lawyers for Israel are not fit to wash their scrubs.”

US-based researcher Shaiel Ben-Ephraim said the report by UKLFI demonstrates that “support for Israel requires you to be against everything good in this world, like an organization which sends doctors to conflict areas to save human lives.”

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Netanyahu Backed Into a Corner : Trump Blind to AI

Pregnant woman among more than 10 killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza

A pregnant Palestinian woman died on Saturday from injuries sustained after being shot in the head by Israeli forces south of Khan Younis, according to her family and medical workers, as strikes across Gaza killed at least 10 people in 48 hours. The woman, named as Iman Shalouf, 27, who was nearly eight months pregnant, was sitting inside her family’s tent in the al-Mawasi area when Israeli gunfire struck her, according to paramedics and witnesses.

‘‘We heard the sound of gunfire while I was praying,’’ Wathfa abu Mashi, Shalouf’s mother-in-law, said in a video interview with Anadolu. “My daughter asked me, ‘Where is Iman?’ I told her she was in her tent. She went to check on her and found her covered in blood after she was hit by a bullet.” Shalouf’s husband, Ismail abu Mashi, said “Where is the ceasefire they keep talking about? There is no such thing. There is killing every day. People are dying here every day.”

Despite the ceasefire agreement reached in October 2025, violence and the killing of Palestinians continue on a daily basis. The health ministry in Gaza said 10 Palestinians had been killed and 56 wounded in Israeli attacks over the previous 48 hours, amid artillery shelling and gunfire in several areas of northern, central and southern Gaza.

Four members of the same family – Momen Ahmed, his wife, Haneen Saleh, and their daughters Lana, 12, and Bana, eight – were killed when their home in Beit Lahiya was struck on Thursday night, according to the ministry. Six other Palestinians were reported killed in Khan Younis and Gaza City on Friday, including a man who died of wounds sustained in an earlier attack.

Is Türkiye Israel's Next Target?

Pressure builds in Spain to deny US extradition request for leftwing donor

Attorneys for James “Fergie” Chambers, the US citizen and wealthy donor to leftwing and humanitarian projects worldwide who is currently imprisoned in Madrid and sought in extradition, have submitted a brief ahead of a decisive government meeting on the case. Meanwhile, Chambers’ partner, the actor and activist Stella Schnabel, met last week with multiple members of the Spanish parliament to assert his innocence.

The legal team’s arguments include that the US government has failed to identify specific acts of violence or damages personally attributable to Chambers and instead is seeking to criminalize acts linked to political protest. They also assert that at least one figure of US law underpinning the request – “conspiracy to commit riot” – has no equivalent in Spanish law, which would also help render the extradition invalid.

It is the first known case of the US seeking to extradite a citizen over alleged support for Hamas. The US government’s case centers on Chambers allegedly laundering $7.5m that he wired several years ago from a US bank account to Tunisia, where he lived at the time, and allegedly using the money to support the Palestinian group Hamas. The exact details of the indictment against Chambers remain sealed.

Chambers’ team say he has been supporting humanitarian aid and other projects. The 41–year-old self-described anti–imperialist’s defense is also asserting that the Trump administration’s additional charges of “international money laundering” don’t hold up because, as heir to one of the richest families in the US, he obtained his personal wealth through legal means. Chambers’ donations have gone to about 100 projects in 20 countries for several years – including the Sameer Project, in Gaza.

“It would set an alarming precedent in all of Europe if Spain allowed the Trump administration to criminalize offering vital humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people and defending their rights,” said Baltasar Garzón, the acclaimed human rights lawyer and a member of Chambers’ legal team. “That’s what Fergie has financed: humanitarian aid and support for people in a situation of great need,” said Garzón. “That’s not terrorism, according to Spanish and European legal standards.”

US BLINDSIDED as Saudi Oil Supply COLLAPSES & China Does the Unthinkable

Surging inflation puts interest rates back in focus as policymakers meet

Central bankers in economies including the US, Japan and the UK will face a moment of truth this week, as surging inflation raises the prospect of higher interest rates. Policymakers in all three countries will set rates in the next seven days against the backdrop of turbulent global bond markets.

In particular, investors will be watching closely to see if Kevin Warsh, the new chair of the US Federal Reserve, can face down Donald Trump’s demands for rate cuts and instead persuade Fed governors to raise them on Wednesday. Warsh was handpicked by the US president, who has repeatedly demanded lower interest rates. In a Truth Social post this month, Trump claimed the US should have the “LOWEST RATE of any country in the World”.

However, the central bank’s board of governors is having to contend with a renewed rise in oil prices after the US-Iran conflict intensified again. The cost of a barrel of crude surged past $100 last week for the first time since July, as the strait of Hormuz remained all but closed to tanker traffic and Houthi rebels advanced along the Red Sea coast, threatening to choke off Saudi oil supplies.

Oil prices eased slightly on Friday amid hopes of fresh talks to reopen the waterway but remained well above levels in the summer, when Middle East hostilities temporarily abated. Higher energy costs are expected to feed a fresh rise in US inflation, which has been above the Fed’s 2% target for more than five years. In a speech this month, Warsh said without continued progress towards the target, Fed policymakers would have “work to do”. Data published on Friday showed annual US inflation unchanged at 3.4%.

‘It’s just straight bigotry’: wave of Islamophobic rhetoric looms over US midterm elections

Within hours of Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan’s Democratic US Senate primary, Republican senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama declared that the party had “just voted to send a TERRORIST” to Washington. El-Sayed – or “Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed”, as Tuberville called him on X – was a “RADICAL ISLAMIST” who would “do everything he can to destroy America”, he claimed.

It was the opening shot in what researchers who track anti-Muslim sentiment describe as the most concentrated wave of Islamophobic rhetoric in US electoral politics since the 9/11 attacks, arriving at the exact moment Muslim candidates are winning office in unprecedented numbers. “It’s probably the worst of what we’ve seen,” said Saher Selod, director of research at the non-partisan Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), which has tracked anti-Muslim sentiment nationally for a decade. “We’re certainly seeing in 2025 and 2026, ahead of these midterms, really very Islamophobic ads – more so than what we saw after 9/11.”

The Pew Research Center found in a survey this spring that 51% of US adults now say Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence, up from just 25% six months after the 2001 attacks. The partisan gap on that question has widened sharply. Back in 2022 32% of likely Republican voters and 23% of Democrats in 2002 said Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence, according to the Pew survey. Today, 76% of Republicans say the same, and 29% of Democrats.

Set against that backdrop is a wave of Muslim electoral success. There are four Muslim members of US Congress, with a fifth likely on the way, compared with zero in 2001. Ghazala Hashmi became Virginia’s first Muslim woman elected to statewide office this year, as lieutenant governor. Zohran Mamdani was inaugurated as New York’s first Muslim mayor in January 2025, and El-Sayed’s primary win put him on track to potentially become the first Muslim ever elected to the US Senate.

The attacks go beyond one candidate, however. Senator Ted Cruz told Fox News that El-Sayed and Mamdani were “Islamists” who “want Sharia law” and “hate Jews, they hate Christians, they hate capitalism, they hate America”. Representative Nancy Mace posted that “every single Muslim holding public office in America is a trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic”, and followed up by writing that Islam “must be removed from civil society in the US”. In March, Representative Randy Fine of Florida wrote on X, “We need more Islamophobia, not less. Fear of Islam is rational,” while Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee posted that “Muslims don’t belong in American society”.

Trump reiterates $5,000 ‘dividend’ pledge if Republicans win midterms

Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his controversial pledge to give US adults a $5,000 “dividend” if his Republican ⁠party keeps control of Congress after November’s midterm elections. The plan has been greeted with expressions of incredulity across the US political spectrum as well as outraged accusations of seeking to bribe voters. The plan – which would cost more than a trillion dollars – also comes amid huge concern over the US national debt, which topped $40tn for the first time in August.

“I don’t ‌know but ‌it’s easy if the ‌Republicans win. $5,000 to all adults in the country and we can easily handle that because we’re taking in ‌so much money,” Trump told reporters in Ireland where he is on a visit to a golf course. Trump had been asked if ​Congress would need to approve the $5,000 pledge and continued: “The Democrats can’t make that pledge ⁠because it would all go to ​hell ​right away, ​we’d go into a ​depression … ‌I made ​that pledge, ​I always keep my pledge.”

San Jose officer fired for misusing Flock camera database in domestic abuse case

A San Jose police officer was fired for using his department’s Flock license plate tracking system to share the location of a woman with the suspect accused of abusing her, Chief Paul Joseph told NBC Bay Area on Friday. The firing marks another in a growing number of cases of misuse of a controversial surveillance technology that has expanded rapidly over the last several years.

The officer accessed Flock camera data last year without authorization on his personal phone for the vehicle of a woman allegedly abused by one of the officer’s family members, then sent that information to his cousin, according to Joseph. The suspect in the domestic abuse case was the officer’s cousin, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

Police discovered the unauthorized access when the woman told police that her alleged abuser told her that he knew her location. The department immediately placed the officer on administrative leave and began a criminal investigation into his actions, Joseph said. “I was furious that an officer would betray the public’s trust in that manner, that he would not understand how serious of a violation that is,” Joseph said.

Joseph did not publicly disclose the name of the officer. San Jose police department referred the case to the Santa Clara county district attorney’s office, but the officer was not been charged with a crime. The district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

License plate reading technology has drawn broad criticism, recurring protests and vandalism from the right and left alike, as law enforcement has deployed tens of thousands of cameras across the country, raising concerns about privacy, mass surveillance, false positives and police misuse of the technology.

Whistleblower REVEALS REAL REASON AI Execs Freaking Out NOW

OpenAI boss and Elon Musk back calls to put brakes on ‘reckless’ AI development

Sam Altman and Elon Musk have backed a call from the head of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, to “slow the pace” of AI development after he warned that an AI swarm could otherwise become capable of “taking over the entire internet” within a year. In a rare show of unity, the rival technology leaders threw their weight behind the appeal from the founder and chief executive of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, which came after a series of warnings from AI researchers last week. Amodei also called for safety coordination with China.

But the US president, Donald Trump, on a visit to his golf course in Ireland, played down the warnings and said “very negative forces” were “bringing up things that won’t happen”.

“We’re leading China in AI,” he said. “We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly I want to ⁠keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins.

Amodei laid out his thoughts on “why the AI industry should slow down”, in an essay with a three-part plan for doing so, starting with giving independent monitors constant access to developers’ research processes. Amodei said “building [AI] too fast is reckless” and he feared that after hundreds of OpenAI agents hacked into the Hugging Face website this summer, a swarm with greater capabilities but similarly misaligned could cause hundreds of billions of dollars of damage by “taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet”. This was disputed by some AI experts as not particularly plausible and to be treated with scepticism.

Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, responded to Amodei’s slowdown plan with a series of posts on X - “Dario is right.” Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, responded to Amodei’s comments on Saturday. “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier,” he said in a post on X. “Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We’ll have more to share soon.”

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One in nine migratory birds threatened with extinction

One in nine migratory birds are threatened with extinction and 45% of migratory species such as cuckoos, turtle doves and Arctic terns are in decline, according to a global report.The migratory slender-billed curlew was officially declared extinct last year, the first global bird extinction in mainland Eurasia and Africa in recent centuries. Worldwide, seven migratory bird species have been confirmed or are suspected to have become extinct over the last 150 years.

The threats to migratory birds, which are overwhelmingly caused by humans and include the intensification of farming, unsustainable hunting, pollution, invasive species and global heating, were revealed in the State of the World’s Birds report. Seabirds and shorebirds, which depend upon marine habitats and coastal wetlands, are faring particularly badly, according to the analysis, which is produced every four years by BirdLife International.

Stuart Butchart, the chief scientist at BirdLife International, said: “Migratory birds are sentinels, and their declines reveal growing pressure on the natural systems that sustain us. But the science is equally clear: conservation works, with coordinated action preventing extinctions and helping populations recover. The solutions exist: what is needed now is their implementation at flyway scale.”

The report was published at the Global Flyways summit in Nairobi, Kenya, where governments, scientists, conservation NGOs and financial institutions signed a commitment to increase efforts to protect migratory birds along their flyways, the routes taken by billions of migratory birds moving between continents and seasons. The Nairobi Flyways Declaration comes with three development banks integrating flyway conservation into their lending frameworks, providing $6bn (£4.4bn) for habitat protection and restoration along migratory routes.

Federal Appellate Court Kills Trump Bid to Keep ‘Old, Expensive, and Dirty’ Coal Plant Open

Climate defenders celebrated on Friday after a federal appellate court rejected the US Department of Energy’s abuse of emergency powers to keep a Michigan coal plant open, part of President Donald Trump’s broader push to boost the climate-wrecking industry.

“The court rejected the Trump administration’s nationwide push forcing unreliable, aging coal plants that are bleeding money and polluting communities to stay online,” said Ted Kelly, director and lead counsel for US clean energy at the Environmental Defense Fund—which was among the advocacy groups that joined Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois in challenging the DOE’s abuse of Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to keep the JH Campbell Generating Plant running.

“The Department of Energy’s unlawful actions attempted to make families and businesses in the Midwest wastefully pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a coal plant that should have been shut down over a year ago,” said Kelly. “That’s why these aging coal plants are scheduled to retire in the first place—they are incredibly expensive, dangerous to our health, and break down frequently.”

The Campbell plant was scheduled to retire on May 31, 2025, after over six decades of operation. As the opinion from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia notes, Consumers Energy “worked for several years to develop plans and secure regulatory approval to retire the old Campbell plant and replace it with a mix of expanded and new electricity-generation sources.”

While Michigan officials approved the company’s retirement plan for the facility, Trump’s DOE intervened, forcing not only that plant but six others across the country to remain open—collectively costing Americans over $547 million, according to a live tracker from the Sierra Club, which has challenged all of the department’s coal plant orders.

The three-judge appellate panel unanimously vacated the department’s order on Friday, writing that “our reading of the text, structure, and history leaves us unpersuaded by DOE’s sweeping conception of its ‘emergency’ authority under Section 202(c).”

The Associated Press reported that while the DOE didn’t respond to a request for comment, Consumers Energy spokesperson Brian Wheeler said the plant operator was reviewing the court ruling and, in the meantime, will keep the facility operating through mid-November.

In a statement to Bridge Michigan, DOE spokesperson Emily Mathews claimed the emergency orders prevented blackouts and “likely saved hundreds of lives,” without offering evidence. She did not confirm plans for an appeal but did say that the department “will continue to protect and defend energy security for all Americans.”

Consumers Energy spokesperson Katie Carey told the outlet that the company “is reviewing today’s court ruling,” and “while that happens, we are continuing to comply with the current 90-day Department of Energy order.” Still, those who fought against the administration’s policy welcomed their legal victory.

“By forcing its continued operation, DOE tried a never-before-used tactic to illegally prop up the aging JH Campbell coal plant that nobody asked to keep, sticking ratepayers with a bill for a facility that should have been retired more than a year ago,” said Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel in a statement.

“I am relieved that the court saw through this facade and threw out DOE’s order that had zero basis in reality,” she continued. “My office has been fighting this unlawful political stunt at every turn, and this ruling proves what we have been saying all along: This administration does not get to invent fake emergencies to bypass the rule of law against the best interests of Michigan residents. We remain committed to fighting these nonsensical orders and protecting our ratepayers.”

A HUGE win for AG Dana Nessel and the rule of law.

The Trump administration illegally forced a Michigan coal plant to stay open more than a year past its planned retirement. Today, a three-judge panel unanimously ruled DOE overstepped its authority.

— Democratic AGs (@DemocraticAGs) September 11, 2026

Derrell Slaughter, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Michigan policy director for climate and energy, declared that “Michiganders shouldn’t have been saddled with artificially high energy bills or forced to deal with toxic air pollution over a fabricated ‘emergency.’ The Campbell coal plant is out of date, costs more to operate than other electricity generation options, and is one of the worst polluters in the state.”

While applauding the decision as “a victory for families across the Midwest who are tired of paying to keep this old, expensive, and dirty power plant online,” Sierra Club chief appellate counsel Sanjay Narayan stressed that “instead of working to lower costs and clean up our air and water, the Trump administration has been pulling out all the stops to try to bolster dirty and expensive fossil fuels—at public expense.”

“This reckless agenda will not succeed,” the attorney pledged. “We will continue to hold the Department of Energy accountable to the law, and ensure that the JH Campbell plant finally retires as it was scheduled to, and we will continue to fight back against the other illegal extensions across the country.”

Trump Administration Making Aggressive Push to Use Public Lands for AI Data Centers

President Donald Trump’s administration is making an aggressive push to find public lands to use for building artificial intelligence data centers, according to a Friday report in The Washington Sun.

The US Department of the Interior, under the leadership of Secretary Doug Burgum, has pushed the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to “identify public land ripe for data center development,” and provide lists to department leadership, reported the Sun.

Leaders at the Interior Department gave state BLM leaders just three days to compile their lists, emphasizing this was a “top priority,” the Sun’s sources said.

Additionally, reported the Sun, Burgum has been meeting regularly with Big Tech executives to discuss ways to accelerate data center development.

The department’s aggressive push stems from a Trump executive order signed in July 2025 that tasked the government with identifying federal lands that could be used to build data centers.

Mary Jo Rugwell, president of the Public Lands Foundation and former BLM state director, told the Sun that she’s concerned that the Trump administration is “bending knee to the tech oligarchs and letting them do whatever they need to do” without asking the right questions about data centers’ impact on public lands.

Rugwell added that the BLM during Trump’s second term has shed nearly half of its staff, leaving few experts available to evaluate the environmental impact of data centers.

“Where are they going to get people to do the analysis especially when you have a technology that’s relatively new and not well defined?” Rugwell asked. “It’s a headache BLM doesn’t need.”

Olivia Tanager, director of the Sierra Club’s Nevada chapter, told the Sun that the nationwide backlash to data center construction has gotten so intense that the tech industry might see using public lands as their best option for building out capacity.

“A lot of elected officials in Nevada on both sides of the aisle are really hesitant to approve data centers in their local jurisdiction,” said Tanager. “I would imagine in some cases, despite the environmental review being heightened in a lot of instances being sited on federal public land, there’s more political will to move those projects forward.”

Jayson O’Neill, spokesperson for Save Our Parks, accused Burgum of trying to “exploit our parks and public lands” for the benefit of wealthy tech donors.

“Data Center Doug Burgum is actively shopping America’s public lands to data center developers, the AI industry, and big energy companies lining up to power them,” O’Neill said. “And he’s keeping communities in the dark, hiding the details from Congress and the public.”

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Also of Interest

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

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Iran War: Ansar Allah Takes Mocha and the Bab el-Mandeb Islands, Putting Both Chokepoints in Play; Trump Says the War Ends After the Midterms While Vance and Rubio Tell Him January 2029

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Jaybird Coleman - Man Trouble Blues

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Jaybird Coleman - My Jelly Blues

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