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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Tommy Brown

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features r&b singer Tommy Brown. Enjoy!

^{Tommy Brown - The House Near The Railroad Track}

"Evil people naturally assume that you will use that power exactly as they would use it."

-- Orson Scott Card

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News and Opinion

The Real Danger Of AI Is That It Is Run By Evil Warmongers

The biggest AI threat isn’t artificial superintelligence wiping out humanity in a fit of mechanical vengeance like some digital Old Testament God, it’s the same oligarchs and empire managers as usual inflicting the same evils and abuses as usual upon their fellow man.

We’re already presently watching the empire building AI into its killing machines and causing all kinds of horrifying problems while these technologies become more and more complex and unpredictable.

CNN reports that US military AI “almost started a war” with China when it hallucinated intelligence showing a Chinese ship transporting nuclear weapon components to Iran; US military planes were apparently already in the air preparing to attack the vessel before human intelligence picked up on the error.

NEW: An AI-assisted intel report sent the military scrambling to intercept a Chinese ship in the Middle East it believed was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program.

It turned out to be a hallucination. And it "almost started a war." https://t.co/xXZHEE64M6

— Katie Bo Lillis (@KatieBoLillis) September 18, 2026

A recent Pentagon report has officially concluded that an over-reliance on Palantir’s AI-powered command-and-control system Maven contributed to the bombing of a school in Minab which killed 120 children attending classes on the first day of the US-Israeli war with Iran.

We learned early on in the Gaza holocaust that the IDF was using AI to help it bomb suspected Hamas members when they are at home with their families rather than when they are out in the battlefield using a program called “Where’s Daddy?” — a bit of Israeli humor about the fact that they would be killing the children of Palestinian resistance fighters when their fathers came home.

We’re seeing politicians like Bernie Sanders voice concerns that “AI could soon be smarter than humans and function outside of our control,” but the most obvious and imminent threat right now is not that artificial intelligence will outsmart us and escape our control, it’s that it is being fully controlled by humans who are stupid and evil.

Scientists and industry leaders have been increasingly clear: AI could soon be smarter than humans and function outside of our control.

For the sake of all of humanity, Trump and Xi must negotiate a treaty NOW to pause AI and ban superintelligence before it is too late. https://t.co/nL0Ias2fDb

— Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) September 21, 2026

Again, we know for a fact that powerful nuclear-armed military forces are knitting AI into all their systems. We’re watching them do it, right in front of our faces. An increasingly complex and confusing element has been added to an environment of already tense and dangerous military standoffs around the world as the US and its allies work to absorb the few remaining nations who have managed to retain sovereignty into the imperial power umbrella. And yet recent weeks have seen the mass media flooded with punditry speculating about possible scenarios under which AI might perhaps wind up leading to human extinction.

We already know the most likely scenario under which AI will get us all killed. If it happens, it will be because rich and powerful sociopaths knit these technologies into war machinery that is designed for killing humans at mass scale. Duh.

These developments are unfolding in the context of a frenetic new arms race with China in which nobody’s willing to tap the brake pedal for fear of falling behind. Any talk of regulation or slowing things down before they get out of control is dismissed because the competition-based systems which currently govern human behavior have thrust us into a nightmare of constant military expansionism and brinkmanship instead of collaboration and harmony, all fueled by the fact that this paradigm makes tech plutocrats and war profiteers obscenely wealthy.

That’s clearly the most immediate existential threat that AI poses to our species right now. There’s also the only slightly less frightening threat of artificial intelligence enabling our rulers to use mass surveillance and autonomous weapons systems to stifle any revolutionary political movement before it gets off the ground, locking us into this freakish capitalist dystopia until the planet is an uninhabitable wasteland.

In any case, this isn’t a new threat. It’s the same old threat with new toys. Capitalism must end, and the empire must fall. Our very existence depends on it.

Seyed M. Marandi: BREAKING: Trump Threatens Total Destruction of Iran in UN Speech

Houthis move to seize strategic terrain after Trump calls off airstrikes at last minute

Houthi fighters are moving to seize strategic heights in Yemen that would cut the Red Sea coast off from areas held ​by Saudi-backed forces after Donald Trump called off US strikes on the group at the last minute, reportedly as bombs were being loaded on to aircraft. Amid increasingly heavy fighting in Yemen, which has displaced tens of thousands of people in recent weeks, the New York Times reported on Monday that the US president had flip-flopped wildly in recent days after a call from Saudi Arabia for US strikes on the Houthis.

It comes amid the Houthis’ rapid advance on the ground with the group gaining control over much of Yemen’s Red Sea coast from Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces and advancing to areas adjacent to the crucial Bab al-Mandab strait, which Saudi Arabia has used as an alternative route for oil exports bypassing disruption in the ⁠strait of Hormuz.

In the call reported by the New York Times, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, implored Trump to step in to help halt the Houthi advance after weeks of such appeals. Trump, who had been resisting joining the Saudi war in Yemen, after the call then told the Pentagon to prepare for airstrikes against the Houthis before reversing course once again, the report said.

Trump has frequently given mixed signals to Riyadh, telling reporters during a visit to Ireland earlier this month that the Houthis “called us, and they don’t want to fight us”, adding that the group was “allowing ships to pass” the Bab al-Mandab strait and that the situation would “work out very well”. He added that the Houthi problem was limited to “one country” an apparent reference to Saudi Arabia promising to “take care of fixing that”.

Saudi Arabia has launched hundreds of strikes in recent days on Houthi positions in the strategic Kahboub mountains, according to the group, but making little impact on the ​advance of its fighters. Fighting has centred on the outskirts of the remote Al-Wazi’iyah district in Taiz province and Ras al-Ara along the Indian Ocean coast, which separate the Red Sea coast from the city of Aden, where the government is based. The Houthis aim to secure the rear of their forces around the Bab al-Mandab strait by taking control of the mountains, which would also allow them to open new ‌fronts, according to ⁠sources who spoke to Reuters.

The Houthis’ Red Sea Offensive Drawing the West Toward More War

UK to give support to Saudi jets in attempt to counter Houthi fighters

The UK has agreed to provide defensive air support to Saudi Arabia to help counter Houthi fighters and restore stability in the Middle East while driving down the cost of living at home, Andy Burnham has said, ahead of his first meeting with Donald Trump.

The prime minister said he had agreed to a request for air-to-air refuelling of Saudi jets to defend energy infrastructure against the Iran-backed rebels and help keep oil flowing from the Gulf to ease global economic turmoil.

Burnham also revealed he will use his first meeting with Trump on Tuesday to urge the US president to de-escalate the conflict in Iran, warning that “dark clouds of global instability” are directly affecting people’s lives all over the world.

The turmoil in the Middle East has pushed up global energy prices, putting the UK economy under intense inflationary pressure and increasing government borrowing costs to multi-year highs just weeks before a crucial first budget for the new government..

COL. Douglas Macgregor : Is Trump Planning to Invade Iran Again?

Vermont man convicted of attempted murder of three Palestinian students

A jury has convicted a Vermont man of attempted murder in the shootings of three Palestinian college students who were walking near his home, rejecting an insanity defense rooted in his claims that he was acting on orders from the CIA and Mossad. Jason Eaton, 51, faces up to life in prison over the November 2023 attack near the University of Vermont campus in Burlington, which left Hisham Awartani paralyzed from the waist down and wounded his friends, Tahseen Aliahmad and Kinnan Abdalhamid.

The jury deliberated for several hours before reaching its verdict after a week-long trial that saw testimony from the three men and psychiatric experts called by the defense and prosecution. Eaton was ordered to be held in jail pending sentencing, which has yet to be scheduled. He stared ahead blankly as the verdict was read. Awartani and Aliahmad, sitting in the front row of the courtroom gallery, smiled and hugged people around them.

Eaton had pleaded not guilty but did not dispute that he was the shooter. His lawyers argued that he should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, pointing to his claims that the United States and Israeli intelligence agencies transmitted orders to shoot the men to him via FM radio and that God was commanding him to protect his Jewish neighbors. Had he been found not guilty by reason of insanity, he could have been ordered to undergo mental health treatment.

In their statement, the families said Eaton had repeatedly used “hateful” words to describe their sons during the trial. “They were not the words of a man confused about who he shot, or why. They are the words of a man who saw three young men celebrating their friendship and wearing what made them feel closer to their far away families and home – and decided to kill them because of his own prejudices. We do not need a jury to tell us why our sons were targeted. We heard it, in his own words. This was a hate crime. We have said so from the beginning.”

The shooting, a few days after Thanksgiving, shook Burlington and reverberated in the occupied West Bank, where the three men grew up and became friends as schoolmates in Ramallah before moving to the US for college. The shooting, which occurred weeks after the onset of Israel’s military assault on Gaza – widely condemned as a genocide – triggered calls for a hate crime investigation. But no hate crime charges were filed as questions persisted about whether anti-Palestinian animus, an altered mental state or something else had compelled Eaton to open fire on Awartani, Aliahmad and Abdalhamid, who were all 20 at the time.

Jenin Younes : Taking on the Feds When They Steal Freedom

Robert Kraft's Israel Donations EXPOSED as He Claims To Have Helped Palestinians

Charges dropped against Stanford students over pro-Palestine protest

Five Stanford University students who faced prison sentences and thousands of dollars in restitution in connection to a campus protest against Israel’s war on Gaza had all charges dropped on Monday. The students also had their restitution severely reduced, ending a two-year legal saga that also saw the lead prosecutor in the case removed by the court.

Part of a group of 12, the students had been charged with felony conspiracy to trespass and felony vandalism in connection to an hour-long, June 2024 occupation during which the group barricaded themselves inside the university president’s office to demand Stanford consider a student resolution to divest from Israel, among other requests.

Some accepted plea deals or other diversion offers but five of the students went to trial earlier this year. The month-long trial ended with a hung jury but Jeff Rosen, the Santa Clara county district attorney, immediately announced his intention to retry the case before a judge ordered his recusal in May over a conflict of interest that, the judge said during court proceedings, would “render it unlikely that the defendants will receive fair treatment”.

The case has since been taken over by the California attorney general’s office, which reached a resolution with the students. That resolution meant dropping all charges in exchange for 100 hours of community service at a nonprofit of their choosing and a total restitution of about $50,000, far less than the $1m prosecutors initially threatened them with and the $ 329,000 they each risked being found liable for at trial. The charges were the most severe handed out against students in connection to pro-Palestine protests on campus.

Three of the students who had previously accepted misdemeanor pleas will also have their convictions withdrawn as part of Monday’s agreement once they complete the required community service.

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Trump’s Middle East Mess Worsens

US strikes on alleged drug boats may constitute ‘crimes against humanity’, UN expert says

A special rapporteur for the UN human rights council has concluded that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that the United States attacks on boats allegedly carrying drugs in the Pacific and Caribbean “constituted crimes against humanity”. The boat strikes, carried out since September 2025 on the stated grounds of stopping drugs being trafficked by sea to the US, have killed more than 230 people. The latest, on Saturday, killed four people in the Caribbean.

The UN itself, along with several human rights organisations, lawyers and international law experts, had already described the bombings as “extrajudicial killings”, but special rapporteur Ben Saul went further. In a briefing note posted by Saul on social media on Sunday night and first reported by the BBC, Saul wrote that, in addition to “serial extrajudicial killings”, the attacks were “in violation of the right to life, being unjustified in national or personal self-defence or under international humanitarian law, the international law of the sea, narcotics suppression conventions, or international counter-terrorism law”.

He added: “There are reasonable grounds to believe that the reported 68 attacks that killed 223 people constituted crimes against humanity of murder under customary international law.” The report cites 68 US attacks that killed 223 people. It is unclear how recently the figures were updated – tallies by organisations such as the Washington Office on Latin America put the death toll at 234 people in 66 attacks.

Saul’s report rejects the claim made by Donald Trump before Congress that the strikes amounted to “self-defence” against “designated terrorist organizations”. The special rapporteur wrote that the crews were not “militarily armed and possessed the intent and capacity to launch military attacks” against the US. “Even assuming that the vessels and crew attacked were members of the criminal groups listed as terrorist, such organizations have not mounted any ‘armed attack’ on the United States so as to trigger a right of self-defence,” he added.

Is this the end of the Petrodollar?

ICE hides locations of thousands of detainees with final removal orders

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has stopped publicly revealing where it is holding thousands of detainees who are subject to final deportation orders, an unannounced move that has made it far more difficult for lawyers and relatives to find them, according to current and former officials familiar with the practice.

ICE removed those detainees from its online detainee locator system on 15 September, according to three current and former ICE officials who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the change. Several lawyers contacted by the AP confirmed their clients vanished from the system this week, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association warned its members about the situation on Friday.

The move represents a stark departure from previous practice and highlights the hardline nature of the immigration crackdown Donald Trump’s administration has pursued during his second presidency, leaving thousands of detainees exceedingly hard to trace and potentially unable to exercise all of their legal options.The practice, which applies to detainees who have received final orders of removal from an immigration court, could speed deportations by making last-minute legal challenges harder to seek, immigration lawyers said. Nearly 16,000 people who were arrested and booked into ICE detention in July were subject to final removal orders, more than a third of the overall bookings, according to ICE data obtained by the Deportation Data Project based at UC Berkeley and UCLA.

The practice does not apply to detainees held at a detention facility in Adelanto, California, or at temporary holding facilities in Minneapolis, New York City or suburban Chicago, the sources said. Judges have ordered ICE to list detainees in those facilities in the online locator promptly upon their arrival, as part of litigation over their detention practices.

The effort to hide their locations adds to the ways in which the Trump administration has made life harder for detainees and their families as it has increased pressure on them to waive appeals and agree to deportation. ICE did not publicize the move and in a statement issued to the AP, the agency did not confirm or deny it. The statement said detainees with final removal orders were being prioritized for deportation, even as ICE faces a “historic number of injunctions” from courts stopping individual removals.

Venezuelan shot by ICE seeks medical care as lawyer says bullet lodged in back

The Venezuelan man who was shot by a federal immigration officer in Texas on Sunday spoke out from detention on Monday afternoon when he was able to call his lawyer, in the middle of a press conference, and plead for better medical care. Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, 28, was taken from a hospital in Austin into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention, even though he apparently still has a bullet lodged near his spine and is in much discomfort. “I haven’t received any medical attention. I’m in a lot of pain,” Garcés Pérez said, in a phone call to his attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch. “I have expressed my pain [to the guards].”

He recounted that he had spent the night sleeping on the floor of a cold room in a detention center about 140 miles from Austin, where he was taken hours after being shot by an ICE officer after a traffic stop on Sunday afternoon. Lincoln-Goldfinch had told the Guardian earlier on Monday that the federal officer’s bullet was still inside her client. Garcés Pérez said he had been told it is too close to his spine to operate on to remove at this time.

Garcés Pérez was taken to a downtown hospital for treatment but, according to lawyer Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, was whisked away from there by ICE late Sunday afternoon. For a few hours, his partner and the lawyer could not locate him, then on Monday morning Lincoln-Goldfinch told the Guardian he’d been located at the South Texas ICE Processing Center, in Pearsall. “Bullet still lodged in his back. No pain meds,” Lincoln-Goldfinch said by text on Monday.

Garcés Pérez said when he called the attorney on Monday that what appeared to be a normal car had pulled up next to him before veering in his direction. When he eventually stopped and spoke to what turned out to be an ICE officer, he said he asked to move his vehicle to a nearby parking lot because he wanted his car to be there if he was arrested. He was told he could not and when he drove further the ICE vehicle crashed into him and then he was shot, he said.

Video posted on social media shows a man running out of the black SUV and shooting at Garcés Pérez’s almost stationary blue sedan from behind it. Three gunshots ring out. A witness, Nedavia Bolaños, got closest to the scene and shared video with the Guardian of ICE officers standing next to the car as the man clutched his chest, before Austin police officers arrived and were the ones to render first aid.

Illinois authorities investigate possible ICE wounding of US citizen

Authorities in Illinois are investigating a case on Sunday in which a US citizen was detained by federal immigration agents before ending up at a hospital with injuries. It came the same day that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot and seriously wounded a man in Austin, Texas.

Police in the Chicago suburb of Evanston said in a statement that officers were called to an argument between two men just before 10am on Sunday and arrived to find a man on the ground with injuries to his head, neck, and teeth, surrounded by several people who were assisting him. Officers questioned a man in one of two SUVs who was wearing plainclothes and a vest with the word “police” on it. That person “identified himself as a federal agent conducting a fugitive investigation”, the statement said.

“The agent told the officer that agents had attempted to identify an individual who resembled a person they were seeking,” the statement added. “He said the individual refused to provide identification, was detained for fingerprinting, and resisted detention. “Agents later determined he was not the person they were seeking and learned that he was a US citizen. He was released.” An officer saw blood on the agent’s hands, the statement also noted, and he said he was injured “while attempting to handcuff the individual”.

The statement did not specify which agency the person said he was from. But witnesses told police they believed the persons attempting to arrest the individual were ICE agents.

Officers later contacted the wrongly detained person, an adult Evanston resident, at a hospital and “photographed and documented his injuries”.

CNN, MS Now and Politico sue Trump after being blocked from White House

In what will be one of the largest battles yet between the press and Donald Trump’s administration, three news organizations – CNN, MS Now (formerly MSNBC) and Politico – that have been denied access to the White House have sued to regain their ability to enter the building, accusing the president of violating the US constitution.

The suit was filed on Monday morning in the US district court for Washington DC.

Journalists for the three news organizations were denied access to the White House and had their badges disabled on Saturday after the president decreed a day earlier that they would lose their ability to enter the building because of his concerns about their coverage. The parties are seeking a temporary restraining order that would immediately lift the ban – and return access for the journalists – while the case plays out.

“This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes,” the news organizations said in a statement, referring to the US constitutional amendment guaranteeing a free press.

“Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting. Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.” Case law heavily favors the plaintiffs, including past legal challenges that successfully returned the press badges of journalists Jim Acosta – then of CNN – and Brian Karem, then of Playboy magazine, during Trump’s first presidency.

US TV networks suspend White House pool coverage over Trump media ban

The major US television news outlets agreed to suspend their video coverage of Donald Trump after the administration banned journalists from several outlets from entering the White House grounds. The collective decision came after the barred outlets – CNN, MS Now and Politico – sued the administration on Monday, saying the president’s actions were a violation of their first amendment rights.

The ban was an extraordinary escalation of Trump’s battle against news outlets. After a coalition of networks including ABC, CBS, Fox News and NBC – which along with CNN form a press “pool” that share the responsibilities of capturing and distributing footage of the president carried by news outlets worldwide – announced they would cease coverage in solidarity with the barred outlets, the White House promoted its own feed online, branding it “Trump TV”. The channel purported to show “top past moments, announcements, and the latest and greatest from the administration all in one place”.

It is extremely rare for a president to travel or make public appearances without the accompaniment of a representative from the White House television pool. Network cameras have provided coverage of the president since 1950. The president abruptly announced his ban against outlets this weekend in a Truth Social post, saying he had enough of “purposely negative stories” about him. Journalists had their press badges confiscated by Secret Service on Saturday.

“Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Bryan Boughton, Fox News’s Washington bureau chief who is also currently serving on as TV pool chair, wrote in an email to pool members Monday. The role is rotated each quarter. “This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties,” said Boughton. In a show of support with the banned outlets, several outlets, including the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Associated Press, said they would not publish or distribute images taken as part of the White House photography pool including Trump’s departure on Marine One and his events at the United Nations in New York, until midnight ET. In a statement, the Washington Post described the action as part of a “collective effort”.

The five news networks, including CNN, wrote in a joint statement: “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.” Although the broadcast networks said they would withhold televised coverage, the print, radio and wire service press pool continues to provide reports detailing Trump’s movements throughout the day.

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Appeals court rules in favor of Trump-backed Missouri congressional maps

A long-running legal fight over Missouri’s congressional map took another turn Monday when a federal appeals panel ruled in favor of new districts backed by Donald Trump, even though the US supreme court has blocked those districts from being used in the November election.

A three-judge panel of the 8th US circuit court of appeals said Missouri should use the new Republican-drawn US House districts in the November election, just as the state did in its August primary. To revert to its prior districts for the general election would violate the US constitution, the appeals judges said.

However, the ruling has no immediate impact. That’s because the federal appellate panel delayed the effect of its order for a week to allow time for an appeal. The US supreme court already has twice sided against the Trump-backed map and had blocked enforcement of a lower court order favoring the map pending a potential appeal and eventual decision by the high court.

Republicans SCRAMBLE To Oppose Iran War As Polling COLLAPSES

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‘Planetary boundaries’ necessary for flourishing of life have been massively breached

The planetary life support systems relied upon by humans have deteriorated to their worst levels ever recorded amid ongoing pollution and habitat destruction, according to a key yet grim annual update by scientists. Of the nine “planetary boundaries” that help determine whether life can flourish on Earth, seven are being breached at their highest ever levels of transgression, according to the latest planetary health check, a process that was established in 2009.

The seven key indicators in the danger zone include climate change, change in biosphere integrity, land system change, freshwater change, modification of biogeochemical flows, introduction of novel entities and, for the first time last year, ocean acidification. Only two of the assessed areas, stratospheric ozone depletion and atmospheric aerosol loading, have shown improvement over the last decade, although researchers warn that atmospheric aerosols, which can form air pollution, are still a problem in several regions of the world.

The coalition of 60 scientists who conducted the analysis of the key guardrails for human life under the auspices of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research warned that the consequences of breaching these planetary boundaries is “becoming increasingly clear all around us”.

“The diagnosis is unambiguous – pressure is rising across every planetary boundary already outside the safe operating space,” said Boris Sakschewski, lead author of the report. “It means that the risk of large-scale, persistent and potentially irreversible change is increasing, while our margin for error in tackling these problems is shrinking.”

While there is little time to reverse this parlous situation, humanity does still possess the knowledge and capacity to do so, according to Johan Rockström, a climate scientist and report co-author. “Accelerating action to return to the safe operating space across all planetary boundaries is essential to protect lives and livelihoods, and to deliver on the promise of shared future prosperity,” he said.

‘Jaw-dropping’ El Niño bursts through temperature record months before peak

The “jaw-dropping” El Niño currently heating up the planet has burst through the highest temperature ever recorded for the phenomenon, several months before its expected peak. The latest data shows the temperature rise at the heart of El Niño in the Pacific Ocean has now reached 3.05C. That is higher than the 3.02C set in late November 2015, the previous high set in the 150 years of modern records. This temperature is measured against the average of 1991-2020.

The preferred measure of most meteorologists uses a 30-year rolling average as a reference and so takes account of human-caused global heating. This metric, called ONI (Nino3.4), is on the brink of breaking the record, just one-hundredth of a degree below the 2015 record. Both metrics are underpinned by data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The most recent forecasts predict a peak of 4.0C in November and December, according to the average of 14 different models assessed by climate scientist Zeke Hausfather. That is a level so far above previous events that Hausfather called it “mind-blowing”, while others have described it as “Godzilla-level”. Any temperature rise above 0.5C is deemed an El Niño; above 2C is officially called a “very strong” El Niño – often referred to as a “super” El Niño.

The current El Niño is likely to be the largest in at least 1,000 years and will pile extra heat into an atmosphere in which temperatures are already rising rapidly due to human-caused global heating. This double whammy means 2027 is expected to “blow apart” previous records and become the hottest year ever recorded.

The climate crisis, caused by pollution from fossil fuels, is already supercharging extreme weather and killing people. The El Niño will ratchet up the impacts even further, and has already begun to affect regions across the planet as weather patterns are altered. “Very strong El Niño events like those in 1997/1998 and 2015/2016 were associated with hundreds of billions of dollars in damages globally – this event is leaving those past ones in the dust,” said Hausfather, whose analysis is published by Carbon Brief.

US judge declines to block transfer of wildlife refuge land to Musk’s SpaceX

A federal judge on Monday refused to block the Trump administration from giving SpaceX more than 700 acres of wildlife refuge as part of a land swap in Texas, while environmental groups vowed to continue their legal challenge. US district judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr declined the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction to prevent the parcel exchange, saying they failed to prove it would worsen ecological risks to a Gulf coast region already transformed by billionaire Elon Musk’s rocket operations.

In June, the US Fish and Wildlife Service approved moving forward with the deal with SpaceX, which would surrender 683 acres the company owns in exchange for the federal land in the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. The 103,000-acre refuge spans four counties along the Texas border and is home to animal habitats and historical landmarks. Maps show the land SpaceX would acquire would be closer to the company’s launchpad near the US-Mexico border.

The swap amounts to a gift of public lands to SpaceX, “clearing the way for bulldozers to tear into this wildlife refuge as soon as next week and turn a public treasure into a private payday”, said Laiken Jordahl, a spokesperson with the Center for Biological Diversity, which filed the lawsuit alongside other opponents including tribal groups. Jordahl said Monday that the litigation will continue even as the exchange goes forward.

“This court order is not the final word. These lands hold incredible spiritual, historical and conservation value for the people and wildlife of South Texas. We won’t stop fighting to keep this irreplaceable public wildlife refuge safe from SpaceX bulldozers,” Jordahl said in a statement.

The lawsuit asks the federal court to halt the exchange, which has worried SpaceX opponents in the area who have long criticized the company’s expanding footprint over lost access to beaches and concerns over exploding rockets.

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Also of Interest

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

Patrick Lawrence: The War Outside Our Doors

By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Yemen and Obama & Trump’s America, Too

Iran’s IRGC Warns It Will Expand ‘Geography of the War’ If the US Attacks Again

A Useless Attack On Yemen, Ordered By Trump, Was Called Off

Israel Blocking Hundreds of Wheelchairs for Injured Children From Entering Gaza

Phosphorus Munitions Fired by Israel Burn Groves, Orchards in Southern Lebanon

‘Good Luck With That’: Critics Mock Trump for Hyping ‘Deal’ With Belarus to Replace Canadian Fertilizer

Chancellor vows to stay on for Germany’s ‘democratic future’ after latest loss to far-right AfD

‘Huge Blow’ to ‘Lawless’ Practices of Trump DHS as Court Orders End to Warrantless Construction Site Raids

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A Little Night Music

Tommy Brown - Double Faced Deacon

Tommy Brown And His Combo - Remember Me

Tommy Brown - Southern Women

Tommy Brown And Orchestra - Atlanta Boogie

Griffin Brothers featuring Tommy Brown - Tra La La

Tommy Brown - V-8 Baby

Tommy Brown & The Griffin Brohters - Weepin' And Cryin'

Tommy Brown - Ain't So

Big Walter Horton & Tommy Brown ~ Tribute 1954

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