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The Evening Blues - 9-29-26

Submitted by joe shikspack on Tue, 09/29/2026 - 4:10pm

eb1pt12

The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Jimmy Rogers

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist Jimmy Rogers. Enjoy!

^{Jimmy Rogers - Blues All Day Long}

"A correct diagnosis is three-fourths the remedy."

-- Mahatma Gandhi

News and Opinion

AI Won’t Solve Humanity’s Problems Because Our Problems Aren’t Caused By Lack Of Intelligence

I hate it when people say humanity’s problems will be solved by “artificial superintelligence” as though all we need to fix the cruelty and abusiveness in our world is an AI that is smarter than a human.

Mark Zuckerberg voiced this talking point again today in a Twitter thread claiming that “superintelligence will create significant new opportunities for all people and businesses.” Last month he said the following in a statement titled “The Future is for Everyone — The Path to a Positive AI Future”:

“In the next few years, people will be able to use superintelligence beyond human capacity to create and discover extraordinary new things, build new businesses, express new ideas, learn new concepts, and advance our health and quality of life. As we get closer to this moment, it is important to develop a philosophy for how we can best use superintelligence to ensure it improves all of our lives, work, communities, freedom and safety.”

We believe superintelligence will create significant new opportunities for all people and businesses. Meta already serves billions of people at scale and helps hundreds of millions of businesses reach customers. Today we are starting the next major pillar of our business, Meta Enterprise Platform, to help businesses use AI to grow and transform in new ways as well.

— Mark Zuckerberg (@finkd) September 28, 2026

These talking points annoy me because it’s an absolutely specious claim that artificial superintelligence will benefit everyone. Humanity’s problems are not caused by a lack of intelligence, our problems are caused by greedy plutocrats like Zuckerberg. It’s like a serial killer telling us we can stop serial killing by making serial killers smarter.

The argument hinges on the premise that humanity is suffering because we’re just not smart enough to come up with the right solutions, when in reality that hasn’t been the case for a very long time. Humanity has had the technology and resources to solve all its major problems for generations; we’ve just chosen to use our technology and resources making rich people richer instead.

We’ve long had the ability to end extreme poverty, to stop destroying our biosphere, to stop waging wars, to stop pillaging the global south at unfair prices, to stop imposing starvation sanctions, to end genocides, to remove money from politics, to institute true democracy, to create a well-informed electorate free from propaganda brainwashing, and to provide everyone with a decent standard of living. This hasn’t failed to happen due to our lack of superintelligence, it has failed to happen because the people with the power and the money actively stop it from happening.

No amount of added cleverness is going to make plutocrats less greedy, make warmongers less bloodthirsty, make politicians less corrupt, make empire managers less tyrannical, make imperial propagandists less deceitful and manipulative, or make capitalists less exploitative and ecocidal. Give them artificial superintelligence and they’ll just use it to grab up more money and control, just like they’re doing with the AI of the present day.

We can already see that AI is not making the world a better place. It’s already taking away jobs, facilitating war crimes and mass surveillance, poisoning art, and making people crazy and stupid. We’re already witnessing the results of more intelligent AI. Continuing to say we just need the AI to be more intelligent is like taking a pill to get healthy, having a terrible reaction to the medicine, and then deciding we just need to dramatically increase the dose.

Artificial superintelligence isn’t going to solve all our problems because our problems don’t arise from insufficient intelligence. We don’t need artificial superintelligence, we need basic human kindness. We need justice. We need ethics. No matter how much intelligence we add to the AI soup, it’s never going to magically add up to simple human morality. Which is what we’re actually going to need if we’re going to create a healthy world.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Iran War Spreads - Could Israel Fall?

Israel does not have right to close UK consulate in Jerusalem, Foreign Office advised

Israel does not have a legal right to act on its plan to close the British consulate in East Jerusalem, the former attorney general Dominic Grieve has advised the UK Foreign Office. Israel has said it intends to shut the consulate on 8 October in response to the sweeping ban on trade with goods from Israeli settlements announced by the foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, this month.

Israel said on Sunday that it planned to revoke the credentials of Dutch diplomats from the country’s mission to Palestine, in response to the Netherlands’ ban on imports from illegal Israeli settlements.

Grieve, who was a Conservative MP between 1997 and 2019 and attorney general from 2010 to 2014, said Israel did not have the right to shut the consulate since it was situated in East Jerusalem, which is recognised by the United Nations and most of its members, including the UK, as being occupied Palestinian territory.

Grieve said the UK should challenge the decision in the courts, arguing Israel was asserting a right it did not possess as an occupying power to impose sovereign control over East Jerusalem. The UK mission in Jerusalem dates from 1838, predating the creation of the state of Israel by more than 100 years, and is separate from the embassy based in Tel Aviv. The consul general reports direct to the Foreign Office, and has its own staff and a distinct diplomatic role, covering Jerusalem, the rest of the West Bank and Gaza.

Grieve argues in an advisory paper sent to the Foreign Office by the British Palestine Project that “retaining a consulate general in East Jerusalem after recognition of the state of Palestine preserves the UK’s position that Jerusalem’s final status remains to be determined. It does not concede Israeli sovereignty.”

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Is Trump Out of Options in Iran?

Updated Google Satellite Images Show ‘Apocalyptic’ Destruction of Gaza by Israel

Updated Google satellite imagery shared Monday on social media provides a new perspective on the staggering scale of Israel’s obliteration of the Gaza Strip, showing entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble and vast stretches of a formerly dense urban landscape transformed into barren wasteland.

The images from Google—which is accused of complicity in the Gaza genocide—can be viewed on both Google Earth and Google Maps and show extensive destruction throughout the Palestinian territory. In some locations, roads and familiar landmarks remain visible amid enormous fields of gray rubble where homes, businesses, schools, and other civilian structures once stood.

“I’ve walked through much of the destruction in Gaza myself, but I couldn’t bear looking at the map,” Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed posted on social media. “It shows you the Israeli barbarism and terrorism that the world lets happen.”

I'M GOING TO BE SICK

Google updated its Gaza maps with extensive high-res satellite imagery... it's hard to even stomach it.

Apocalyptic levels of destruction.

We already knew, but for anyone who wasn't convinced...

Have a look for yourself.

Source: SoarAtlas, Google Maps, @AbubakerAbedW / Writer: Michael

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) September 27, 2026

“I’ve been to those places, I have seen the scale of the destruction—it was really heartbreaking,” Abed told The New Arab. “But when you see all the destruction in just one active website, it really broke my heart. I couldn’t even bear continuing looking at that because seeing the place where I grew up, seeing the place where I was born, [lying] in ruins in that way was absolutely heart-shattering.”

US writer Linda Mamoun noted that “Google Maps shows photos and reviews for thousands of places in Gaza that don’t exist anymore. You can scroll through an entire world that Israel destroyed.”

The Google images help affirm independent assessments documenting the extraordinary scale of Gaza’s destruction. According to the United Nations Satellite Center (UNOSAT), 201,290 structures—or approximately 82% of all structures in Gaza—had sustained damage as of June. More than 134,400 structures were classified as destroyed, while over 13,800 were severely damaged. UNOSAT also estimated that 328,627 housing units had been damaged.

The devastation shown in the new imagery is particularly stark in Rafah in southern Gaza. Israel ignored a May 2024 order from the International Court of Justice to “immediately halt” its assault on the city of approximately 275,000 people, as well as other acts enumerated in Article II of the Genocide Convention. A South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the ICJ is currently in the written phase, which will continue until at least May 2029.

“Look at these satellite images of Gaza and listen to the inconsistency, the hypocrisy, and the ugliness of the soul of the deniers... who will tell you above all not to use the word genocide,” wrote Rima Hassan, a French leftist member of European Parliament.

In a social media post, UK journalist David Yelland said: “I recommend spending a few minutes on Google Earth today looking at Gaza. Keeping the media out has meant we have not seen this before. Make your own mind up.”

Another British journalist, Piers Morgan, called the images “horrifying.”

“Now we know why [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu continues to ban international media from Gaza,” he added.

A UN report published last week estimates that approximately 1.9 million of Gaza’s roughly 2.2 million people have been displaced by Israel’s assault—many of them more than once—and around 60% of the strip’s residents have lost their homes. The publication also said that 92% of economic establishments in Gaza were destroyed or damaged, and that the territory needs about $71.5 billion for reconstruction and recovery.

Since launching the war in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, Israeli forces have killed at least 74,022 Palestinians and wounded upward of 175,980 others, according to Gaza officials. The majority of those killed, they say, were women and children. At least 1,421 Palestinians have been killed and 4,983 wounded since the October 2025 ceasefire took effect.

Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former minister of defense, are wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation.

Some Israelis and their supporters expressed satisfaction and even pride in the satellite images of Gaza’s annihilation.

“If updated Google satellite images of Gaza have not troubled you, see a doctor,” said Lebanese diplomat Mohamad Safa. “Supporting mass killing and distribution on this scale is really a pathological issue.”

Smotrich Says the Key To Forcing Palestinians Out of Gaza Is To ‘Take Away Their Hope’

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has repeated his calls for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the re-establishment of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territory in a new interview with Israel’s Channel 14 that was published on Monday.

Smotrich, who also holds a position in the Israeli Defense Ministry, said that the key to forcing Palestinians out of Gaza is to “take away their hope” and keep them in a tiny, crowded part of the Strip that will never be rebuilt.

“The biggest key to migration is: take away their hope. As long as they think that one day there will be reconstruction there, and then it will flourish again — if you annex up to the Yellow Line, and that’s ours, and then what remains is tiny, crowded, and destroyed, everyone will understand that there’s nothing to look for there. They’ll start looking for solutions for where to go,” Smotrich said.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Gaza:

The biggest key to migration is: take away their hope.

If you annex up to the Yellow Line and say, "This is ours," and leave them with a tiny, crowded and destroyed area, everyone will understand that there is nothing to look for there and they will start searching for solutions for where to go.

That is the right thing.

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 28, 2026

UK 'TERROR' Suspects RELEASED, NO EXPLOSIVES FOUND

Trump designates protesters terrorists. How far will it go?

Protesting is terrorism. At least, that is the message that the Trump administration has communicated in a series of recent actions, culminating last week in its designation of the U.K.-based Palestine Action as a terrorist group. The Trump administration placed Palestine Action and two other European entities on the Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) list, a category created in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001. By designating Palestine Action as an SDGT, the administration has unlocked the authority to impose economic sanctions against the group and all people associated with it, including freezing any of their U.S.-held assets and prohibiting them from financial transactions with any U.S. actors.

Separately from financial transactions, it also means that all U.S. persons are prohibited from vaguely-defined interactions with the group that amount to “material support” or “services.” Anyone violating this prohibition could be subjected to civil or criminal penalties, or could themselves be placed on the SDGT list.

In theory, U.S. law has an important feature not found in the U.K. system: the First Amendment’s protection of free speech and association. In its announcement designating Palestine Action as “terrorist,” the Trump administration reiterated that “constitutionally protected activities” would not result in sanction.

But this is cold comfort for anyone paying attention to how the U.S. government has long chipped away at the First Amendment’s reach in the name of countering “terrorism.” Our Supreme Court has held that assisting a designated group with peacefully resolving its grievances amounts to criminal “support” for terrorism; our Treasury Department once suggested that hosting leaders of a designated group for peaceful dialogue could amount to prohibited “support” for terrorism; and, under the Trump administration, noncitizen students and scholars like Mahmoud Khalil have faced detention and threats of deportation for peaceful protest and expressions of opinion that the administration described as bolstering terrorism. At this point, we must ask the question: what even is “terrorism”?

IDF Declares Mostly-Destroyed Lebanese Town of Mansouri ‘Finished’ After Huge Explosion

Israel launches attacks on several locations in southern Lebanon on any given day. That’s barely news in and of itself anymore, but one of the sites most persistently targeted in recent weeks was the town of Mansouri, in Tyre District.

In early August, Israel’s military imposed a full evacuation order on Mansouri, and the attacks started scaling up. At this point, the town appears to have been largely destroyed, and the IDF declared today that their Combat Engineering Unit has “finished” destroying Hezbollah infrastructure in that town.

They reported 600 “Hezbollah infrastructure” sites destroyed, which are more commonly referred to as civilian homes and commercial sites. The IDF said the destruction was meant to ensure Hezbollah could never reestablish itself in the area.

THE WAR w/RUSSIA EUROPE'S LEADERS WANT /Alastair Crooke

‘Not Just Another Tech Company’: Unions, Rights Groups Across EU Demand Governments Ditch Palantir

A large coalition of labor unions and rights groups across Europe on Sunday demanded governments end their relationships with US tech company Palantir, which they described as a threat to democracy and civil liberties.

A joint statement from over 120 groups—including Corporate Europe Observatory, Global Justice Now, and the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU)—says Palantir’s actions should “disqualify it from involvement in the operations and functioning of democratic governments.”

Among other things, the statement cites Palantir’s technical support for “predictive policing” in US cities, its supply of data mining tools to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and its work with the Israeli military, whose brutal years-long assault on Gaza has killed at least 74,000 Palestinians.

The statement also highlights the danger of governments relying on “a class of tech billionaires” to deliver public safety services, which they argue could lead to corporate capture of sovereign nations.

The groups are demanding that European governments cancel all current contracts with Palantir while permanently barring the firm from receiving future public contracts.

Scholars of authoritarianism earlier this year expressed alarm after Palantir posted a 22-point manifesto that they said espouses a “technofascist” doctrine.

Among other things, the manifesto hails the creation of artificial intelligence-powered weapons as tools to enforce American “hard power” around the world; declares that “national service should be a universal duty,” while suggesting the US should “seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force”; and denounces the embrace of “a vacant and hollow pluralism” on the grounds that some cultures “remain dysfunctional and regressive.”

Tim Bierley, campaign manager at Global Justice Now, said that Palantir’s leadership has shown “apparent disdain... for democracy,” but has still “been allowed to embed dubious technologies across our public services, giving it access to sensitive data and creating worrying new technical dependencies.”

“The UK must work with other countries to end dependence on companies involved in human rights abuses,” Bierley added, “and end the outsourcing of the public sphere to a dangerous class of big tech oligarchs.”

Olivier Hoedeman, research and campaign coordinator at Corporate Europe Observatory, warned that “Palantir is not just another tech company selling governments a piece of software,” but is rather being woven “into the machinery of the state, creating deep dependencies while giving a private company a far too powerful role in how governments process sensitive information and make decisions.”

“This is a recipe for corporate capture of public infrastructure and decision-making,” Hoedeman emphasized. “A company whose technologies are implicated in serious human rights abuses should not be allowed to become an integral part of Europe’s public infrastructure.”

Jan Willem Goudriaan, general secretary of EPSU, singled out Palantir’s tax avoidance schemes as a reason for European nations to scrap all ties with the company.

“Europe must stop rewarding public contracts to corporations that do not share public service values,” said Goudriaan. “The European Parliament must fix this. It is unacceptable to keep feeding corporations with public money while they minimize their tax bills in the middle of a public services emergency. Every euro shifted offshore means fewer nurses, teachers or firefighters.”

Texas Declares DIESEL EMERGENCY

Trump announces $15bn Iowa steel plant as he bids to boost flagging midterm hopes

Donald Trump on Monday announced what he called the largest steel plant in American history to be built in Iowa, giving Republicans a jobs message to take to voters in a state that could help decide control of the Senate in November. “Using advanced steelmaking technology, the plant will produce some of the highest quality, most affordable steel anywhere in the world,” Trump said in the Oval Office, flanked by Iowa’s top Republicans.

The plant, which “they’ve already started building”, Trump said, will be built in eastern Iowa by the foreign-owned steelmaker Mesabi Metallics and is expected to cost about $15bn, according to a White House official. It aims to begin production in 2030, years after voters go to the polls in November.

In his announcement, Trump singled out Iowa’s Ashley Hinson, the Republican congresswoman who was in the Oval Office and who is running for the Senate seat being vacated by Joni Ernst, also in the room. “I saw some good polls just recently,” he told her. “Looks like you’re doing well.” But the polls for that race are less rosy than Trump suggested. A Marist survey published last week found Hinson trailing Democrat Josh Turek by eight points in the conservative state, while an earlier Emerson College poll had Hinson narrowly ahead but found voters worried about tariffs. Democrats see the seat as one of four they need to retake the Senate.

The Mesabi Metallics company itself, however, is owned by the India-based Essar Group, and US taxpayers are helping to pay for the expansion: the Export-Import Bank, a federal agency, will provide up to $10bn in financing.

Bessent PANICS as US Bonds Wipe Out Investors - Japan Just Lit a BIGGER Fuse

Trump’s deportations to third countries violate human rights, UN experts warn

The deportation of thousands of migrants from the US to third countries has set off a “cascade of human rights violations” that could have “deadly” consequences, two dozen UN human rights experts have warned. Since Donald Trump returned to power in 2025, the US government has been offering millions of dollars to foreign governments to take in migrants, including refugees and asylum seekers, with no ties to their countries. Deals have been struck with 35 nations, nearly a third of them in Africa.

About 20,000 people have been taken by bus to Mexico, according to Refugees International and Human Rights First. More than 5,000 others have been put on flights to countries in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and central Asia.

On Monday, 24 experts who advise the UN Human Rights Council – backed by a special rapporteur for the African Commission – said they had contacted the US and each of the 35 countries to express their concerns and call for an immediate halt to the policy. “The harms caused by this US government scheme are no longer hypothetical,” they said in a joint statement. “The arrangements are triggering a cascade of human rights violations. For migrants in situations of particular vulnerability, the consequences can be deadly.” Those being banished to countries where they had no connections faced an increased risk of torture and ill-treatment, as well as enforced disappearances, they noted.

In some cases, the countries that have struck deals with the US are engulfed in conflict, meaning US arrivals were turning up in places where people were already grappling with displacement, starvation and debilitating poverty. These countries, the statement noted, “lack the capacity to protect the rights of migrants sent there by wealthy nations seeking to shirk their international obligations”.

Human rights lawyers say the deportations allow the US administration to skirt around its legal obligations because US law does not allow people to be sent back to countries where they are likely to be persecuted. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security has been deporting migrants, including asylum seekers, to third countries. From there, they are often moved on to home countries they had fled.

Gone in 90 seconds: an ‘invisibilized’ ICE is arresting more people than ever

At the height of the raids last year, agents in armored military vehicles rolled through residential neighborhoods. Masked agents patrolled public parks and stationed themselves outside elementary schools; squadrons of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents snatched pedestrians off the streets. Then, officers killed two US citizens during an ICE “blitz” on Minneapolis. After a public backlash, the Trump administration said it would try a new approach.

Though agents appear to be moving with more stealth than they were before, ICE arrests are still, often, violent. Glimpses of that violence are – despite Markwayne Mullin’s initial intentions – still making national headlines. Last week, an ICE agent shot Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez in Austin, Texas. The Venezuelan asylum seeker, who had received a deportation order after missing a letter to appear in immigration court, was discharged from a local hospital with a bullet still lodged near his spine and then taken to ICE detention. That same day, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a Guatemalan man died in a fiery crash while fleeing federal immigration agents.

Still, for every arrest that breaks through into public view, countless others happen quickly, before anyone can notice. “The detentions are happening in a flash – we’re talking, like, 90 seconds from the time ICE shows up to that person being driven away,” Willis said. “And often they are moving very quietly, with very soft feet.” Bolstered by $75bn in funding from Congress, the Department of Homeland Security – the US government agency that oversees ICE – has more than doubled its workforce this year to more than 22,000 officers and staff. It has also vastly expanded its capacity by working with local police, sheriffs, highway patrol and even fish and wildlife agents. As of 15 September, ICE had signed more than 2,500 287(g) agreements.

“The administration is able to essentially hide a multiplied ICE force not only in unmarked cars, and not only behind masks, but also within local law enforcement through the 287(g) program,” said Willis. “I call it the invisibilizing of immigration enforcement.” Operations that now originate with local police are taking place across the country. A spokesperson for the DHS said partnerships with law enforcement agencies were key to the agency’s immigration enforcement.

Lawyers across the US said they worried that local law enforcement officials are not adequately aware of the nuances of immigration policy. “People are getting detained if they don’t have their green card on them. They’re getting stopped even if they have legal status,” said Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, an immigration attorney based in Austin. “We’re seeing a lot of racial profiling,” she said. Local law enforcement appear to be especially active in Hispanic neighborhoods, she said, or in areas where Latino construction workers gather."

Texas Republican called for public execution of Democratic leaders

Bo French, a Texas Republican running to lead a powerful state agency, has a history of making controversial social media posts, including calling for the public execution of Democratic leaders, according to a recent investigation from CNN’s KFile team. French, who is running to lead Texas’s railroad commission, has recently faced criticism from members of his own party after making a racist post on social media. Powerful Republicans, including the Texas senator John Cornyn, said they would not support French in the upcoming election.

But the latest spat over French’s social media has led to a deeper look at his online history. In a review of old posts from social media accounts that seemingly belonged to French, CNN’s KFile team found that the Texas Republican repeatedly called for public executions of opponents.

In 2020, French used a now-suspended X account to seemingly call for the execution of former president Barack Obama and other Obama administration officials that he believed had disseminated false information about Russia’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election. In February 2025, French used his X account, under a former handle, to call for other public executions, including Senator Adam Schiff.

the evening greens

Hormone-disrupting herbicide contaminating 25% of continental US rivers

The hormone-disrupting herbicide atrazine is contaminating nearly 25%, or about 860,000 miles, of all continental US rivers at levels that can harm wildlife and may threaten human health, a new review of federal records has found. The waterways cover over 20% of surface drinking water intakes across the country, and over 675,000 private and commercial wells.

Atrazine can have severe impacts on human and animal hormones, especially for developing children. It was found to “chemically castrate” frogs, and cause some to change sexes. The herbicide is so dangerous that it has been effectively banned in 60 countries, including the European Union, since 2003. Litigation in the US seeks to strike down its approval, but it remains the second most widely used pesticide here, with about 70m pounds sprayed on the nation’s cropland annually.

The report, compiled by the Center for Biological Diversity, which advocates for stricter pesticide regulations, marks the first time anyone has analyzed all the EPA’s atrazine records and identified the threat’s extent. “The problem is vast,” Nathan Donley, a report co-author and environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told the Guardian. “Everyone recognizes this is a big problem, but the EPA has utterly failed to do anything about it for the last three or four decades.”

Atrazine is primarily used on commodity crops like corn, sugarcane and sorghum. The research around its health impacts is robust, and it is classified as a probable carcinogen by the International Agency for Cancer Research. It is an endocrine disruptor that is especially dangerous for developing fetuses and children at even very low levels of exposure, and is linked to impaired fetal growth, pre-term birth, birth defects and low birth weight. Atrazine can be particularly harmful to reproductive systems, and is linked to the “feminization” of the male gonads, irregular menstrual cycles, lower sperm counts, poor semen quality and lower fecundity in men and women.

The Center for Biological Diversity and other public health groups have sued over the EPA’s approval of atrazine, and in 2020 the agency said it would put together a plan to address the water pollution, Donley said. A 2024 draft he reviewed showed an inadequate plan that “is not worth the paper that it’s printed on”, Donley said, and it is likely that the lawsuit will resume once the final plan is published. The EPA has failed to act, Donley said, because atrazine is chemical giant Syngenta’s flagship product, widely used, and profitable. Analysts estimate $2-3bn in US sales in 2025.

Trump administration to slash clean car rules aimed at cutting climate emissions

The Trump administration on Monday announced it was slashing clean car rules that had been aimed at reducing planet-heating emissions and boosting electric vehicles. The move, which was criticized by environmentalists, relaxes requirements on automakers to control pollution from gasoline-powered cars and light trucks for model years 2022 through 2031.

The new rule, announced by the Department of Transportation, reverses a push by the Biden administration to accelerate the transition to EVs. Transportation is the largest source of climate emissions in the United States, accounting for about 28% of total US greenhouse gas emissions according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Monday’s move follows the Trump administration’s rollback of the government’s ability to impose requirements to track, report and limit climate-heating pollution from cars and trucks. Donald Trump said on Truth Social on Saturday that the less stringent mileage requirements would “take the waste out of building cars in America” and save families “thousands on a new, beautiful and safe car”, while boosting auto production in the US.

Trump has repeatedly pledged to end what he falsely calls an EV “mandate”, referring incorrectly to Joe Biden’s target that half of all new vehicle sales be electric by 2030. No federal policy has mandated auto companies to sell EVs.

Concern mounts over slow-moving, planetary-scale ‘Kelvin’ wave heading for California

Concerns are mounting about an ocean phenomenon known as a Kelvin wave that could raise sea levels along the California coastline by up to a foot, as scientists say El Niño is supercharging the threat of storm surges and flooding in the coming months. As an incredibly strong El Niño continues to develop in the Pacific, the phenomenon brings with it a strange shift in the ocean. The Kelvin wave phenomenon is created when trade winds that usually blow from South America towards Asia die down or reverse in El Niño years, setting off a massive, slow-moving slosh of water.

Kelvin waves are not like crashing waves at the beach. They are planetary in scale, spanning thousands of miles. And when a Kelvin wave kicks off, it brings with it an untold amount of warm water that slowly moves from the western Pacific, along the equator, towards South, Central and North America. “You can follow them along … we see the higher sea levels along the equator, and when the wave reaches the coast of South America, it cannot continue to go eastward,” Severine Fournier, a research scientist studying ocean circulation at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said. “So it goes north and south.”

One such wave hit the northern tip of South America in late August and has begun moving up towards the west coast of the US. That wave could reach California shores within days, and when it does, ocean scientists say it may raise sea levels by up to a foot for months as El Niño lingers and keeps that warm water trapped along the coast.

The climate pattern also brings with it the threat of more severe storms, storm surges, flooding and coastal erosion. For California, all of those effects will happen on top of the sea level rise the Kelvin wave brings, making the threat even worse.

“It’s a wave unlike the ones you’re used to at the beach. They don’t crash, you can’t really seem them come by,” said Mike Jacox, a research oceanographer at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center. “This winter, we’re supposed to have some really high tides around Thanksgiving and Christmas. If you also have more storms, then you have storm surge. It’s just like you’re raising the floor on all that stuff that happens.”