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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Arthur Conley

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features soul singer Arthur Conley. Enjoy!

^{Arthur Conley - Funky Street}

"Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future."

-- Adolf Hitler

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News and Opinion

The Trumpanyahu Administration Is Already Sabotaging The Ceasefire

I don’t know who first coined the saying that an Israeli ceasefire means “you cease and we fire,” but it proves reliably accurate time after time.

The IDF reportedly killed nine Palestinians trying to return to their homes today under the usual justification that they were traveling in some kind of unauthorized area in ways that made the troops feel threatened, blah blah. They did this all the time during the previous “ceasefire” at the beginning of the year, using the exact same excuses.

Just as we speculated the other day might happen, Israel has announced that it is going to cut the aid it allows into Gaza in half and cut off fuel and gas shipments because Hamas hasn’t returned the bodies of all the dead Israeli hostages. Israel was fully aware when it signed the agreement that Hamas would not be able to deliver the bodies of all the hostages right away due to the rubble and chaos caused by the Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza.

Israel was already 100% aware that Hamas would be unable to return the bodies of all the dead hostages because of the conditions created by the bombing campaign. They planned to use this to justify torching the ceasefire agreement before it even started. https://t.co/zYJHbsEgl5 pic.twitter.com/JHJlPJl5C3

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) October 14, 2025

On October 9, CNN published an article titled “Israel assesses Hamas may not be able to return all remaining dead hostages” which reported that “the Israeli government is aware that Hamas may not know the location of, or is unable to retrieve, the remains of some of the 28 remaining deceased hostages.”

The Red Cross says that finding all the bodies of the hostages will be a “massive challenge” in all the rubble created by Israeli airstrikes in the areas where hostages were being kept.

Drop Site News’ Jeremy Scahill explains that “During Gaza negotiations, Israel understood it would take time to recover all bodies of deceased captives. A specific mechanism for recovering the bodies was agreed. Now Israel is pretending that didn’t happen so it can violate the deal and cut the agreed aid shipments in half.”

Mondoweiss reported last week that Hebrew-language Israeli media had been saying that a “secret clause” in the ceasefire agreement would allow Israel to resume its onslaught if the bodies of the dead hostages were not returned within a 72-hour window.

So it looks like this was planned from the beginning. Create obligations that Israel knew Hamas would be unable to fulfill, then use it as an excuse to resume the slaughter.

And President Trump appears to be going right along with it, posting on Truth Social that “A big burden has been lifted, but the job IS NOT DONE. THE DEAD HAVE NOT BEEN RETURNED, AS PROMISED!”

“We were told they had 26, 24 dead hostages… and it seems as though they don’t have that, because we’re talking about a much lesser number,” Trump told the press on Tuesday, saying, “I want them back.”

Trump also told the press that Hamas is going to have to be forcibly disarmed, which amounts to an open admission that this entire “ceasefire” show is a sham.

“If they don’t disarm, we will disarm them, and it will happen quickly and perhaps violently,” Trump said on Tuesday.

This statement matches recent comments from Benjamin Netanyahu saying that Hamas will be disarmed “the easy way” or “the hard way”.

The president and prime minister are making it clear that in order for the ceasefire negotiations to proceed to a lasting peace, Hamas is going to have to completely surrender and Israel is going to have to be handed total victory. They’re branding it as a ceasefire deal when it’s actually a total surrender deal, and Hamas has made it explicitly clear that it is not surrendering.

As Drop Site News explains, “In reality, senior Hamas, Islamic Jihad and figures from other resistance factions have repeatedly rejected disarmament throughout negotiations, including in multiple interviews with Drop Site over the past year.”

A big part of the confusion around the ceasefire in public discourse today is that there are two contradictory ideas going around about what the ceasefire is and what it means. Israel supporters think “ceasefire” means “total victory and complete surrender by Hamas,” while everyone else thinks “ceasefire” means ceasefire.

Trump: If Hamas Doesn’t Disarm, ‘We Will Disarm Them, Perhaps Violently’
The president also expressed support for Hamas's executions of alleged criminals, saying he's 'OK' with it#Trump #Hamas #Gaza #Israel #Palestinians https://t.co/ScbSWYEOZy

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) October 14, 2025

That’s why you see Israel supporters celebrating the deal while Palestine supporters are much more apprehensive. Palestine supporters understand that a ceasefire and a surrender are two different things, and see Trump and Netanyahu stating that Hamas is going to have to completely disarm if “ceasefire” negotiations are going to move toward a lasting peace. They understand that the unyielding mutually exclusive positions of the Trumpanyahu administration and of Hamas are likely to come to a head in ways that result in the reignition of the Gaza holocaust.

So for all the applause and fuss that has been made about the ceasefire, as things stand right now it doesn’t look like much has changed. From the very beginning of this genocide it has been the officially stated position of the US and Israel that the killing will not end until Hamas lays down its arms and surrenders, and that is still their position today. There’s a much-needed pause in the slaughter, sure, but the Trumpanyahu team is making it explicitly clear that it is going to ramp up again under the justification of Hamas refusing to disarm.

And that’s assuming negotiations even make it that far; Israel is already doing everything it can to sabotage the ceasefire by murdering Palestinians and greatly reducing the amount of aid it promised.

Unless something significant changes about all this fairly soon, even this feeble reduction in Israel’s Gaza atrocities cannot be expected to hold.

Israel ALREADY Making Excuses To BREAK CEASEFIRE

Israel limits aid into Gaza in dispute over hostage remains as ceasefire faces test

The fragile ceasefire in Gaza faced its first test on Tuesday when Israel said the flow of aid into the devastated Palestinian territory would be cut by half and the crucial Rafah border crossing with Egypt would not open as planned, blaming Hamas for delays in the return of bodies of hostages. The militant group handed over the remains of four hostages to the International Committee of the Red Cross on Tuesday night, bringing to eight the number of bodies transferred since the US-brokered ceasefire took hold, leaving 20 to be accounted for. Hamas said it was facing obstacles as not all the burial sites had been identified.

The Red Cross, which is overseeing the transfer of remains, warned on Monday that the retrieval was a “massive challenge” given the difficulties of finding bodies in Gaza’s rubble, and could take days or weeks. But Israel responded severely, accusing Hamas of deliberate delays. It announced the halving of the number of aid trucks allowed into Gaza to 300 a day, and postponed the opening of a major aid crossing point into Gaza from Egypt at Rafah, both violations of the ceasefire agreement brokered by Donald Trump.

That agreement led to the release of the last 20 living Israeli hostages by Hamas on Monday, the freeing of nearly 2,000 Palestinians from Israeli custody and a partial Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. But the next steps, aimed at entrenching the truce and moving towards a lasting peace, are fraught with risk. ...

Israeli forces, which pulled back from Gaza City and some other parts of Gaza on Saturday, opened fire on civilians who approached their positions in two separate incidents, reportedly killing six. Under the ceasefire deal, Israeli forces have pulled back to a so-called yellow line but still hold slightly more than half of Gaza. Mahmud Bassal, a spokesperson for the Gaza civil defence agency, said five people were killed by drones as they inspected their homes in the Shuja’iya district of Gaza City and another died in a drone strike south-east of Khan Younis city.

Max Blumenthal: IDF’s Plan in Gaza

‘Cruelest forms of torture’: freed Palestinians describe horrors of Israeli jail

Before releasing him, Israeli prison guards decided to give Naseem al-Radee a farewell gift. They bound his hands, placed him on the ground and beat him without mercy, saying goodbye the same way they had said hello: with their fists. Radee’s first sight of Gaza in nearly two years was blurry; a boot to the eye left him with blurred vision two days later. Vision problems added to the laundry list of ailments he gained during his 22-month stay in an Israeli prison.

The 33-year-old government employee from Beit Lahiya was arrested by Israeli soldiers at a school-turned-displacement shelter in Gaza on 9 December 2023. He spent more than 22 months in captivity in Israeli detention centres – including 100 days in an underground cell – before being released alongside 1,700 other Palestinian detainees back to Gaza on Monday.

Like the other detainees released back to Gaza, Radee was never charged with a crime. And like many others, his detention was marked by torture, medical neglect and starvation at the hands of Israeli prison guards. His description of his time in prison is part of what the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem says is a policy of abuse towards Palestinians detainees in Israeli prisons and detention centres.

“The conditions in the prison were extremely harsh, from having our hands and feet bound to being subjected to the cruelest forms of torture,” said Radee, speaking of his time in Nafha prison in the Negev desert, the last place he was detained before being released. The beatings were not an exception, but instead part of what he described as a scheduled regimen of abuse. “They used teargas and rubber bullets to intimidate us, in addition to constant verbal abuse and insults. They had a strict system of repression; the electronic gate of the section would open when the soldiers entered, and they would come in with their dogs, shouting ‘on your stomach, on your stomach’, and start beating us mercilessly,” he said. ...

Mohammed al-Asaliya, a 22-year-old university student who was released from Nafha prison on Monday, contracted scabies during his time in detention. “There was no medical care. We tried to treat ourselves by using floor disinfectant on our wounds, but it only made them worse. The mattresses were filthy, the environment unhealthy, our immunity weak, and the food contaminated,” said Asaliya, who was arrested on 20 December 2023 from a school in Jabaliya. “There was an area they called ‘the disco’, where they played loud music nonstop for two days straight. This was one of their most notorious and painful torture methods. They also hung us on walls, sprayed us with cold air and water, and sometimes threw chilli powder on detainees,” said Asaliya.

Prof. John Mearsheimer: Trump/Biden Responsible for GENOCIDE

'You Cease, I Fire': Israel Kills at Least 9 in Gaza, Says It Will Break Truce Aid Terms

Israeli occupation forces killed numerous Palestinian civilians in Gaza on Tuesday in an apparent violation of a ceasefire that Israel's government said it would continue to break by blocking the full flow of aid into the obliterated coastal strip until Hamas returns all bodies of hostages taken two years ago.

Gaza officials told international media outlets that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops shot dead at least nine unarmed Palestinians trying to return to their homes in northern Gaza City and southern Khan Younis. The bodies of six victims were reportedly brought to al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, while three other victims were taken to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.

Witnesses described the killings as unprovoked. An IDF spokesperson acknowledged that five Palestinians were killed, claiming that they came too close to Israeli troops by crossing the so-called "Yellow Line" established as part of last week's ceasefire agreement, a contentious demarcation that leaves more than half of Gaza under the control of occupation forces.

Again: Ceasefire according to Israel=“you cease, I fire.” Calling it “peace” is both an insult and a distraction.
All eyes on Palestine: Israel must face justice, sanctions, divestment, boycott UNTIL occupation, apartheid and genocide are over and every crime is accounted for. https://t.co/K73I2177Ms

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) October 14, 2025

“The IDF calls on Gaza residents to follow its instructions and not to approach the troops deployed in the area,” the IDF spokesperson said.

Israel and Hamas accused each other of violating the fragile ceasefire.

Israel claimed that the Palestinian political and resistance group breached the US-brokered truce by withholding the bodies of Israeli and other hostages who died or were killed in captivity. Hamas—which has turned over eight of the 28 hostages' bodies it held—previously and repeatedly warned that it would take time to locate and transport all of the remains amid the ruins of an annihilated Gaza.

Hamas, meanwhile, called Israel's announcement Tuesday that it would slash by half the already inadequate humanitarian aid allowed to enter through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt a "blatant breach" of the ceasefire. Hamas urged international mediators such as the United States, Egypt, and Qatar to help enforce the ceasefire agreement, warning that Israel's continued violations risked blowing up the tenuous truce.

During the last Gaza ceasefire—which lasted from January-March 2025—United Nations officials said Israel violated the agreement more than 1,000 times before scrapping the deal and ramping up its genocide.

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday pressured Hamas to quickly turn over all remaining hostages' bodies and lay down its arms, saying that "if they don't disarm, we will disarm them, and it will happen quickly and perhaps violently."

Hamas disarmament is a non-negotiable part of Trump's 20-point plan for ending Israel's two-year genocidal assault and siege on Gaza, during which more than 247,000 Palestinians—including at least 64,000 children—were killed or maimed or are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Around 2 million Palestinians were also forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened during the war. However, senior Hamas officials have rejected the disarmament demand out of hand.

On Monday, Hamas freed 20 Israeli captives it had held since the October 7, 2023 attack in exchange for Israel's release of nearly 2,000 Palestinians it imprisoned.

While Hamas says logistical barriers are behind its slow return of hostage bodies, critics accused Israel of deliberately trying to destroy the ceasefire.

"Israel is working extremely hard to blow up this ceasefire, now reneging on promises to surge humanitarian aid by saying Hamas has been to slow in finding all the bodies of hostages (which mediators were clear would take some time, for obvious reasons)," US investigative journalist Ryan Grim said Tuesday on social media.

His Drop Site News co-founder, Jeremy Scahill, said on X that "during Gaza negotiations, Israel understood it would take time to recover all bodies of deceased captives. A specific mechanism for recovering the bodies was agreed."

"Now Israel is pretending that didn’t happen," he added, "so it can violate the deal and cut the agreed aid shipments in half."

Patrick Henningsen: Trump’s Strategy Just BLEW UP

Smotrich Vows There Will Be Jewish Settlements in Gaza

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich Vowed on Tuesday that there “will be Jewish settlements in Gaza” despite the ceasefire deal that Israel signed last week.

The Israeli minister, who also holds a position in the Defense Ministry that gives him power to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank, claimed settlements in Gaza were necessary for Israel’s security.

“So, we have patience, but we have determination, and faith, and with God’s help, we will continue the series of victories, and the big miracles,” Smotrich said at an event in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, according to The Times of Israel.

Gaza Ceasefire, Moscow Prepares Donbass Cauldron; Kiev Evacuates Slavyansk; US Out Of Tomahawks; EU/NATO Meet Argue

French PM suspends Macron’s pension plan before no-confidence vote

France’s prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, has suspended Emmanuel Macron’s flagship 2023 pension overhaul until after the 2027 presidential election in the hope of winning over enough Socialist deputies to survive a no-confidence vote. In a welcome respite for the embattled French president, the left-leaning party, which holds the balance of power in a deeply divided parliament, suggested in response on Tuesday that it would not back any of the no-confidence motions to be voted on later this week.

After the centre-right Les Républicains (LR) said it would back the government, no-confidence motions submitted by the far-right National Rally (RN) and radical-left France Unbowed (LFI) and due to be voted on Thursday would need Socialist party (PS) support to succeed. Responding to Lecornu’s announcement on Tuesday, the PS parliamentary leader, Boris Vallaud, did not explicitly say the party would not vote to topple Lecornu. But he hailed a “victory” and said it was “prepared to take a bet” on further debate – for now.

A PS deputy, Laurent Baumel, went further, telling BFM TV that the party, which is itself divided on how to handle the fragile government, “will not vote in favour” of ousting it or submit its own motion of no confidence for the time being. He added that did not mean it would not do so in the future. ... With a total of 264 deputies from the RN, LFI, Greens, Communists and hardline-right UDR pledged to vote against him and 288 votes needed to topple the government, any no-confidence motion would need the backing of at least 24 PS deputies to succeed.

Trump says six were killed in US strike on another boat allegedly carrying drugs near Venezuela

Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that the United States has struck another small boat that he accuses of carrying drugs in waters off the coast of Venezuela, killing six people aboard. “The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike,” Trump said in a statement on his Truth Social social media platform. “No U.S. Forces were harmed.”

Trump wrote that “intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics” and said that it was “associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks” but did not provide any evidence. Trump said that defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, ordered the strike on Tuesday morning and also shared video footage of the strike, as he has with prior strikes.

This marks the fifth deadly US strike in the Caribbean, according to the Associated Press since the beginning of September, and comes just weeks after Trump administration officials said that the US is now in a “non international armed conflict” with drug cartels.

Trump To Argentina Voters: ELECT Milei OR LOSE Bailout

Trump threatens to cut US aid to Argentina if Milei loses election

Donald Trump has warned he could cut financial aid to Argentina if his ally Javier Milei loses crucial legislative elections later this month. “If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina,” the US president said as Milei visited the White House to seek the Republican’s political and economic support. “I’m with this man because his philosophy is correct. And he may win and he may not win – I think he’s going to win. And if he wins we are staying with him, and if he doesn’t win we are gone.”

Trump’s administration has already promised $20bn to prop up Argentina’s struggling economy but his backing has failed to calm the markets – or help Milei’s polling before midterms on 26 October. The results of the elections, in which Milei’s minority party is hoping to boost its seat tally, will dictate whether he can pass tough cost-cutting reforms or will face a legislative brick wall for the next two years of his term.

Hailing Milei as a “great leader”, Trump said he would “fully endorse” his ideological ally in the elections. “He’s Maga all the way, it’s ‘Make Argentina Great Again,’” he added. Trump has, however, faced questions about how a big bailout for Argentina tallies with that same “America First” policy. Asked by reporters what the benefit to the United States was, Trump replied: “We are helping a great philosophy take over a great country. We want to see it succeed.”

With Argentina struggling to stave off yet another financial crisis and Milei’s disapproval ratings rising, the country’s president has come to his rightwing ally Trump for help. Trump has repeatedly voiced political support for Milei, while backing it up with a promise of huge economic aid, but the markets remain spooked by Argentina. In recent weeks, the highly indebted country has had to spend more than $1bn to defend the peso, a strategy most economists believe is unsustainable.

Administration will produce list of ‘Democrat programs’ to be closed due to shutdown

Donald Trump has said his administration is planning to produce a list on Friday of “Democrat programs” that will be closed as a result of the ongoing federal government shutdown, after the Senate failed in its eighth attempt to pass legislation that would end the impasse.

He did not specify the programs but indicated to reporters at the White House on Tuesday that the closures would be permanent. ...

Since 1981, the US has had 15 federal government shutdowns that furloughed hundreds of thousands of workers, however no president until now has sought to use a shutdown as the basis for large-scale firings. The dismissals are expected to disrupt government operations, including disease outbreak investigations.

Marjorie Taylor Greene slams party and calls Republican men in Congress ‘weak’

The far-right US congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is further distancing herself from her fellow Republicans and accusing men in her party of being “weak”. In an interview with the Washington Post, Greene expressed her frustrations with Republicans, signaling her further deviation from the political strategies of her party, as the government shutdown beginning 1 October was slated to enter its third week.

In the interview with the Post, Greene highlighted her discontent with congressional leaders of her own party, particularly the House speaker, Mike Johnson, amid the ongoing government shutdown. The Trump loyalist on social media called on the US Senate to do away with the 60-vote filibuster requirement to end the government shutdown in order to push along their spending bill. Johnson apparently told her “they can’t do it” even though “it’s math”, Greene told the Post. Greene also sided with Democrats in their push to provide healthcare subsidies – a rare move for a Republican – which has been the sticking point at the center of the negotiations between both parties to end the government shutdown.

The Georgia representative in recent months has also been pushing for further transparency related to the convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Along with other Republicans representatives, including Thomas Massie as well as the Trump loyalists Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace, Greene has pushed for the US justice department to release all its files detailing its handling of the Epstein case before his death in 2019.

Despite Johnson and Trump’s opposition to the release of those files, Greene has been prominent in trying to force a vote on the matter.

US Senate again rejects Republican plan to end government shutdown

Congress remained deadlocked on legislation to reopen the federal government, as the US Senate on Tuesday again rejected a Republican plan to end the government shutdown that began two weeks ago.

The eighth Senate vote to advance a Republican bill that would fund government operations through 21 November failed on a 49-45 tally – far short of the 60 needed for advancement in the chamber. In a sign that that there has been little if any progress toward ending the stalemate, no senators changed their votes from the last time the measure was brought to the floor, though there were a handful of absences.

After the Trump administration began laying off federal workers at several government agencies last week, Democrats and Republicans continued to trade blame.

In a speech on the Senate floor, the Democratic leader Chuck Schumer slammed the Trump administration’s decision to approve a huge bailout for Argentina in the middle of a government shutdown that has closed federal agencies and furloughed workers nationwide.

“If this administration has $20bn to spare for a Maga-friendly foreign government, they cannot turn around and say we don’t have the money lower healthcare costs here at home,” Schumer said, calling the move a “slap in the face” to US families.

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Dems Push HISTORICALLY OLD Senate Candidate To Rival Populist

As Mills Enters Maine Senate Race, Platner Says Election Is Fight to 'Retake Our Party' for Working Class

After weeks of speculation and reports that Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer was privately calling on Maine Gov. Janet Mills to enter the race to unseat longtime Republican lawmaker Susan Collins—despite considerable energy surrounding the candidacy of progressive veteran and oyster farmer Graham Platner—Mills announced her primary run Tuesday.

Mills highlighted her public sparring with President Donald Trump earlier this year and positioned her run as one that would focus on standing up to "bullies" like Trump, who threatened to cut off Maine's federal funding if it allowed transgender youths to play on team sports that correspond with their identities.

She also pledged to "fight back" against efforts by Trump and Republicans in Congress—including Collins, who has represented Maine since 1997—to slash healthcare for millions of Americans while handing out tax cuts to corporations and the richest Americans.

"This election is going to be a simple choice: Is Maine going to bow down, or stand up?" said Mills.

But before Mainers decide whether to stick with Collins or unseat her in favor of a Democratic senator, they are set to choose the Democratic nominee next June—and despite being a political novice, Platner has generated excitement across the state since announcing his candidacy in August.

Platner has centered his campaign on naming "the enemy" shared by Mainers and Americans from all walks of life: not immigrants, transgender people, or other frequent targets of the Trump administration, but the oligarchy. He's also been unapologetically outspoken in his condemnation of the US-backed Israeli assault on Gaza and over the weekend said that should he win a Senate seat, "there will be consequences" for those who have led federal immigration agents' violent incursion in US cities.

Platner has garnered endorsements and enthusiasm from lawmakers including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—who recently criticized reports that Schumer was pushing for a Mills run—and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who called his campaign "pretty impressive" and "killer" recently.

He's also proven to be a formidable fundraiser, pulling in more than $4 million since launching his campaign in August, and has spoken to overflow crowds in cities and towns across Maine.

Recent polling has shown Platner outperforming Mills by 21 points among Trump voters, 13 points among voters aged 18-44, and 10 points in rural parts of northern and western Maine.

After respondents see bios for both Dems, Platner outperforms Mills by

— 21 pts among Trump voters
— 16 pts among independents
— 14 pts among conservatives
— 13 pts among gun households
— 13 pts among age 18-44
— 13 pts among Republicans
— 10 pts in deeply rural North/West Maine https://t.co/xTR7S1Dj9V pic.twitter.com/4p78btkpCt

— Adam Carlson (@admcrlsn) October 11, 2025

On Tuesday, Platner released a statement welcoming Mills "into this race" and focusing on the fight to unseat Collins.

"I have held over 20 town halls in every corner of Maine, from Rumford to Madawaska to Portland," he said. "Everywhere I hear the same thing: People are ready for change. They know the system is broken and they know that politicians who have been working in the system for years, like Susan Collins, are not going to fix it.”

But he also released his own ad, pledging to keep up the momentum in order to "retake our party and turn it back into the party of the working class."

"We either organize and build power and fight, or we lose," Platner told a crowd in the video.

Ryan Grim of Drop Site News posited that the entrance of Mills into the race could be "to Platner's advantage" and may underscore his independent streak.

"By beating her (and Schumer) Platner can solidify the impression that he is independent of the party, whose brand is fatally toxic," said Grim.

Lindsey Boylan, Ex-Cuomo Aide Who Accused Him of Sexual Harassment, on Why She Supports Mamdani

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Pentagon retreats from climate fight even as heat and storms slam US troops

Across the US military, the climate crisis isn’t a distant threat. It’s a daily challenge. The fallout from a warming planet has hit the military hard, sidelining more than 10,000 troops with heat-related illnesses since 2018, flooding bases and undermining everything from runways to nuclear readiness. Extreme weather is battering installations from Guam to North Carolina and fueling instability in regions overseas where American forces may be called to intervene.

For decades, the Pentagon viewed the climate crisis as a national security threat – not for environmental reasons, but because it undermined operations and readiness. Now the Trump administration is dismantling that approach. Pentagon leaders have cut climate research funding and abandoned adaptation plans. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has dismissed global warming concerns as “climate change crap”.

Critics warn that the military is being forced to fly blind – and that the cost could be strategic vulnerability in a world where climate is increasingly shaping conflict. “I think it puts our troops at risk,” said Erin Sikorsky, the director of the Center for Climate & Security. “We’re going to be less prepared if our troops are deployed somewhere where it’s incredibly hot and their equipment doesn’t work right, or if they themselves can’t physically operate … That’s malpractice, I think.”

The Pentagon’s 2026 budget request recommends cutting $1.6bn in “wasteful” climate spending. Among the targeted programs: a $6m grant to decarbonize emissions from navy ships. Where most of the remaining cuts would come from is unclear. That marked a sharp break from the previous administration, when the Department of Defense sought $5bn for climate initiatives in its fiscal 2024 budget – including efforts to harden bases against extreme weather and reduce battlefield fuel dependence.

Voters TURN On Data Centers As Sam Altman ROLLS OUT AI P0RN

Nationwide Backlash Brewing Against Big Tech's Energy-Devouring AI Data Centers

America's biggest tech firms are facing an increasing backlash over the energy-devouring data centers they are building to power artificial intelligence.

Semafor reported on Monday that opposition to data center construction has been bubbling up in communities across the US, as both Republican and Democratic local officials have been campaigning on promises to clamp down on Silicon Valley's most expensive and ambitious projects.

In Virginia's 30th House of Delegates district, for example, both Republican incumbent Geary Higgins and Democratic challenger John McAuliff have been battling over which one of them is most opposed to AI data center construction in their region.

In an interview with Semafor, McAuliff said that opposition to data centers in the district has swelled up organically, as voters recoil at both the massive amount of resources they consume and the impact that consumption is having on both the environment and their electric bills.

"We’re dealing with the biggest companies on the planet,” he explained. “So we need to make sure Virginians are benefiting off of what they do here, not just paying for it.”

NPR on Tuesday similarly reported that fights over data center construction are happening nationwide, as residents who live near proposed construction sites have expressed concerns about the amount of water and electricity they will consume at the expense of local communities.

"A typical AI data center uses as much electricity as 100,000 households, and the largest under development will consume 20 times more," NPR explained, citing a report from the International Energy Agency. "They also suck up billions of gallons of water for systems to keep all that computer hardware cool."

Data centers' massive water use has been a consistent concern across the US. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on Monday that residents of the township of East Vincent, Pennsylvania have seen their wells dry up recently, and they are worried that a proposed data center would significantly exacerbate water shortages.

This is what has been happening in Mansfield, Georgia, a community that for years has experienced problems with its water supply ever since tech giant Meta began building a data center there in 2018.

As BBC reported back in August, residents in Mansfield have resorted to buying bottled water because their wells have been delivering murky water, which they said wasn't a problem before the Meta data center came online. Although Meta has commissioned a study that claims to show its data center hasn't affected local groundwater quality, Mansfield resident Beverly Morris told BBC she isn't buying the company's findings.

"My everyday life, everything has been affected," she said, in reference to the presence of the data center. "I've lived through this for eight years. This is not just today, but it is affecting me from now on."

Anxieties about massive power consumption are also spurring the backlash against data centers, and recent research shows these fears could be well founded.

Mike Jacobs, a senior energy manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists, last month released an analysis estimating that data centers had added billions of dollars to Americans' electric bills across seven different states in recent years. In Virginia alone, for instance, Jacobs found that household electric bills had subsidized data center transmission costs to the tune of $1.9 billion in 2024.

"The big tech companies rushing to build out massive data centers are worth trillions of dollars, yet they’re successfully exploiting an outdated regulatory process to pawn billions of dollars of costs off on families who may never even use their products," Jacobs explained. "People deserve to understand the full extent of how data centers in their communities may affect their lives and wallets. This is a clear case of the public unknowingly subsidizing private companies' profits."

While the backlash to data centers hasn't yet become a national issue, Faiz Shakir, a longtime adviser to US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), predicted in an interview with Semafor that opposition to their construction would be a winning political issue for any politician savvy enough to get ahead of it.

“For any Democrat who wants to think politically, what an opportunity,” he said. “The people are way ahead of the politicians.”

Inside Virginia’s billion-dollar data center boom—and what’s next for its Maryland neighbors

‘It’s a road to destruction’: climate defenders facing surge in reprisals, says UN expert

Human rights defenders organizing to prevent climate catastrophe are facing a surge in reprisals, as governments around the world denigrate, delegitimize and criminalize activists in spite of worsening global heating, a top United Nations official has told the Guardian. Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur for human rights defenders since 2020, has documented hundreds of cases where states have sought to smear and silence climate defenders engaged in peaceful protest, non-violent civil disobedience and litigation.

“Attacks against climate defenders have surged over the course of the mandate, and we now see outright repression against people who are organizing for climate action. It’s some of the states that have claimed to be the strongest supporters of human rights defenders including the UK, Germany, France and the US, that are most often repressing climate activists and where the right to protest is being denigrated and delegitimized. These big countries spew out the rhetoric about 1.5C, but they don’t mean it. They are playing the game to suit themselves. It’s business as usual,” Lawlor said in an interview with the Guardian.

Lawlor will present the penultimate report of her six-year mandate, “Tipping points: Human rights defenders, climate change and a just transition”, to the UN general assembly on 16 October. It documents state repression including police violence and surveillance, civil litigation deployed to deliberately wear down and silence climate defenders known as Slapp (strategic lawsuits against public participation), as well as bogus criminal charges ranging from sedition, criminal defamation, terrorism and conspiracy to trespass, to public disorder and to disobedience. ...

In the US, about 1,000 criminal cases were brought in Minnesota against people involved in non-violent actions against the Line 3 oil pipeline, including charges of attempted assisted suicide and trespass on critical infrastructure. While most cases were eventually dismissed or overturned, legitimate concerns about Indigenous lands, environmental harm and climate impacts were ignored and the pipeline began operations in 2021. The criminalization of Line 3 protesters mirrored the repression seen during the 2016 Indigenous-led movement against the Dakota Access pipeline in the US. “Both instances entailed close collaboration between the companies involved and the police, indicating the adoption of a blueprint for the repression of climate activism in the United States,” the report states. ...

One trend documented by Lawlor is the conflation of non-violent climate action with terrorism. In 2022, the French minister of interior at the time, and current minister of justice, accused the national environmental movement Les Soulèvements de la Terre of “ecoterrorism”. The government sought to close down the group, but the country’s highest administrative court eventually overturned the effort. Lawlor is adamant that climate activists are human rights defenders. They use non-violent protest, disruptive civil disobedience and litigation to stop fossil fuel projects and pressure elected officials to take meaningful action precisely because they are trying to protect the right to food, clean water, health, life and a healthy environment.

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