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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Ernie K-Doe

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features New Orleans r&b singer "Ernie K-Doe" Kador. Enjoy!

^{Ernie K-Doe - Te-ta-Te-ta-Ta}

"Resisting overreaching by the federal government is appropriate and, yes, even patriotic."

-- Russ Feingold

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News and Opinion

High Court Rules UK Terrorism Ban on Palestine Action Unlawful

The Home Office’s decision to ban Palestine Action as a terrorist group last year was unlawful, a three-judge panel at the High Court has ruled.In a hearing on Friday, Dame Victoria Sharp, one of the judges, said there had been “very significant interference with the right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.” The court, she said, considered the proscription of the group “disproportionate.”

Despite the ruling, the group will remain proscribed until a further court order because it has “yet to hear argument on whether there should be a stay of any order setting aside the proscription order pending the possibility of appeal,” the judges said.

The judgment is a major blow for former Home Secretary Yvette Cooper as well as the Israeli arms companies who lobbied for a crackdown on the group. It will be a relief for over 2,700 protesters who have been arrested for showing support for the group since the controversial ban. The ruling comes a week after a jury decided not to convict six Palestine Action members accused of some of the most serious criminal charges leveled against the group.

The government will appeal the decision.

Alastair Crooke: The Powerful Forces Pushing Trump into an Unwinnable War v Iran

US Preparing for Sustained, Weeks-Long War Against Iran If Trump Orders Attack

The US military is preparing for the possibility of a sustained, weeks-long operation against Iran if President Trump orders an attack on the country, Reuters has reported, as the US continues to build up its forces in the region.

The report, which cited two unnamed US officials, said a US attack on Iran could lead to a far more serious conflict than the two countries have seen before. All signs indicate that Iran wouldn’t hold back or give the US notice in advance of a counterattack as it did during the 12-Day War after the US bombed its nuclear facilities.

The New York Times reported that Trump is considering a range of military options against Iran, including strikes on its nuclear facilities, attacks meant to hurt its ability to launch missiles, and even the possibility of sending US commandos into the country. US officials acknowledged to the Times that taking out Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be much more difficult than the attack on Venezuela to kidnap President Nicolas Maduro.

To prepare for Iranian counterattacks, the US has reportedly been deploying additional Patriot missile systems and an additional THAAD air defense battery to its bases in the Middle East.

The Trump-Bibi Meeting The Media Missed - w/ Dave DeCamp

At least 12 Palestinians killed and several hurt in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza

At least 12 Palestinians were killed and several more injured across the Gaza Strip on Sunday as the Israeli military said it carried out airstrikes in response to ceasefire violations by Hamas. The Gaza civil defence agency said five people were killed and several others hurt when an airstrike targeted a tent sheltering displaced people in the northern city of Jabaliya.

According to the agency, which operates as a rescue force under Hamas authorities, five more people were killed and several injured in a separate early morning strike in the southern city of Khan Younis. It said one more person was killed after Israeli shelling in Gaza City, while one person was killed by Israeli gunfire in Beit Lahia. Hazem Qassem, a Hamas spokesperson in Gaza, accused Israel of committing a new massacre against displaced Palestinians, calling it a serious breach of the ceasefire days before the first meeting of Donald Trump’s Board of Peace.

Trump urged Hamas to move forward with disarmament under his plan for postwar Gaza on Sunday and said members of the Board of Peace had pledged $5bn (£3.7bn) towards the Palestinian territory’s reconstruction. Despite a US-brokered truce that entered its second phase last month, violence has continued in Gaza, with Israel and Hamas accusing each other of violating the agreement.

“Israel doesn’t understand ceasefires or truces,” Osama Abu Askar, who lost his nephew in the Jabaliya attack, told Agence France-Presse. He said the people killed there were hit as they slept. “We’ve been living under a truce for months and they’ve still targeted us. Israel operates on this principle – saying one thing and doing another,” Askar added.

Gaza’s health ministry has said at least 601 people have been killed since the truce began. The Israeli military said at least four of its soldiers had been killed in the same period.

The Increasing Attacks on Francesca Albanese Presage a New Dark Age

US military used Anthropic’s AI model Claude in Venezuela raid

Claude, the AI model developed by Anthropic, was used by the US military during its operation to kidnap Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, the Wall Street Journal revealed on Saturday, a high-profile example of how the US defence department is using artificial intelligence in its operations.

The US raid on Venezuela involved bombing across the capital, Caracas, and the killing of 83 people, according to Venezuela’s defence ministry. Anthropic’s terms of use prohibit the use of Claude for violent ends, for the development of weapons or for conducting surveillance.

Anthropic was the first AI developer known to be used in a classified operation by the US department of defence. It was unclear how the tool, which has capabilities ranging from processing PDFs to piloting autonomous drones, was deployed.

A spokesperson for Anthropic declined to comment on whether Claude was used in the operation, but said any use of the AI tool was required to comply with its usage policies. The US defence department did not comment on the claims.

The WSJ cited anonymous sources who said Claude was used through Anthropic’s partnership with Palantir Technologies, a contractor with the US defence department and federal law enforcement agencies. Palantir refused to comment on the claims.

Anthropic CEO: Claude Might Be CONSCIOUS. Pentagon Already Using for WAR

US boards second oil tanker in Indian Ocean after it fled Venezuelan raid

US military forces boarded another sanctioned tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking the vessel from the Caribbean Sea in an effort to target illicit oil connected to Venezuela, the Pentagon said on Sunday. Venezuela had faced US sanctions on its oil for several years, relying on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains. Donald Trump ordered a quarantine of sanctioned tankers in December to pressure the president, Nicolás Maduro, before Maduro was apprehended in January during a US military operation.

Several tankers fled the Venezuelan coast after the raid, including the ship that was boarded in the Indian Ocean overnight. The defense department said in a post on X that US forces boarded the Veronica III, conducting “a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding”. The Pentagon said: “The vessel tried to defy President Trump’s quarantine – hoping to slip away,. We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down.”

The Veronica III is a Panamanian-flagged vessel under US sanctions related to Iran, according to the website of the Treasury department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. The Veronica III left Venezuela on 3 January, the same day as Maduro’s capture, with nearly 2m barrels of crude and fuel oil, TankerTrackers.com posted on Sunday on X. “Since 2023, she’s been involved with Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil,” the organisation said.

Alastair Crooke : Why Witkoff’s Russian Negotiations Are Failing

Alastair Crooke : Why Witkoff’s Russian Negotiations Are Failing (part two)

Putin Sends Tough Team Geneva As Russia Prepares Giant Missile Strike; Breaks Through Konstantinovka

British and German military chiefs press ‘moral’ case for rearmament

Britain and Germany’s highest ranking military leaders have made an unprecedented joint appeal to the public to accept the “moral” case for rearmament and prepare for the threat of war with Russia. The pair said they were making the plea not just as the military leaders of two of Europe’s largest military spenders, but “as voices for a Europe that must now confront uncomfortable truths about its security”.

Air Chief Marshal Richard Knighton, the UK’s chief of the defence staff, and Gen Carsten Breuer, Germany’s chief of defence, said Russia’s military stance had “shifted decisively westward” and a “step change” was needed in Europe’s defence and security.

In a joint article published in the Guardian and the German newspaper Die Welt, in the wake of the Munich Security Conference, the soldiers said they had a duty “to explain what is at stake so that the public could understand why the UK and Germany have committed to the biggest sustained increases in defence spending since the end of the cold war”.

“There is a moral dimension to this endeavour. Rearmament is not warmongering; it is the responsible action of nations determined to protect their people and preserve peace,” they write. There is significant reluctance among voters in Britain and Germany to accept economic pain in return for rearmament, even while majorities in both countries believe the outbreak of a third world war is more likely than not in the next five years.

In Britain, polling this month by YouGov found that a minority favour tax rises (25%) or spending cuts (24%) to fund greater spending on the armed forces – including those who say it is very important to increase UK hard power. German and French voters are also now less likely than they were last year to support increased defence budgets if it meant a trade-off with other investment, according to a poll for Politico this month.

Massie SHREDS Trump As Bondi Says NO MORE FILES

Maxwell’s clemency pitch: can Epstein accomplice talk her way out of prison?

When Ghislaine Maxwell refused to testify before Congress last week, she nonetheless insisted on her willingness to help. Maxwell, who was convicted of helping Jeffrey Epstein draw teenage girls into a world of sexual abuse, dangled the prospect of revealing truth before Congress and American public – so long as she was freed from jail.

“If this committee and the American public truly want to hear the unfiltered truth about what happened, there is a straightforward path. Ms Maxwell is prepared to speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump,” her attorney, David Oskar Marcus, said. “Only she can provide the complete account. Some may not like what they hear, but the truth matters.” She added: “For example, both President Trump and President Clinton are innocent of any wrongdoing. Ms Maxwell alone can explain why, and the public is entitled to that explanation.”

While Donald Trump’s team has denied he was considering such an act of mercy for Maxwell, her pitch rekindled discourse on whether a presidential pardon, or commutation of her sentence, were potentially on the table. Trump for months has dealt with political blowback over his administration’s handling of the Epstein files, as he waffled on campaign trail promises to release all documents amid growing attention on his prior association with him. Legal veterans told the Guardian that any sort of clemency for Maxwell – albeit hypothetical at this point – would likely do little to provide insight into Epstein’s crimes. Attorneys for Epstein’s victims, meanwhile, have condemned her clemency pitch, with one calling it “twisted” and cast doubt on her motivations, and ability, to tell “the truth”.

“She’s saying, look, what I’ll do is: I’ll clear you, Mr President Trump, I’ll clear whomever, if you let me out,’” said RJ Dreiling, a defense attorney and former prosecutor in Los Angeles. “If she’s saying, ‘Get me out of jail in exchange for this information’, it obviously undermines any kind of credibility for her and any information she provides.”

“It’s kind of a game of chess between her and the administration, where she’s saying, ‘Help me out, and I can help you. Don’t help me out, and maybe I can hurt you,’” Dreiling said.

ICE & DHS: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Courts Have Ruled That ICE Illegally Jailed People More Than 4,400 Times in Less Than Five Months

Judges across the country have ruled more than 4,400 times since the start of October that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has illegally detained immigrants, according to a Reuters investigation published Saturday.

As President Donald Trump carries out his unprecedented “mass deportation” crusade, the number of people in ICE custody ballooned to 68,000 this month, up 75% from when he took office.

Midway through 2025, the administration had begun pushing for a daily quota of 3,000 arrests per day, with the goal of reaching 1 million per year. This has led to the targeting of mostly people with no criminal records rather than the “worst of the worst,” as the administration often claims.

Courts have ruled 4,400 times that ICE jailed people illegally. It hasn’t stopped. https://t.co/a5qRuwbRHP https://t.co/a5qRuwbRHP

— Reuters (@Reuters) February 14, 2026

Reuters’ reporting suggests chasing this number has also resulted in a staggering number of arrests that judges have later found to be illegal.

Since the beginning of Trump’s term, immigrants have filed more than 20,200 habeas corpus petitions, claiming they were held indefinitely without trial in violation of the Constitution.

In at least 4,421 cases, more than 400 federal judges have ruled that their detentions were illegal.

Last month, more than 6,000 habeas petitions were filed. Prior to the second Trump administration, no other month dating back to 2010 had seen even 500.

In part due to the sheer volume of legal challenges, the Trump administration has often failed to comply with court rulings, leaving people locked up even after judges ordered them to be released.

Reuters’ new report is the most comprehensive examination to date of the administration’s routine violation of the law with respect to immigration enforcement. But the extent to which federal immigration agencies have violated the law under Trump is hardly new information.

In a ruling last month, Chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz of the US District Court in Minnesota—a conservative jurist appointed by former President George W. Bush—provided a list of nearly 100 court orders ICE had violated just that month while deployed as part of Trump’s Operation Metro Surge.

The report of ICE’s systemic violation of the law comes as the agency faces heightened scrutiny on Capitol Hill, with leaders of the agency called to testify and Democrats attempting to hold up funding in order to force reforms to ICE’s conduct, which resulted in a partial shutdown beginning Saturday.

Following the release of Reuters’ report, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) directed a pointed question over social media to Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE.

“Why do your out-of-control agents keep violating federal law?” he said. “I look forward to seeing you testify under oath at the House Judiciary Committee in early March.”

US teen who pushed for her father’s release from ICE custody dies of cancer

A Chicago teenager, whose father was detained by immigration authorities while she navigated cancer, died on Friday, a family spokesperson said. Ofelia Torres, a 16-year-old in Chicago, had been undergoing treatment for an aggressive and rare form of cancer since late 2024. As she and her family struggled with the medical procedures, her father, Ruben Torres Maldonado, was detained by immigration authorities while at a Home Depot in October, leading to a contentious and public case that highlighted the human effects of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown.

The family challenged Torres Maldonado’s detention, saying he was instrumental to helping their family and caring for Ofelia’s four-year-old brother, Nathan. A judge later ruled in late October that Torres Maldonado’s arrest and detention was illegal. He was released from custody on 30 October.

Last year, the Trump administration launched Operation Midway Blitz, a surge in immigration enforcement arrests in Chicago, with officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), border patrol and other federal agencies descending on the city to drive up arrests. Torres Maldonado was arrested by authorities and detained in an immigration jail amid the operation. Ofelia had been enjoying a temporary break from treatment for stage 4 alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer that develops in skeletal muscles, when her father was detained.

Delia Ramirez, a US representative opposing the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda, said on social media that Ofelia, one of her constituents, was an inspiration. “Even as Ofelia fought cancer, she also fought to bring her father home and ensured that he would no longer have to live in fear in the shadows,” Ramirez said. “She taught us what love, hope, and resolve look like. My condolences to her family and loved ones.”

Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, also expressed his condolences on social media, while criticizing the Trump administration’s operations in Chicago. “Ofelia led a steadfast, dedicated and truly inspiring life,” Johnson said, adding that the Trump administration’s “indiscriminate, bigoted” mass deportation campaign, “which has upended the lives of hard-working families who came to Chicago, and other cities across the country, in search for a better life, must come to end”.

$38 billion. That's what Trump is spending to turn warehouses into human holding facilities. Not on schools. Not on healthcare. Not on veterans. On warehousing humans. And they have the audacity to call it "safe and humane." https://t.co/BpwDe33bZq

— Rep. Seth Moulton Press Office (@RepMoulton) February 13, 2026

Ex-watchdogs warn rush to give power to local police in immigration crackdown risks ‘threat to civil rights’

Homeland Security watchdogs who were forced out of their jobs warn that the Trump administration’s “alarming” rush to deputize hundreds of local police departments to enforce federal immigration law – while gutting independent oversight – risks “a threat to civil rights nationwide.”

When the experienced civil rights watchdogs had their jobs cut last year by the Trump administration, they were in the process of scrutinizing the controversial federal program allowing local police to conduct federal immigration enforcement work, an investigation by the Guardian can reveal. The vexed program gives local, county and state law enforcement officials unusual powers to detain, arrest and interrogate immigrants and turn them over to federal immigration authorities – a system critics say is open to abuse and risks alienating communities from local police.

The program is known by its technical name, 287(g), after a section in the Immigration and Nationality Act, and has been expanding fast since Donald Trump returned to the White House. The watchdogs had compiled a report, mandated by Congress in 2024, that would have revealed red flags about suspected civil rights violations by some local police and sheriff agencies partnering with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), sources familiar with its contents have disclosed to the Guardian.

But the report has still not been published and its status is unclear, leading some former officials to express fears that it is being suppressed by Trump administration officials to thwart unfavorable news and further scrutiny of the program. The former officials who spoke to the Guardian previously worked at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), the watchdog office for the department. They were speaking up to warn that the Trump administration’s slashing of guardrails while expanding the 287(g) program dramatically risks turbocharging civil rights violations.

“The [CRCL] office doesn’t exist now – at least not in its previous form. How could there be meaningful oversight of the 287(g) program?” Peter Mina, the former deputy officer for CRCL, said in a telephone interview with the Guardian. Mina was among the officials ousted from the CRCL last spring by the new administration, when they were told their jobs were going to be eliminated. He ultimately resigned. Mina is now a civil rights lawyer in Washington DC.

In Minneapolis, Native American patrols keep watch – and see history repeating: ‘We are still being chased’

Outside the Pow Wow Grounds coffee shop in Minneapolis’s Native American cultural corridor, a group of watchers huddled around a small firepit. Some cuddled into heated camp chairs, as others grasped steaming cups of coffee as they scanned the intersection for ICE agents. A volunteer periodically monitored a local chat group for reports of ICE agents in the area. Foot patrollers equipped with heated handwarmers and orange whistles were dispatched throughout the neighbourhood, and watchers with cars took off in pairs.

The Minneapolis and St Paul metro areas are home to one of the largest urban American Indian populations in the US. As federal forces descended on the Twin Cities this winter as part of Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown, tribal citizens, too, reported frequently being stopped and interrogated for their documentation. During some weeks this winter, masked, armed federal agents in SUVs would circle this neighborhood over and over again – stopping undocumented immigrants, legal residents and tribal citizens alike. Sometimes the agents would hover outside Little Earth, the Native American community housing project just south of Pow Wow Grounds.

“Our kids are afraid, our elders are afraid. That’s really what sparked the fire to get us out here, ” said Vin Dionne, a leader of the Many Shields Society, a community safety group that has been working to help both Native and immigrant neighbors. It seemed that often, Native people were stopped because they didn’t look white, said Robert Lilligren, CEO of the Native American Community Development Institute (NCDI). “This is a general attack on brown people, a ‘scoop them all up,’” he said.

More than 50 years ago, the American Indian movement (AIM) was born in this corner of south Minneapolis, just across the street from the coffee shop. In 1968, in response to escalating police brutality against Native people, the movement established citizen patrols. Now, Dionne said, Many Shields, along with Native and non-Native volunteers in the neighborhood, has reprised the practice. At least four members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe have been detained in the operations, according to tribal president Frank Star Comes Out. The Department of Homeland Security disputed the tribe’s allegations.

In response, Star Comes Out and the leaders and representatives of at least 10 tribes travelled to Minneapolis and processed applications for tribal IDs, setting up booths at the Minneapolis American Indian Center. It was an unprecedented move for many tribal governments, which normally require members to travel to their tribal reservations to collect IDs. But many Minnesotans don’t have passports or Real IDs issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles, meaning that tribal IDs are one of the few ways for Native people to prove their status to agents. “We felt an urgency to protect our people,” said Star Comes Out. Local leaders expressed hope for a drawdown after the Trump administration said this week that it would pull back federal agents from the city, but remain concerned about the pain that operations have already inflicted.

For many Native elders especially, the sight of armed, masked federal agents have triggered dark memories and the generational trauma of violence from the US government against Indigenous people, said Jolene Jones, an organizer with NCDI. “We’re having so much anxiety because it’s in our bones,” she said. “We were still being chased, we’re still being snatched from our homes, our children are being snatched. It’s very triggering.” A horrifying aspect of the recent immigration operation in the Twin Cities, she said, is that people detained by federal agents are being taken to an ICE processing facility located on Fort Snelling, where the US government in the mid-1800s imprisoned more than 1,600 Dakota and Ho-Chunk people in a concentration camp. “History repeats itself,” Jones said. “And as Indigenous people, we are trying to make sure we’re as prepared as we can be.”

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Progressive Texas organizers hail shock win as far-right Republicans left reeling

Chris Tackett started tracking extremism in Texas politics about a decade ago, whenever his schedule as a Little League coach and school board member would allow. At the time, he lived in Granbury, 40 minutes west of Fort Worth. He’d noticed that a local member of the state legislature, Mike Lang, had become a vocal advocate for using public money for private schools – despite the fact that Lang campaigned as a supporter of public education.

With a little research, Tackett found that Lang had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the Wilks brothers and Tim Dunn, billionaire megadonors whose deep pockets and Christian nationalist views have consumed the Texas GOP. Tackett published his findings on social media, and soon enough, people started asking him to create pie charts of their representatives’ campaign funds. These charts evolved into the organisation See It. Name It. Fight It. “There’s so many people out there that are so busy with their daily lives, they’re walking past and not even seeing some of these bad things going on,” he says. “So that’s the first step: you have to see this thing.”

Tackett and his wife Mendi, the organisation’s sole members, now live in Fort Worth, where they’re part of a scrappy community of progressives and anti-extremist organizers who are building momentum amid their town’s deeply embedded Christian nationalism. Tarrant county, in which Fort Worth is the largest city, provided a chilling preview of Texas’s gerrymandering efforts, and the county is widely regarded as a hotbed for far-right actors. But most recently, the county was the site of a Democratic victory that sent the Texas Republican party reeling.

Taylor Rehmet, a Democrat and local union leader, won a runoff for a state Senate seat that’s been held by Republicans since 1992. What’s more, he bested Republican Leigh Wambsganss despite having one-tenth as much money. Much of Wambsganss’s funding came from Dunn and the Wilks brothers. Republicans blamed low turnout for Rehmet’s victory, while pundits opined that the Trump administration’s unpopularity was to blame. But people in Fort Worth say local organizing was central to the upset – and it will be key to any future victories in Texas, too.

AOC's DISASTROUS Foreign Policy Debut In Munich

California’s billionaires pour cash into elections as big tech seeks new allies

California politics in a marked uptick from their previous participation in affairs at the state capitol. Behemoths such as Google and Meta are getting involved in campaigns for November’s elections, as are venture capitalists, cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and Palantir’s co-founders. The industry’s goals run the gamut – from fighting a billionaire tax to supporting a techie gubernatorial candidate to firing up new, influential super political action committees (Pacs).

The phenomenon squarely fits the moment for the state’s politics – with 2026 being the year that Politico has dubbed “the big tech flex”. Gavin Newsom, California’s tech-friendly governor who’s been quick to veto legislation that cramps the sector’s unfettered growth, is reaching his term limit. That means Silicon Valley needs to find a new ally. The industry may have found its candidate in an upstart mayor from San Jose, Matt Mahan.

Silicon Valley’s businesses and billionaires – some of the richest and most powerful on earth, most of which are headquartered in California – are in the midst of a massive AI boom. Industry insiders say tech companies need to ensure they can continue to flourish without regulations getting in the way.

Unlike other industries, such as oil and pharma, tech has been relatively tame when it comes to lobbying in the state. The industry has tended to focus on narrow state issues and instead spent big and broad at the federal level (aside from Uber and Lyft’s massive $200m ballot measure campaign in 2020). That ethos has changed. California is now ground zero for tech titans working to become omnipresent in politics.

The “California Billionaire Tax Act”, often referred to simply as the billionaire tax, is a proposal that would require any California resident worth more than $1bn to pay a one-off, 5% tax on their assets to help cover education, food assistance and healthcare programs in the state. It’s sponsored by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, and if it receives enough signatures from California voters, it will go to the ballot in November. When the proposal was put forward at the end of last year, many among tech’s billionaire elite threw a tantrum.

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Trump touts climate savings but new rule set to push up US prices

The Trump administration claims its latest move to gut climate regulations and end all greenhouse gas standards for vehicles will save Americans money. But its own analysis indicates that the new rule will push up gas prices, and that the benefits of the rollback are unlikely to outweigh the costs. On Thursday, the president and his environmental secretary, Lee Zeldin, announced the finalized repeal of the endangerment finding, a legal determination which underpins virtually all federal climate regulations. He claimed the rollback would save the US $1.3tn by 2055.

Late on Thursday night, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a regulatory impact analysis to back up that number. The savings will come from two places, the document says: some $1.1tn will stem from reduced vehicle prices, while another $200bn will come from slashed electric vehicle purchases and lowered spending on charging infrastructure. But a chart within the analysis indicates that the US will through 2055 incur $1.4tn in additional costs from increased fuel purchases, vehicle repair and maintenance, insurance, traffic congestion and noise. An additional $40bn in costs will come from reduced energy security, increased refueling time and lowered “drive value”, or costs associated with operating a vehicle.

In total, this means the repeal of the endangerment finding will impose an estimated costs of $1.5tn, overshadowing the projected $1.3tn in savings. And that’s before you take into account the huge social and climate costs.

In an emailed statement, an EPA spokesperson said: “The Trump EPA is following the law, ending the bogus overreach of previous administrations done by agenda-driven climate zealots.”

Western US states fail to negotiate crucial Colorado River deal: ‘Mother nature isn’t going to bail us out’

The future of the American west hung in the balance after seven states remained at a stalemate over who should bear the brunt of the enormous water cuts needed to pull the imperiled Colorado River back from the brink. Negotiators, who have spent years trying to iron out thorny disagreements, ended their talks on Friday without a deal – one day before a critical deadline to form a plan that had been set for Saturday. The end of these talks has thrust the basin, and those who rely on its essential water resources, into uncertain territory. In the region where water has long been the source of survival and conflict, the challenges that hindered consensus were as steep as the stakes are high.

Snaking across 1,450 miles (2,300km) from the Rocky Mountains into Mexico, the Colorado supplies roughly 40 million people in seven states, 5.5m acres (2.23m hectares) of farmland and dozens of tribes. The waters fuel an estimated $1.4tn in economic activity, and raised bustling cities, including Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas. The sprawling basin is also home to diverse ecosystems, with scores of birds, fish, plants and animals, and provides critical habitat for more than 150 threatened or endangered species.

But the river has been overdrawn for more than a century. As demand continues to grow, rising temperatures and lower precipitation caused by the climate crisis are taking an increasingly larger share of declining supplies, a trend only expected to worsen as the world warms. Up to 4m acre-feet of cuts are needed to bring the basin back into balance – an amount equal to more than a quarter of its annual average flow. One acre-foot, a unit denoting the amount of water that can cover a football field one foot deep, is equal to roughly 326,000 gallons – enough to supply roughly three families for a year.

A record snow drought plaguing the region this year is expected to reduce water supplies further, which added another layer of urgency to the talks. Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico, which form the upper-basin states – have resisted any cuts to their share, insisting lower-basin states – California, Arizona and Nevada – are responsible for creating the deficit. Because they are situated closer to the headwaters, their supply doesn’t come from the reservoirs that the lower basins draw from. The lower basin has balked at the idea. They have already agreed to take substantial cuts and are demanding their neighbors to the north share the burden. While disagreements range across a series of issues, this is a major sticking point.

The states have been at an impasse for months, after blowing through a deadline last November and this week’s breakdown in the talks signals how entrenched the opposing parties are. “The federal deadline for a consensus agreement on managing the Colorado River after 2026 is passing for a second time without resolution,” said Gavin Newsom, Katie Hobbs and Joe Lombardo. “The stakes couldn’t be higher for our lower basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada.” If the states can’t produce a path forward, the federal government has threatened to issue its own, one likely to deeply slash the lower-basin states’ shares. Four draft proposals released for public comment in January include severe reductions of lower states’ supply.

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Also of Interest

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

A Constitutional Ice Age

ROBERT PARRY: Who Is Ari Ben-Menashe?

WSJ Debunks NYT’s “Ragtag Network Of Activist” Propaganda

Poison Dart Frogs Killer

US Military Kills Three in Strike on Boat in the Caribbean

Trump’s Concentration Camp Build-Out Includes Nearly $40 Billion for Warehouse Conversions

DHS Partially Shuts Down, Setting Up Battle Over ICE Accountability in Coming Weeks

The key to defeating Trump? Mass non-cooperation

‘I feel like a ghost’: new father deported by ICE to Bhutan that exiled his family

Trump’s Religious Liberties Commission Implodes Over Zionism

Ghislaine Maxwell CONNECTION To 911

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A Little Night Music

Ernie K-Doe - Mother-in-Law

Ernie K-Doe - Here Come the Girls

Ernie K-Doe - A Certain Girl

Ernie.K.Doe - I cried my last tear

Ernie.K.Doe - Come On Home

Ernie K Doe - Later For Tomorrow

Ernie K-Doe - T'ain't It The Truth

Ernie K-Doe - I Got To Find Somebody

Ernie K-Doe - Wanted, $10,000.00 Reward

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