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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Fats Domino

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features New Orleans piano player Antoine "Fats" Domino. Enjoy!

^{Fats Domino – I've Got Eyes For You}

"The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

-- Albert Einstein

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News and Opinion

No Bro This War Will Be Completely Different, Bro

No bro this US war in the middle east will be completely different, bro. See, this time the regime we’re trying to get rid of is REALLY BAD!

No no, this is nothing like all those other times. This time military interventionism to topple an oil-rich government in west Asia will lead to peace and democracy. Our soldiers will be greeted as liberators!

You don’t understand, bro. This time the government and the media are telling us the truth! This time the regime really IS committing mass atrocities and they really ARE trying to build weapons of mass destruction.

Why are you acting so skeptical? If it turns out our leaders were wrong and this war was a bad idea, I’m sure they’ll admit their mistakes and course-correct immediately to set things right, and then implement major, sweeping policy changes to make sure they never repeat the same mistakes again. What could possibly go wrong?

I know you think this will be a disaster like all those other US military interventions in the region, but you see, unlike all those other times, this time there are many foreign policy analysts from highly respected think tanks and mass media outlets assuring us that it will go perfectly fine.

If bombing Iran was a bad idea they would have told us so in the news. The news isn’t allowed to lie about important things like this.

This time is completely different because this time there are people from the targeted country who say they don’t like their government. If that country didn’t need American bombs dropped on it, every single person from that country would love the government.

No this isn’t like all those other times. This time it’s about bringing freedom and democracy to a poor oppressed population, and it’s about fighting terrorism, and it’s about women’s rights, and it’s about bringing peace and stability to the region. Don’t you agree that those are good and worthy goals? Why do you hate freedom?

I’m beginning to suspect that you just love tyrannical regimes. There is no other possible reason anyone could oppose US military interventionism to topple a government in the middle east. Also you hate Jews.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Negotiation or Escalation? Trump’s Iran Crossroads

Marco Rubio delivers rare briefing to top US lawmakers on Iran amid tensions

Marco Rubio delivered a rare briefing to top US lawmakers on Iran from the White House on Tuesday as Washington deploys its largest force of aircraft and warships to the Middle East since the 2003 buildup to the Iraq war. The audience for the secretary of state’s briefing was reported to include the so-called “gang of eight”, which includes the senior lawmakers from both parties in the House and Senate, as well as the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees.

The select group is briefed by the White House on classified intelligence matters, which can include preparations for significant military action. Rubio last publicly briefed the group on 5 January, the day after the US launched its successful operation to capture Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro.

The developments came after a second US aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford – the largest such vessel in the world – arrived in the region. Analysts have said that the US is now in position to launch a strike against Iran if Donald Trump orders one. The details of the report were classified and were not immediately made public. Exiting the briefing, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said: “This is serious, and the administration has to make its case to the American people.”

The briefing by Rubio took place just hours before Trump is scheduled to deliver a State of the Union speech on Tuesday evening in which his foreign policy is expected to play a central role. Trump has demanded that Iran abandon its nuclear programme, abandon its production of ballistic missiles and cease its support for overseas proxies such as Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen.

IRAN Learned from History, They're READY to FIGHT /Lt Col Daniel Davis

Top Democrats Try to Stop Vote That Would Put Them on Record for Trump's Iran War

House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats have been working behind the scenes to try to prevent a vote on Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie’s Iran war powers resolution – a measure that would require every member of Congress to go on the record about a potential U.S. war with Iran.

A top Democratic HFAC staffer, multiple sources with direct knowledge tell me, ​​deliberately inflated projections of opposition to the bipartisan measure – warning of 20 to 40 Democratic defections – as part of a broader effort to dampen momentum and prevent the Iran war powers vote from advancing. Khanna and Massie had initially planned to force a vote on the resolution this week, but Democratic leadership is now saying they expect the vote to be delayed until next week or even later. The postponement comes as the Trump administration accelerates preparations for unauthorized military action, overseeing the largest U.S. military buildup in the region in years.

Khanna and Massie argue that Congress must weigh in before – not after – the U.S. is pulled into another regime change war in the Middle East. Their resolution would require explicit congressional authorization for any military action against Iran, a vote that could become one of the most consequential foreign policy decisions in recent congressional history.

A senior Democratic congressional staffer told me it’s “pretty clear” Democratic leadership is working to delay “or potentially sideline” the vote on the Khanna-Massie war powers resolution. “If you’ve been around the Hill, this is a familiar playbook.”

“Leadership rarely comes out and says they oppose these votes outright, because they know the underlying issue is popular with the base,” said the staffer, who works on foreign policy. “Instead, you see process concerns, timing objections, and caucus-unity arguments used to slow things down or keep members off the record. We’ve seen the same approach on past war powers votes and foreign policy amendments that clash with the national security elite consensus.”

The internal effort to sabotage momentum for the Iran war powers resolution reflects a broader strategic calculation among Democratic elites. As a recent Drop Site report detailed, many top Democrats privately believe Iran will ultimately have to be confronted militarily. But they also understand that openly backing another regime change war in the Middle East would be politically toxic. Poll after poll show there is little to no appetite for war with Iran, including lukewarm support among conservatives. The preferred outcome of many AIPAC-aligned Senate Democrats, according to a senior foreign policy aide to Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, is that Trump acts unilaterally, weakening Iran while absorbing the domestic backlash ahead of the midterms.

The war powers vote threatens to disrupt that arrangement by forcing Democrats to declare, publicly and on the record, whether they support giving Trump unilateral authority to wage war.

US Navy MUTINY? Trump's Iran War UP IN FLAMES | Rania Khalek & Stanislav Krapivnik

Israeli Analysis Affirms Gaza Health Ministry’s Official Palestinian Death Count

An Israeli analysis published Tuesday examining the Gaza Health Ministry’s list of Palestinians killed during Israel’s US-backed annihilation of the Gaza Strip largely affirmed the official death count, while noting some imperfections in the 2,000-page document.

Haaretz, Israel’s oldest daily newspaper, dissected the Gaza Health Ministry’s (GHM) database of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, which at the time contained nearly 70,000 names—it’s now over 72,000—in part by using artificial intelligence to analyze the massive file.

“A consensus has taken shape: Even if the list has weaknesses, including the fact that it does not differentiate between combatants and civilians, it reflects the scale of the disaster inflicted on Gaza and its people,” article author Nir Hasson wrote. “It also forms the basis for allegations that Israel committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and even genocide.”

Lee Mordechai, a historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who says Israeli is committing genocide in Gaza, told Hasson, “It’s clear that the list isn’t 100% accurate and that it has errors, but I think they’re around 1%.”

Gabriel Epstein, an associate at the US-based Israel Policy Forum who was formerly skeptical of the GHM list, “now believes it is largely accurate and may even slightly undercount the dead,” according to Hasson. ...

The GHM list notably only contains the names of people who died from combat-related violence, not from “hunger, disease, accidents, or the collapse of the health system.”

It also does not include the thousands of people who are missing and likely dead and buried beneath the rubble of the 80% of Gaza’s buildings that have been destroyed or damaged during the war.

Aaron Maté : Huckabee Is a Dangerous Fool

US justice department sues UCLA over alleged antisemitism amid pro-Palestinian protests

The justice department sued the University of California, Los Angeles on Tuesday, alleging the university created a hostile work environment for Jewish and Israeli faculty and staff after protests against the war on Gaza broke out across campus.

The lawsuit claims UCLA violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by “failing to prevent and correct discriminatory and harassing conduct” after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and ensuing war on Gaza. The lawsuit is the latest action against a US university by the Trump administration since the president took office last year, and an escalation of Donald Trump’s feud with the state of California.

“Based on our investigation, UCLA administrators allegedly allowed virulent anti-Semitism to flourish on campus, harming students and staff alike,” Pam Bondi, the attorney general, said in a press release.

In December, nine justice department attorneys told the Los Angeles Times they felt pressured by the Trump administration to accuse the University of California of discriminating against Jewish students and faculty. “The political appointees essentially determined the outcome almost before the investigation had even started,” Jen Swedish, a former DoJ lawyer who worked on a case against UCLA, told the LA Times.

Aaron Maté DESTROYS Steve Witkoff on Iran

I guess the best we can get out of the Dumbocrats is some namby-pamby act that will make government surveillance and oppression of citizens marginally less awful instead of the Dumbocrats standing up for the citizenry and putting a stop to the governments abuse outright. Figures.

Congress Urged to Require Warrants in Reauthorization of Key Spy Power

Privacy advocates are backing a bipartisan bill introduced in the US Senate this week that’s intended to protect Americans from warrantless government surveillance.

Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) unveiled the Security and Freedom Enhancement (SAFE) Act on Monday, in the wake of Politico reporting that President Donald Trump’s White House “is quietly pushing for a key spy authority to be extended as is into 2027, according to five people granted anonymity to discuss the private talks.”

There have long been arguments on Capitol Hill and beyond over Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which empowers the federal government to surveil electronic communications without a warrant. The law only allows for targeting foreigners outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information, but Americans’ data is also collected.

Despite such arguments, Congress reauthorized Section 702 nearly two years ago, under then-President Joe Biden. That decision is set to expire on April 20, setting up a new battle over the spying power—hence the bill’s introduction this week.

Under Durbin and Lee’s proposal, the authority would be extended another two years, but government agencies must obtain a FISA Title I order or a warrant before accessing Americans’ communications. As the pair noted in a statement, it also “closes the ‘data broker loophole’ that intelligence and law enforcement agencies use to buy their way around the Fourth Amendment” to the US Constitution, which bars unreasonable searches and seizures and details requirements for issuing warrants.

“Section 702 is a valuable tool to help keep our nation safe,” said Durbin. “However, it’s being used to conduct thousands of warrantless searches of Americans’ private communications. That’s unacceptable. Our bipartisan SAFE Act is a commonsense solution to continue protecting our country from foreign threats—while safeguarding Americans’ civil liberties and privacy.”

In a Tuesday statement welcoming the legislation, Demand Progress senior policy adviser Hajar Hammado highlighted that “right now, the government can freely troll through your private emails and texts swept up in 702 collections and this power has been abused to spy on everyday Americans, journalists, and even members of Congress.”

“No government, whether it’s run by Donald Trump and Stephen Miller or Joe Biden, should be able to do this,” argued Hammado. According to Politico, Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, “is a leading advocate” for extending Section 702.

So, let me get this straight - Stephen “let’s suspend the right of habeas corpus” Miller is opposing reform of spy powers that abused President Trump, 8 US Senators, and countless private citizens? Advocating for warrantless abuse of Americans is MAGA?? https://t.co/DN8lLJ1but

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) February 19, 2026

Hammado stressed that “the SAFE Act is a bipartisan solution to this problem, and all members of Congress should not support reauthorization without these critical reforms. We thank Sens. Lee and Durbin for their leadership on this bill and for modeling how Republicans and Democrats can come together to stop oppressive government overreach.”

Epstein, Chomsky, & The Politics of Betrayal (w/ Chris Hedges)

Democrats to investigate whether DoJ withheld Epstein files on Trump abuse claim

Democrats on the House oversight and government reform committee announced on Tuesday the launch of an investigation to determine whether the US Department of Justice (DoJ) purposely withheld materials that pertain to allegations against Donald Trump in the government’s release of the Epstein files. The lawmakers pledged to look into a report that Trump had been accused by a woman of sexually abusing her decades ago when she was a minor, and that material relating to the allegation in the Epstein files has not been released to the public. ...

Congressman Robert Garcia of California, a Democrat and the ranking member of the committee, said in a statement that he reviewed unredacted evidence logs at the justice department and that “Oversight Democrats can confirm that the DoJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes”.

“Under the oversight committee’s subpoena and the Epstein Files Transparency Act, these records must immediately be shared with Congress and the American public,” said Garcia. “Covering up direct evidence of a potential assault by the president of the United States is the most serious possible crime in this White House cover-up.”

The oversight committee’s announcement coincided with the publication of an investigative report by NPR on Tuesday, which asserted that the DoJ withheld “what appears to be more than 50 pages of FBI interviews, and notes from conversations with a woman who accused Trump of sexual abuse decades ago when she was a minor”. The report also says that the justice department “removed some documents from the public database where accusations against Jeffrey Epstein also mention Trump”.

NPR’s investigation said that one lead involving Trump was sent to the FBI’s Washington office with the intent to set up an interview with the woman accusing him. The lead was included in an internal slide deck detailing “prominent names” in the sex-trafficking investigations into Epstein and his convicted associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, last year. The accuser directly named Trump in her allegation made in 2019, according to NPR, reportedly saying Epstein introduced her to him in about 1983, when she was 13 and Trump was a New York businessman and would have been in his mid-30s, and that there was an attempt at sexual contact.

Report Details How Trump Economic Agenda ‘Will Make Ordinary Families Reliably Poorer in the Future’

President Donald Trump’s economic agenda “will make ordinary families reliably poorer in the future,” according to the author of a report published Tuesday by the Economic Policy Institute.

Josh Bivens, EPI’s chief economist, said Trump’s slashing of federal spending and jobs, mass deportations, chaotic tariffs, and anti-labor policies were suppressing hiring and wages, draining household and business spending, and slowing economic growth.

While a recession is not yet inevitable, Bivens argued that worrying signs are already on the horizon, with 1.4 million fewer new jobs than expected in 2025 and unemployment ticking up to 4.4%, up from the low of 3.4% in April 2023.

For low-wage earners, the past year has been particularly rough. After seeing unusually fast growth during the presidency of Joe Biden, real wages for the bottom 10% of earners fell by 0.3% in 2025.

The report predicts that Republicans’ 2025 budget package will reduce “aggregate demand” in the coming years. The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act cuts $100 billion annually from Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), while allowing health insurance subsidies that saved families thousands to expire, which the report projects will cause many families who rely on these benefits to pull back spending in the economy.

While the law reduced taxes, the vast majority of those benefits went to the wealthiest earners, whose spending was already much less constrained by their incomes.

The report notes the astonishing increase in inequality caused by the law. Between the years of 1979 and 2019, which were considered to have seen an explosion of wealth inequality, the share of income claimed by the richest 10% increased by about 0.25% per year.

It found that the GOP budget law will, in just one year, increase the top decile’s share of wealth by a full percentage point. In other words, the rate of inequality will “quadruple in its first year.”

Aside from this major driver of inequality, the report also says that the Trump administration’s hostility toward collective bargaining rights and its mass firings of federal workers would further suppress wages by making the labor market less competitive, and that the president’s erratic tariff regime would make those wages less valuable by fueling inflation.

“Disastrous policy choices that led to excess unemployment, slower growth in the economy’s productive capacity, and rising inequality have made life less affordable for typical families in recent decades,” Bivens said. “The Trump administration’s policies double down on the worst policy decisions of this period and will make ordinary families reliably poorer in the future, even if an outright recession or spiking inflation does not happen.”

Trump Admin Sued Over ‘Unlawful Warrantless Arrests’ During North Carolina ICE Blitz

A coalition of advocacy groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday “seeking to prevent a pattern of unlawful warrantless arrests in North Carolina that is harming communities” during the Trump administration’s deadly crackdown on undocumented immigrants and their defenders.

Democracy Forward, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of North Carolina, and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) sued the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on behalf of five individuals, including four American citizens and one legal US resident from El Salvador. ...

Democracy Forward said in a statement announcing the lawsuit: “In mid-November, the Trump-Vance administration accelerated its immigration crackdown across North Carolina during Operation Charlotte’s Web. Heavily armed, masked DHS agents, including ICE and CBP officers, roamed Charlotte, Durham, Raleigh, and other communities, detaining and arresting people indiscriminately without warrants or legal justification.”

“Each plaintiff was arrested by DHS agents without probable cause to believe that they are legally removable from the country and that they pose a flight risk—determinations required under federal law for warrantless arrests,” Democracy Forward continued.

The plaintiffs “represent a class of individuals who have been or will be subjected to warrantless immigration arrests by DHS in North Carolina, including arrests made without probable cause based on flight risk or removability,” the group added. “They ask the federal court for the Western District of North Carolina to declare DHS’ mass warrantless arrest policy unlawful and to issue a permanent injunction blocking these unlawful practices.”

ACLU-NC staff attorney Corina Scott said in a statement Tuesday: “Federal immigration agents have consistently ignored the law and trampled civil rights in North Carolina. This lawsuit seeks to stop this abuse of power and demand accountability going forward so that our communities do not continue to suffer violent and unlawful arrests.”

Democracy Forward president and CEO Skye Perryman said that “when armed, masked agents are breaking car windows, handcuffing people without probable cause, and dumping them on the side of the road, that is not law enforcement, it is lawlessness.”

“Congress was explicit: Warrantless immigration arrests require individualized probable cause to be proven,” she noted. “That standard is not optional based on the whims of whoever is in the White House. [DHS] is carrying out mass arrests that disregard the limits that Congress imposed and the Constitution requires. Federal agencies do not have the authority to sweep up people in America—whether they are US citizens, lawful residents, or anyone else—without legal justification.”

“This case is about restoring basic guardrails on government power and ensuring that federal officers follow the law they are sworn to uphold,” Perryman added.

Arrests on US army base spark fear of military coordination with ICE

Francisco Galicia paced his cell at Fort Hunter Liggett, a vast army base 160 miles south of San Francisco, on a Friday evening in January. His mind raced with thoughts of his five daughters waiting for him at home. Over several hours, immigration agents brought six more men into the frigid, cement-walled cell. As the men shared eerily similar stories of their arrests, Galicia realized they had all driven straight into a trap. All seven had been driving home from fishing at a popular county lake when an official in a white truck had pulled them over along the same stretch of Jolon Road, a public, two-lane road that, unbeknown to Galicia, cuts through a corner of the military installation.

The traffic stops appeared routine at first: a light out, an open gas cap, a trunk door ajar, driving over the line. But then the officer asked for a social security number. In each case, when the men didn’t give a number, immigration agents arrived within minutes to make arrests, then drove the men to a detention site on the base where they were held overnight before being transferred to an immigration facility, Galicia said.

The arrests of Galicia and his cellmates point to an apparent collaboration between Fort Hunter Liggett police and immigration agents that has ensnared at least 15 men since 30 December, according to Galicia and a local rapid response network, which confirmed eight additional cases. The arrests were first reported by the bilingual news magazine Voices of Monterey Bay.

Together, the accounts suggest that the Department of the Army civilian police at Fort Hunter Liggett – whose mission is to maintain law and order on base property – assisted in the federal government’s nationwide drive to arrest undocumented immigrants, a scheme that military law experts and members of Congress say may violate a US law restricting the use of the military on domestic soil. A federal judge previously ruled the Trump administration violated the 19th-century law, the Posse Comitatus Act, when it deployed national guard troops to Los Angeles in June amid widespread protests against Trump’s increasingly unpopular deportation campaign.

The traffic stops and on-base detentions at Fort Hunter Liggett appear to violate the spirit of the act and represent a “creep in the wrong direction toward military participation in law enforcement”, said William Banks, a Syracuse University law professor emeritus and expert in the domestic role of the military.

US military leaders pressure Anthropic to bend Claude safeguards

US military leaders including Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, met with executives from the artificial intelligence firm Anthropic on Tuesday to hash out a dispute over what the government will be able to do with the company’s powerful AI model. Hegseth gave Dario Amodei, the Anthropic CEO, until the end of the day on Friday to agree to the department’s terms or face penalties, Axios reported.

Anthropic, which presents itself as the most safety-forward of the leading AI companies, has been mired in weeks of disagreement with the Pentagon over how the military is allowed to use its large language model, Claude. US defense officials have pushed for unfettered access to Claude’s capabilities, while Anthropic has reportedly resisted allowing its product to be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons systems that can use AI to kill people without human input. The Department of Defense (DoD) has integrated Claude into its operations, but has threatened to sever the relationship over what its top brass perceives as roadblocks erected by Anthropic.

At stake in the negotiations is whether the AI industry will push back against government demand for the military use of their products, something that has long been controversial among researchers and ethical AI advocates. Defense officials have already threatened punitive measures against Anthropic if it does not comply, including canceling a massive contract with the company and designating it a “supply chain risk”.

The DoD struck deals with several major AI firms including Anthropic, Google and OpenAI in July last year, offering them contracts worth up to $200m. Until this week, however, Anthropic’s Claude product was the only model permitted for use in the military’s classified systems. The DoD signed a deal on Monday which allowed the use in classified systems by military personnel of Elon Musk’s xAI chatbot, which has faced recent backlash over producing nonconsensual sexualized images of children.

Both xAI and OpenAI have agreed to the government’s terms on the uses of their AI, according to he Washington Post, with a defense official stating that OpenAI had allowed its model to be used for “all lawful purposes”. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment on their agreement with the government. The meeting between Anthropic and the Pentagon is taking place a month after the US military reportedly used Claude to assist in its capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

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Rep. Summer Lee on Boycotting Trump Speech, Jesse Jackson, Voting Rights, “Endless Wars” & More

New Poll Shows Platner Romping in Dem Primary and Comfortably Ahead of Collins for Maine Senate Seat

The progressive candidate Graham Platner has a commanding lead in the Democratic primary for Maine’s US Senate seat over the state’s centrist Gov. Janet Mills. Come November, he’s also much more likely than Mills to defeat the Republican incumbent, Sen. Susan Collins.

The University of New Hampshire’s Pine Tree State Poll, released Tuesday morning, showed that Platner has built momentum since October. Five months ago, 58% of likely Democratic voters said the 41-year-old oyster farmer was their first choice to be the state’s next senator, compared with 24% who preferred the governor.

Now, with the June primary less than four months away, undecided voters have broken hard in Platner’s favor: 64% said he’s their first choice, while Mills has only jumped up to 26%.

Wow. New UNH poll in Maine shows Graham Platner beating Susan Collins 49-38

Poll has Maine Governor and Chuck Schumer-backed Janet Mills neck and neck with Collins, 41-40

Same poll shows Platner ahead of Mills in the Democratic primary, 64-26 (!) pic.twitter.com/BLeJkTtVQv

— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) February 24, 2026

The steady shift toward Platner comes as affordability issues have become increasingly salient to Maine voters. A full 35% of voters said that either the cost of living or housing was the most important problem facing Maine.

As President Donald Trump suffers historic unpopularity amid a flailing economy, the most marked shift has been concern about the cost of living. Where just 4% of Mainers said it was their No. 1 issue in March 2025, that number has shot up to 20% this month.

Collins’ popularity has been in a dramatic freefall in the era of Trump 2.0, to the point where a late January Morning Consult poll showed her to be the second-least popular US senator, behind only the former longtime GOP leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

While Democratic Party insiders have long argued that voters prefer a safer, moderate candidate when ousting a hated incumbent, observers say Platner’s success over the candidate backed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and much of the party establishment is redefining what it means to be “electable” in a swing state.

“The fatal part of this poll for Mills isn’t even the massive lead Platner has,” said Drop Site News co-founder Ryan Grim. “It’s that he is 10 points more electable against Collins, which is the real priority for Maine voters who don’t want her in office anymore.”

New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells said: “This is a small-sample poll, and there’s a long way to go. But if something like this comes to pass—Platner stomping Mills in the primary, then cruising to a double-digit win in the general election—it wouldn’t just be a Senate-seat victory but a narrative earthquake.”

Florida Man Can't Stop Talking

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How Trump’s big climate finding repeal could actually hurt big oil

The Trump administration’s repeal of a foundational climate determination could clear a path for new litigation and policies targeting big oil, legal experts say. Earlier this month, Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a rule revoking the “endangerment finding”, a 2009 determination that established that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare. The move eliminated federal limits on climate-warming emissions from motor vehicles, and is expected to extend to all other pollution sources.

Critics say the change was designed to reward oil companies, which poured record sums into Trump’s campaign. Ironically, it could also weaken a shield the fossil fuel industry has used against attempts to make it pay climate damages around the US. The future of that legal shield will soon face a major test as the supreme court considers a fossil fuel industry petition to quash a climate lawsuit filed by a Colorado city.

In recent years, dozens of US states and local governments have brought climate-focused lawsuits against big oil. Since 2024, Vermont and New York have also passed “climate superfund” policies that compel oil majors to help cover the costs of climate disasters. Fossil fuel companies and their allies have claimed that these laws and lawsuits should be thrown out because they are pre-empted by the federal Clean Air Act. The endangerment finding rollback could topple that reasoning, said Pat Parenteau, environmental law expert at Vermont Law School. “I don’t see how oil companies can, with a straight face, any longer make that argument,” he said.

In 2011, the supreme court dismissed a climate lawsuit by Connecticut against a power company, saying emissions should be regulated by the EPA under the Clean Air Act, not the courts. Since then, nearly a dozen climate lawsuits against big oil have been dismissed on similar grounds. Many of those dismissals have been appealed. Now, if the federal government no longer regulates greenhouse gases, no federal law should be read to preclude other efforts to control them, said Parenteau.

Public nuisance claims – alleging companies harmed communities’ health and safety and should fund abatement – may be especially benefited by the endangerment finding’s rescission, said Michael Gerrard, the founder of Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. But oil companies have argued that suits framed around deceptive messaging or marketing – rather than emissions – are still fundamentally about pollution and should be pre-empted by the Clean Air Act, said Parenteau. “All climate accountability cases could be affected,” he said.

US datacenters face slew of problems amid grassroots protests against AI

Cancellations and delays of new US datacenters have increased as the artificial intelligence boom runs up against a slate of issues, including supply chain snags, energy shortages and tariff-induced restraints. Grassroots opposition from local communities has also derailed some plans, and some investors have grown wary of datacenters amid fears of an AI bubble.

Dozens of plans for datacenters were killed or delayed in December or January, according to reports from the investment research firm MacroEdge and climate news outlet Heatmap. MacroEdge’s research identified 26 cancellations through January – up from one in October.

The complex knot of issues raises questions about the US’s ability to quickly facilitate the datacenter boom. Because the increase in production has been powering US growth over the last 18 months, major delays could have broader economic implications, MacroEdge’s chief economist, Don Johnson, wrote. “The [Trump] administration is going to be scrambling to find its next growth engine as the datacenter machine winds down as a tailwind,” Johnson wrote.

Dozens of proposals for new hyper-scale datacenters, which house the infrastructure for artificial intelligence, have been proposed across the US. The centers can consume as much power as the largest US cities, meaning grids need to rapidly expand their infrastructure, adding transformers, circuit breakers, high-voltage cables, steel poles and other pieces of equipment, to connect datacenters to the grid.

Connecting to the grid is “the No 1 challenge we’re seeing”, Marsden Hanna, head of energy and sustainability for Google, said at a utility industry conference last month. “We have utilities in many markets telling us four or five, sometimes 10 years to interconnect,” Hanna said, adding that one utility told Google it would take 12 years just to study the interconnection timeline. ... Many grids simply cannot generate enough power, or add it in time to meet datacenter developers’ timelines, and the process of adding power supply to the grid is slow.

A Warming Planet Makes Nor'easters & Other Storms More Intense: Climate Scientist Michael Mann

Citizen scientists discover a Great Barrier Reef coral giant ‘like a rolling meadow’

Citizen scientists have discovered what they believe is one of the largest coral colonies ever documented on the Great Barrier Reef. The coral spans approximately 111 metres in maximum length and covers an estimated area of 3,973 sq m – about half the size of a soccer field. The Pavona clavus coral was first found by Jan Pope in waters a few hours offshore from Cairns. It was identified as part of the Great Reef Census, a citizen science project run by Citizens of the Reef.

Pope, who has been diving on the Great Barrier Reef for 35 years, described it as “a very surreal underwater landscape. It looks like a rolling meadow.” Pope’s daughter, Sophie Kalkowski-Pope, surveyed the site with her mother a fortnight later. “We had no idea that something so significant was right here on our doorstep,” she said. Kalkowski-Pope, marine operations coordinator at Citizens of the Reef, said the census project used crowd-sourced images to monitor coral cover across the Great Barrier Reef. The organisation estimates it has surveyed a quarter of the reef since 2020.

An aim of the project is to identify key source reefs – “hotspots of resilience” that can supply other reefs with larvae when they spawn, Kalkowski-Pope said.

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Also of Interest

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

Despite Four Weeks Of Build-Up Trump’s Choices On Iran Are Still The Same

Armed Madhouse – America’s Coming Suez Moment

US Deploys F-22 Fighter Jets to Southern Israel as Massive Military Buildup Continues

Standing with Iran

Israel Threatens Lebanon’s Civilian Infrastructure Will Be ‘Hit Hard’ If Hezbollah Is Involved in Iran War

US Military Boards Third Oil Tanker in the Indian Ocean That it Tracked from the Caribbean

Year 4: The Timeline That Tells the Tale

Is Virtue An Advantage Or Disadvantage For Societies?

As Trump Imposes New Tariffs, State Lawmakers Demand Direct Refunds for Americans

‘A feedback loop with no brake’: how an AI doomsday report shook US markets

Yosemite firefall marvels visitors despite heavy snow

Texas republican congressman refuses to resign after allegations of affair with staffer

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A Little Night Music

Fats Domino - The Fat Man

Fats Domino - Walking to New Orleans

Fats Domino – I Hear You Knocking

Fats Domino - Whole Lotta Lovin

Fats Domino – Help Me

Fats Domino - My Girl Josephine

Fats Domino - I'm In Love Again

Fats Domino – I'm Walkin'

Fats Domino - Please Don't Leave Me

Fats Domino – Stay Away

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