Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features r&b singer Sugarpie Desanto. Enjoy!

“The dirty secret of fascism is that its appeal is not rational; it is, therefore, impervious to rational argument. You cannot talk someone out of a feeling of hatred.”

-- Katherine Cross

News and Opinion

After Democrats fund concentration camps Trump renews threat of mass immigrant raids “sometime after July Fourth”

Speaking at a news conference after the G-20 summit in Japan, President Donald Trump said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would soon carry out the mass round-ups of immigrants that he had originally ordered for June 23. “Unless we do something pretty miraculous,” he said, the raids would begin “sometime after July Fourth.” He added, “We will be removing large numbers of people.”

The raids were set to begin June 23 in ten cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, Washington and Houston, with thousands of ICE agents to deploy into immigrant neighborhoods. They have orders to arrest not only specific targeted individuals, but any undocumented person they encountered in the course of the sweeps. ICE officials emphasized that they would seize entire families as part of the raids.

Trump temporarily postponed the raids on June 22 after a telephone conversation with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The leading congressional Democrat evidently pleaded with Trump to delay the raids until after passage of a $4.6 billion emergency appropriations bill providing money for the network of detention facilities along the US-Mexico border. It is highly likely that Pelosi argued that it would be more politically difficult for the Democrats to approve the plan if they had to vote amid widespread publicity over ICE agents smashing down doors, dragging away families, including babies and small children, and locking them up or deporting them summarily.

The bill was passed last week with a majority of both Senate and House Democrats voting to provide the massive increase in funding for Trump’s concentration camps. Two days after the House vote that sent the legislation to the White House for Trump’s signature, the president announced that the raids would now proceed, as soon as next weekend. The passage of the funding bill makes the Democrats full partners with Trump in the savage repression of immigrants, which is a preparation for similar attacks on the working class as a whole. Trump paid tribute to Pelosi in his remarks in Japan. “She really worked with us,” he said.

More Than 700 Migrants Forced to Share 4 Showers at Texas Border Patrol Station

More than 700 migrants have to share just four showers at a Border Patrol station in El Paso, according to a report by the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security.

Inspectors found horrible conditions at the station, the name of which is redacted in the report, obtained by NBC News. The station, toured on May 7, is so crowded that more than half the migrants there are being held outside, according to the report. The ones who are kept inside are held in cells that are so crowded they can’t even lie down to sleep — one cell with a maximum capacity of 35 people held 155 men, according to the report. The situation is getting so dire that agents are gearing up for riots.

Overcrowding and poor hygiene is facilitating the spread of disease at the station, leading to flu, lice, and scabies outbreaks. The report found that more than 75 people were treated for lice in a single day.

These conditions don’t appear to be limited to a single station. Last month, BuzzFeed News obtained a draft of an inspector general report detailing a visit to two Border Patrol stations in the Rio Grande Valley during the week of June 10. The inspectors who visited those facilities also saw adults being held in standing-room-only cells for upwards of a week. Most of them hadn’t showered for almost a month and were instead given wet wipes to clean themselves, according to the report. Instead of hot meals, they were given bologna sandwiches, which the report said led to medical issues like constipation.

A Congressional Tour of Border Patrol Stations Just “Went Off the Rails”

A tour of two Border Patrol facilities for more than a dozen members of Congress just “went off the rails,” Rep. Joe Kennedy told VICE News. The tour, organized by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, took place Monday after weeks of accusations that hundreds of migrants, many of them children, are being held in squalid conditions after attempting to seek asylum. The lawmakers wanted to survey the facilities and ask migrants about their experiences, but Customs and Border Protection (CBP) wouldn’t fully cooperate, according to the group. ...

Customs and Border Protection officers told the delegation that they couldn’t take photos of the facility — though Kennedy said one guard tried to take a selfie with New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — or speak to detainees. The politicians managed to speak to a few migrants anyway, Kennedy said, and the conditions they described were horrific. ...

On Twitter, Ocasio-Cortez said detainees were told to drink out of toilets — some facilities have combination toilet and sinks. Ocasio-Cortez said she spoke with several women at the El Paso facility, one of whom described the treatment there as “psychological warfare.”

This was in fact the type of toilet we saw in the cell.

Except there was just one, and the sink portion was not functioning - @AyannaPressley smartly tried to open the faucet, and nothing came out.

So the women were told they could drink out of the bowl. https://t.co/rcu9Rt6B2x

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 1, 2019

California Democratic Rep. Pete Aguilar, told VICE News that children are still being separated from their families at the border. ...

Shortly before the tour began, ProPublica reported that thousands of CBP officers belong to a Facebook group where members regularly share racist anti-immigrant memes and derogatory posts about Democratic politicians. Ocasio-Cortez is a popular target for the group, which boasts more than 9,500 members. “On the heels of the ProPublica article this morning, it’s really hard for us to build the level of trust that’s necessary to give [CBP] the resources they need,” Aguilar said. “If there are 9,500 individuals on this Facebook page, that means there are individuals on every facility — in every department — that are part of this group that was spewing racist, anti-immigrant messages and messages against members of the House of Representatives.”

Just left the 1st CBP facility.

I see why CBP officers were being so physically &sexually threatening towards me.

Officers were keeping women in cells w/ no water & had told them to drink out of the toilets.

This was them on their GOOD behavior in front of members of Congress.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 1, 2019

There are 20,000 TOTAL Customs & Border Patrol agents in the US.

9,500 - almost HALF that number - are in a racist & sexually violent secret CBP Facebook group.

They’re threatening violence on members of Congress. How do you think they’re treating caged children+families? https://t.co/AfDB50cgHQ

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 1, 2019

Now I’ve seen the inside of these facilities.

It’s not just the kids. It’s everyone. People drinking out of toilets, officers laughing in front of members Congress.

I brought it up to their superiors. They said “officers are under stress & act out sometimes.” No accountability.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 1, 2019

After I forced myself into a cell w/ women&began speaking to them, one of them described their treatment at the hands of officers as “psychological warfare” - waking them at odd hours for no reason, calling them wh*res, etc.

Tell me what about that is due to a “lack of funding?”

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 1, 2019

If you've ever wondered what you would do during the rise of Nazi Germany, well now you know. pic.twitter.com/czVt15KIMH

— Turtles (@alt_urtles) July 1, 2019

#NeverAgainIsNow: 36 Arrested As Hundreds of Jewish Protesters Block Road to Migrant Detention Center

Rejecting the notion that denouncing the Trump administration's immigrant detention centers as "concentration camps" does harm to the memory of the Holocaust, 200 Jewish people demonstrated at a facility in New Jersey Sunday evening and demanded the release of the thousands of immigrants in U.S. custody. Grassroots group Never Again Action called for all detention centers to be closed and for the U.S. government to protect asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants—instead of sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into communities where the agency has arrested hundreds so far this year in raids.

The group reported that 36 participants were arrested for blocking the road to the Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, New Jersey. ...

200 Jews are shutting down an ICE detention center because we when we say never again we fucking mean it. #NeverAgainIsNow pic.twitter.com/iVBL6tv85z

— Alyssa Rubin (@aly_mixed_up) June 30, 2019

Holding signs reading, "Never again for anyone" and "Jews demand freedom for immigrants," the demonstrators stressed the need to recognize the parallels between the Trump administration's arrests of undocumented immigrants and detention of asylum seekers and the treatment of Jewish people and other marginalized groups by the Nazi regime in the 1930s and 40s. "I'm a Jewish Latina. The military camps where my people are being held today are concentration camps; just like the camps my people were held in 75 years ago were concentration camps," said Tae Phoenix, another protester. "That's why I'm here. That's why we're here."

The demonstration came a week after conservatives attacked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) for labeling theadministration's detention centers—where legal advocates recently found hundreds of children living without access to soap, personal hygiene necessities, and sufficient food—"concentration camps."

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum rejected Ocasio-Cortez's statement, saying the museum "unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary." In its statement of purpose ahead of the protest in Elizabeth, Never Again Action did not mention the museum's stance, though the group made clear its disagreement.

"As Jews, we were taught to never let anything like the Holocaust happen again," the group said. "We refuse to wait and see what happens here now." Similar actions are planned for Tuesday in cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston. "ICE isn't just at the border—they're in every community," the group said in a video calling for others to join their campaign. "Since politicians won't shut down ICE, we will. It's going to take all of us."

Is the $4 Billion Border Aid Bill for ICE or for Children?

The Trump Administration Is Planning Mass Video Proceedings for Immigrants in Tents on the Border

A Trump administration program that banishes asylum-seekers to perilous Mexican border cities could expand exponentially — and disastrously — with a new plan to hold mass video proceedings in tents along the border. Officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, the Trump program has already pushed over 15,000 migrants seeking asylum out of the U.S. and into areas just across the international line, many of which the State Department advises Americans to limit travel to because they are so crime-ridden. Many immigrant rights advocates call the program the “Migrant Persecution Protocols.”

Until this year, immigrants who requested asylum in the U.S. were either put in immigration detention centers or released to family and friends in the U.S. to pursue their claims. But in late January, the MPP was instituted in three U.S. cities: El Paso, Texas; Calexico, California; and San Diego. People assigned to the MPP in those cities are sent across the border to Juarez, Mexicali, and Tijuana. There they must wait, often for months, to return for their immigration hearings in the U.S. — before being sent back to Mexico to await their next hearing. In Mexico, few of these immigrants have been able to work legally, and many are homeless. As stateless people with no family or friends in Mexico, they are sitting ducks for severe violence. During five weeks of attending court hearings and interviewing Central American and Cuban immigrants in Juarez, The Intercept heard numerous accounts of adults and children being robbed, kidnapped for ransom, raped, and threatened with murder. Most migrants stuck in Mexico under the MPP say they are deeply fearful about being there.

Yet the Department of Homeland Security appears ready to vastly expand the MPP, not just with more crowded courts, but with mass video hearings held in tents presided over by distant judges. So far, the MPP has sent immigrants to Mexico but returned them for hearings in traditional brick-and-mortar courtrooms, where immigration judges almost always sit a few feet from the migrants and their lawyers, and journalists and representatives from immigrant advocacy groups observe from benches in the spectator section. But the new plan is to erect giant tents, each one subdivided into several courts, and each court containing migrants but no judges, reporters, or observers.

The scenario was described at an hourlong briefing in early June given by DHS officials to several senior staff on Capitol Hill, according to a person with knowledge of the details of the meeting. ... The Capitol Hill meeting “was very detailed,” the source said. The tents were dubbed “port courts,” and they were described as a way to supplement traditional, already crowded immigration courts near the border. The source said that the tents were being considered for Brownsville, Donna, Laredo, Del Rio, and El Paso in Texas; Nogales and Yuma in Arizona; as well as Calexico and San Diego. Of those cities, three or four will be chosen to host courts in tents, the source said. ...

Information that the activists and policy groups have received indicates that immigration reporters and observers located at the border will also be banned from local proceedings. Instead, they will have to travel to the judges’ far-flung courts in the interior. The task of the public and the media will be further complicated by the fact that asylum cases often change judges and cities on short notice. Immigrants, too, will lose their ability to have family and witnesses attend court with them.

Iran breaches uranium limit set by 2015 nuclear deal

Iran Says It Just Breached the Nuclear Deal’s Limit on Enriched Uranium

Iran announced it has broken the limit on its enriched uranium stockpile that was laid out in the 2015 nuclear deal made with world powers, state-run media reported Monday. The breach threatens to kill the deal entirely and ramps up tensions over Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran’s decision to break the limit is a response to President Donald Trump’s move to pull out of the deal and reimpose economic sanctions on the country. European countries that are still in the accord warned Iran not to go through with its plan to exceed the limit, but Iran said it did not receive enough in trade assistance to make it back off.

State Department says it likely won't invoke 2001 war authority in any Iran clash

The State Department has told Congress it does not intend to cite the post-September 11 presidential war authority to take military action against Iran, with certain exceptions.

Lawmakers from both parties have cautioned the Trump White House against invoking the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which targeted those responsible for the 9/11 attacks, as the justification for war with Iran, even as tensions between Tehran and Washington have soared in recent weeks.

In a little-noticed letter sent to the House Foreign Affairs Committee Friday, Assistant Secretary of State for legislative affairs Mary Elizabeth Taylor said that “the administration has not, to date, interpreted either AUMF as authorizing military force against Iran, except as may be necessary to defend U.S or partner forces engaged in counterterrorism operations of operations to establish a stable, democratic Iraq.”

Iraqi PM decree curbs powers of Iranian-allied militias

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi has issued a decree curbing the powers of mostly Iranian-backed Shia militias and forcing them to integrate into Iraq's formal armed forces - a politically risky move seemingly aimed at placating the United States.

The armed groups - known collectively as the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) - helped Iraqi and US-led international coalition forces drive out occupying Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) fighters, and now have broad influence in Iraqi politics.

An alliance of militia leaders and fighters came second in a 2018 parliamentary election.

The PMF already reports to the prime minister, who is the commander-in-chief of Iraq's armed forces, but Abdul Mahdi's decree forces groups that make up the PMF to choose between political and paramilitary activity.

Those who choose to integrate into the military must abandon their old names and sever ties to political organisations. Those who choose politics will not be allowed to carry weapons, the decree said. Headquarters, economic offices, and checkpoints manned by militias are to be shut down.

Democrats "shooting themselves in the foot" by attacking Trump on North Korea

Bolton Rejects Reports of ‘Nuclear Freeze’ Compromise With North Korea

John Bolton issued an angry Tweet on Monday condemning reports from the New York Times that the Trump Administration might seek a compromise with North Korea involving a freeze of the nation’s nuclear arsenal instead of immediately insisting on denuclearization.

Bolton insisted that neither he nor anyone else had ever discussed such an idea, or even heard of the idea that such a deal was under consideration. He demanded that “there should be consequences” for the newspaper for daring to publish it. ...

Bolton may be trying to shoot down the media reports on what is being considered, to try to direct negotiations toward a more hardline US position, the kind of position that has been failing for months.

Blue States Are Finally Worried About Abortion — And They’re Doing Something About It

Missouri could become the only state in the country without an abortion provider this summer, if a state agency agrees to uphold a decision to strip Planned Parenthood of St. Louis of its license to provide abortions. But just 20 minutes and one state line away lies another abortion clinic, one that’s free to operate because it exists in a parallel universe where abortion is far less regulated — a universe called Illinois. ...

Illinois isn’t only state taking a stand for abortion rights: While conservative legislators have spent the year passing some of the most ambitious abortion restrictions seen in the United States in decades, legislators in blue jurisdictions are moving aggressively in the opposite direction. ...

So far in 2019, at least 24 states have introduced 97 bills to strengthen access to abortion, including repealing old laws that could have limited access in a post- Roe United States, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks legislation related to abortion. Six states have successfully enacted 29 abortion rights-supporting measures. ...

The Guttmacher Institute found that eight states so far this year have introduced measures intended to affirm abortion as a right — a move that would, essentially, codify Roe into state law, regardless of the status of the landmark Supreme Court decision. So far, they’ve passed in four states, including Illinois, New York, and Vermont.

Renegade Inc: Full Marx - Has Karl had the last laugh?

After Sanders Points Out Poorest Have Zero or Negative Wealth, WaPo Fact Checker Slammed for Calling That Fact 'Not Especially Meaningful'

Critics of massive wealth inequality in the United States defended a statistic frequently cited by 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday after Glenn Kessler, author of the Washington Post's "Fact Checker" column, claimed the fact that the bottom half of the country has zero or negative wealth was "not especially meaningful."

The statistic in question was brought up most recently by Sanders during the Democratic primary debate last week - "We have three people in this country owning more wealth than the bottom half of America," Sanders said.

The statement, Kessler said, is factually true—but he rejected Sanders's suggestion that the inequality evidenced by the fact means that a major correction to the U.S. economy is required.

"This snappy talking point is based on numbers that add up, but it's also a question of comparing apples to oranges," Kessler wrote. "But people in the bottom half have essentially no wealth, as debts cancel out whatever assets they might have. So the comparison is not especially meaningful." ...

THINGS YOU CAN'T MAKE UP: WashPost "fact checker" @GlennKesslerWP criticizes @BernieSanders for saying 3 families control more wealth than the bottom 50% - Kessler says because the bottom 50% have no wealth at all, this is "not especially meaningful." https://t.co/Piv4ZCJxA0 pic.twitter.com/k7qGpqGgjD

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) July 1, 2019

Kessler's dismissal of the plight of middle-income and lower-income Americans was indicative of the desire of many to ignore "perfectly correct data" which "point out ugly truths" about the United States, wrote Greg Greene, a blogger for Planned Parenthood Action.

Trump: I may tackle homelessness because leaders 'can't be looking at that'

Donald Trump said he might “intercede” to “clean up” homelessness in San Francisco and Los Angeles, noting that world leaders “can’t be looking at that”. In a conversation with the Fox News host Tucker Carlson broadcast Monday evening, Trump called the situation “disgraceful” and implied that it was making police officers sick.

“I’m looking at it very seriously,” Trump said of homelessness, according to a Fox News summary of the Carlson interview. “They can’t be looking at scenes like you see in Los Angeles and San Francisco,” Trump said, referring to world leaders. “We’re looking at it very seriously. We may intercede,” he added.

“You can’t have what’s happening – where police officers are getting sick just by walking the beat,” the president continued. “I mean, they’re getting actually very sick, where people are getting sick, where the people living there living in hell, too.” The president may have been referring to a report from last month, where a police officer in Los Angeles was diagnosed last month with typhoid fever, potentially in connection with work in an area downtown with a large homeless population.

The first two and a half years of the Trump administration have yielded few traces of action on the social policy front, apart from a criminal justice reform bill. Trump has repeatedly attacked society’s most vulnerable, including immigrants and refugees. Yet in his interview with Carlson, Trump appeared enthused about his plan to address homelessness.

“When we have leaders of the world coming in to see the president of the United States and they’re riding down a highway, they can’t be looking at that,” Trump said of homelessness. “I really believe that it hurts our country.”

Here's one way Democrats can defeat Trump: be radically anti-war

President Trump is at it again. He promised to extricate the United States from endless war in the Middle East and still says that’s the goal. Yet he is taking almost every action, short of launching new invasions, to bring war upon us. In addition to defying Congress’s demand to cease support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, he is holding the Iranian people hostage through draconian sanctions, demanding extreme and ill-defined concessions to make the suffering stop. Trump’s schizophrenic foreign policy is almost too easy to criticize. It confounds Democrats much as Trump’s domestic policy did in 2016: the target seems so exposed that it’s actually difficult to land on a line of attack. In the first Democratic debates, candidates alternately accused Trump of accommodating adversaries (Russia and North Korea) and trying to crush them (Iran). Is the greater problem that Trump is alienating allies or that he’s indulging those like Saudi Arabia? The American people strongly disapprove of Trump’s handling of foreign policy, but they cannot hear every message at once.

Democrats have a unique opportunity to close the traditional national-security gap with Republicans, but only if they choose a clear direction for foreign policy and not just against Trump. They should listen to the American people and offer them a genuinely pro-peace message — standing firmly against Trump’s bellicosity as well as decades of bipartisan military intervention. This was the message some voters heard from Trump last time. Now Trump has failed to deliver, and Democrats can capitalize on that. ... The establishment assumes that Iran can never possess nuclear weapons, yet the United States lives with nuclear-armed adversaries like Russia and China and aligns with the nuclear-armed military dictatorship in Pakistan. In the first debates, however, the Democratic candidates gave indecisive messages. Although most supported returning to the nuclear agreement that Trump breached, several candidates harped on the agreement’s imperfections, repeating a neoconservative talking point. Senator Cory Booker even parroted Trump’s empty vow to negotiate a “better deal.” ...

Two new studies reveal how poorly Washington represents Americans’ foreign policy priorities: one by the Eurasia Group Foundation (EGF) and another by the Center for American Progress (CAP). Both reports emphasize Americans’ frustration with military overextension and their preference for diplomatic engagement. CAP asked respondents to react to 20 different statements about foreign policy. The statement that received the most support proposed investing money at home rather than abroad. Which received the least? “The United States must prioritize spending for the military and defense, even if it means making cuts in other areas.” Likewise, EGF found American voters more than twice as likely to support cutting over raising military spending. By lavishing near-record funding on the Pentagon, the Trump administration has handed Democrats a gift. Democrats need to be willing to use it. ...

The last two presidents, Obama and Trump, were unlikely aspirants to the office partly because they bucked national-security orthodoxy, blasting Middle East wars and the political class that started them. Obama and Trump won their elections partly for the same reason. Once in office, however, they struggled to deliver. Endless war continues; diplomacy is in tatters; Americans suffer from underinvestment where they live and work; and the greatest threats, like climate change, loom larger across the globe. In 2020, the candidate who not only identifies these problems, but offers real solutions, will benefit.

Buttigieg raises $24.8m, eclipsing Sanders as candidate cull looms

Pete Buttigieg has said he took in $24.8m during the second fundraising quarter, more than triple the amount he raised during the first three months of the year for his surprise hit presidential campaign. Buttigieg was the first White House contender to announce his fundraising numbers for the quarter, which ended at midnight. The $24.8m sum topped the $18m raised last quarter by the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who led the Democratic field in fundraising during that period. ...

The mayor of South Bend, Indiana is doing well enough in public polls and has received contributions from more than 400,000 people, securing his spot in the September debates. Democratic National Committee requires participants to hit 2% in multiple polls and 130,000 individual donors.

Currently, the only other locks for the fall debates are former Vice-President Joe Biden, Sanders, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and California senator Kamala Harris.

'Precipitous' fall in Antarctic sea ice since 2014 revealed

The vast expanse of sea ice around Antarctica has suffered a “precipitous” fall since 2014, satellite data shows, and fell at a faster rate than seen in the Arctic. The plunge in the average annual extent means Antarctica lost as much sea ice in four years as the Arctic lost in 34 years. The cause of the sharp Antarctic losses is as yet unknown and only time will tell whether the ice recovers or continues to decline.

But researchers said it showed ice could disappear much more rapidly than previously thought. Unlike the melting of ice sheets on land, sea ice melting does not raise sea level. But losing bright white sea ice means the sun’s heat is instead absorbed by dark ocean waters, leading to a vicious circle of heating.

Sea ice spreads over enormous areas and has major impacts on the global climate system, with losses in the Arctic strongly linked to extreme weather at lower latitudes, such as heatwaves in Europe.

The loss of sea ice in the Arctic clearly tracks the rise in global air temperatures resulting from human-caused global heating, but the two poles are very different. The Arctic is an ocean surrounded by continents and is exposed to warming air, while Antarctica is a freezing continent surrounded by oceans and is protected from warming air by a circle of strong winds. Antarctic sea ice had been slowly increasing during the 40 years of measurements and reached a record maximum in 2014. But since then sea ice extent has nosedived, reaching a record low in 2017.

'Trump Is Not Above the Law': New Lawsuit Aims to Defeat Keystone XL

As climate scientists on Monday issued a fresh warning about the devastating consequences of continuing to burn and extract fossil fuels, national green groups filed a new federal lawsuit targeting the Trump administration's efforts to force through the long-delayed Keystone XL crude oil pipeline. The lawsuit (pdf) was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana, the same court that halted construction on the dirty energy project last year, ruling that the administration hadn't adequately considered the consequences of the pipeline when approving it. In response, President Donald Trump revoked the initial permit and issued a new one in March.

"After we won in court, Trump tried to skirt the law," Jackie Prange, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said in a statement Monday. "But as this new lawsuit shows, no president can, on a whim, unilaterally exempt the government from complying with our nation's bedrock environmental laws."

Jared Margolis, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), vowed that opponents of the pipeline "won't stop fighting Trump's underhanded attempt to dodge the courts and ram this dirty fossil fuel project down America's throat." The NRDC and CBD joined with Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, Bold Alliance, and Northern Plains Resource Council in launching the new legal battle, which specifically challenges the Army Corps of Engineers' approval of the pipeline that would transport up to 830,000 barrels of crude oil daily across nearly 1,200 miles from Canada's Alberta tar sands to Steele City, Nebraska.

"The Army Corps' lack of transparency in their review process for the Keystone XL pipeline is deeply disturbing," said Marcie Keever, legal director at Friends of the Earth. "On such a major project, the communities who are on the front lines deserve a comprehensive environmental review to protect themselves and our environment. Rubber-stamping Trump's attempt to build the dirty Keystone XL pipeline behind closed doors is devastating for the farmers, tribes, and communities along its route."

In addition to filing suit Monday, the groups also sent notices to the Army Corps, Trump, companies that would construct power lines for Keystone XL's pump stations, and TC Energy—the pipeline company formerly called TransCanada—informing each recipient that their actions related to the project violate the law. The notices set up an opportunity for future legal action under the Endangered Species Act.

Jakarta residents to sue government over severe air pollution

Tired of breathing in some of the world’s filthiest air, a group of activists and environmentalists in Jakarta has decided to sue the Indonesian government to take action. Air quality in the south-east Asian metropolis has plunged dramatically in the past month and recorded worse conditions than notoriously polluted cities such as Delhi and Beijing.

Taken from my office, 24th floor. SCBD.
#SetorFotoPolusi pic.twitter.com/UZSCgMk9ed

— Varadhita Eriyadi (@dhitavarra) June 26, 2019

On 25 June, the capital registered an air quality index (AQI) of 240 according to the dynamic IQAirVisual index. For comparison, London’s current index reading is 12 while San Francisco is on 26.

The Jakarta smog has now prompted more than 30 plaintiffs, including activists, environmentalists, civil servants, artists, and businesspeople to band together and work on submitting a civil lawsuit against the government this month. The case will be filed against the Indonesian president, as well as the ministries of health, home affairs and environment, and the governors of Jakarta, Banten and West Java.

“We hope that through this lawsuit the government can improve existing policies and take effective steps to overcome air pollution because current policies are not working,” explained Ayu Eza Tiara, a lawyer from the Jakarta Legal Institute, which is handling the case.

Also of Interest

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

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Other Democrats Reject “Staged” Tour of Migrant Detention Facilities

Hope for a Breakthrough in Korea

'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

In the world’s northernmost town, temperatures have risen by 4C, devastating homes, wildlife and even the cemetery. Will the rest of the planet heed its warning?

After Biden’s Sharp Decline, Wall Street Investors Reassessing Other Blue Chips

A Little Night Music

Sugar Pie Desanto - You Got Me Running

Sugar Pie DeSanto - Baby It Ain't Right

Sugar Pie Desanto & Etta James - I Don't Feel Sorry

Sugarpie DeSanto - The One Who Really Loves You

Sugar Pie Desanto - It Won't be Long

Sugar Pie DeSanto - Witch For A Night

Sugar Pie DeSanto - Use What You Got

Sugar Pie DeSanto - A Little Taste Of Soul

Sugar Pie DeSanto - Git Back

Sugar Pie DeSanto - Slip-In Mules

Sugar Pie & Pee Wee - One,Two, Let's Rock

Sugar Pie DeSanto - Go Go Power