This post was originally published on American Jewish World Service – AJWS.
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My youngest son, Silas, grew up fishing the blue-ribbon trout streams of Alberta’s Eastern Slopes.
The first time he set a fly on the narrow, crystal clear waters of the Livingstone River – a couple of hours south-west of Calgary – he knew that he had found his place. We both did.
Photo by Stephen Legault It was a fabulous feeling to fall in love with a landscape not because I was necessarily drawn to it – though I had been since the early 1990s – but because my fourteen-year-old son was enamoured by it.
Many Albertans enjoy a special relationship with the Eastern Slopes; a range of mountains and foothills that run from the Alberta/Montana border, along the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains and Foothills, north to Jasper National Park, the Wilmore Wilderness and the Kakwa Wildland.
This is where our water comes from; it’s where many of Alberta’s most iconic species – from grizzly bears to bull trout – live, and it is where we retreat with our friends and families to hunt, fish, hike, camp and paddle.
The Eastern Slopes are part of our province’s narrative. They are part of the story we tell about who we are and what we stand for.
That relationship and that narrative, however, are at risk because of the Alberta government’s reckless, ill-conceived plans to allow new open pit and mountain top removal coal mines in these watersheds along Alberta’s Eastern Slopes.
Take Action: Tell the Alberta Government to Stop Coal Mines in the Eastern Slopes
It doesn’t matter to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, and Minister of Energy and Mines Brian Jean that 90% of Albertans oppose new coal mines; what matters is the procession of coal company lobbyists, including many former provincial government employees, who keep knocking at their doors to demand access to coal used for making steel in India, China and South East Asia.
In a string of haphazard decisions starting in 2020, the Alberta government has alternatively opened the Eastern Slopes for further coal exploration, reinstated the 1976 coal policy, and then, in January of 2025, reopening the Eastern Slopes for exploration and mining.
As hard as it is to believe, there is still a strong market for coal in China, Asia and elsewhere in the world. While western countries appetite for steel making coal is expected to flatten in 2025 after a record high level of consumption between 2020 and 2025, India and China’s use is forecast to continue to grow.
Unfortunately, market forces alone are not going to keep coal companies out of the Eastern Slopes of Alberta.
While alternatives to coal fired blast furnaces – including electric arc furnaces and hydrogen powered steel making – are beginning to gain traction, these technical solutions are still years from being adopted at the scale needed to sideline coal. That means it is up to you and me to stop this. We’ll have to do it the old fashioned way: advocacy.
Take Action: Tell the Alberta Government to Stop Coal Mines in the Eastern Slopes
As Environmental Defence’s lead for the Alberta Energy Transition, it’s impossible to ignore the impact that coal has on our climate, our communities and our economy. In this special series of blog reports on Alberta’s Eastern Slopes coal industry, including how it has become deeply and profoundly corrupt, and its impact on our ability to see clear-eyed to the future of the energy transition, we’ll explore these challenges and seek out opportunities to take action.
My motivation remains simple. My son is now a young adult, and like him there are many young people in Alberta who dream about casting a dry fly on the undulating back of the Livingstone, the Oldman, the Castle, and Highwood, and the Crowsnest Rivers. My son didn’t know this country before the threat of coal mining; now it’s my goal that he gets to know the Eastern Slopes after this threat has been banished.
That’s what gets me and hundreds, even thousands of other passionate defenders of the Eastern Slopes, up in the morning. It’s why I hope you will join Environmental Defence in taking a stand against coal mining, and for wildlife, wild water, and the wild places we love.
Stay tuned for future blogs that look at the connection between coal mining and climate change, and how when water and wilderness are lost, they’re gone forever.
The post Stop Alberta Coal Mines: A Personal Connection to a Threatened Place appeared first on Environmental Defence.
This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
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As Gazans return under a ceasefire, the official death toll has risen beyond 60,000, including almost 18,000 children (Middle East Monitor, 2/2/25).
The official death count of Israel’s genocide is climbing as hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians resolutely march back to the north of Gaza. That’s in part because those returning to their demolished homes have been unearthing the remains of their missing loved ones whose deaths went unconfirmed for months.
Discoveries like these were anticipated by a study published in the prestigious British health journal Lancet (1/9/25) earlier this year. It estimated that the Gaza Health Ministry may have undercounted the deaths caused directly by the Israeli assault by 40%, placing the real toll closer to 65,000. This is before taking into account the indirect causes of death resulting from the onslaught, like disease, malnutrition and lack of clean water or adequate healthcare.
The study’s findings came as no surprise to experts, who for months have warned that Israel’s attacks on first responders, journalists and infrastructure, as well as its refusal to let in international human rights monitors and media organizations, were causing an undercount. But if all you read are major Western media outlets like the New York Times or CNN, their reports on the study (New York Times, 1/14/25; CNN, 1/9/25) may well have surprised you.
That’s because, over the course of Israel’s genocide, Western media have actively avoided investigating—and even downplayed—the true human costs of the war by eagerly parroting Israeli officials who cast doubt on the claims of the Gaza Health Ministry. Despite those supposed doubts, Western media default to citing the health ministry tally in day-to-day coverage of the war, while making little mention of the long-held consensus among health experts that far more Palestinians were dying than were being recorded (New York Times, 12/27/24; CNN, 8/16/24).
The downplaying can be seen in Western media’s repeated refrain that the health ministry is “Hamas-run” or “Hamas-controlled” (BBC, 12/3/23; New York Times, 10/19/23; CNN, 12/4/23) and therefore not to be trusted. More than adding doubt, labeling civilian infrastructure as “Hamas-controlled” puts Palestinians in harm’s way. Israel’s desire to paint anything Palestinian as Hamas is “an implicit association of Palestinians with evil, essentially making Palestinian lives dispensable,” writes Noora Said in Mondoweiss (12/29/23).
No more pressing task
The phrase “Hamas-run” (CBS, 9/21/24) was used to insinuate that death numbers might be exaggerated, when experts knew the official toll was certainly an undercount.
It stretches the mind to imagine a more pressing task for journalism than accurately reporting on an unfolding genocide. For US audiences, whose tax dollars are bankrolling the slaughter, news outlets should be making every effort to help them appreciate the full consequences of their government’s foreign policy.
That’s undoubtedly a difficult job. The sheer scale of destruction in Gaza, and its status as an open-air death camp walled off from the rest of the world, means outsiders don’t have the ability to get a complete picture of the devastation. That would require an exhaustive cross-referencing of Gaza Health Ministry documents and (Israeli-controlled) population registers, as well as a broad collection of witness testimonies that international observers just don’t have unfettered access to. But major Western media outlets need to ask themselves a question similar to what the International Court of Justice asked in January 2024: “What’s plausible?”
In addition to the most recent direct death estimate, a letter in the Lancet (7/20/24) by public health researchers took a stab at answering the broader question of all attributable deaths last July. Taking into account historical wartime data, the researchers suggested that for each death directly caused by Israeli weaponry, there could be four or more indirect deaths. “It is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza,” they wrote.
In October, 99 American medical practitioners who served in Gaza wrote a letter to then-President Joe Biden, estimating that at least 118,908 Palestinian had already been killed, directly or indirectly, by Israel. The physicians used a variety of methods, including a calculation of the minimum number of deaths likely to result from the number of civilians classified as facing catastrophic and emergency-level starvation.
Ideally, the vast resources of an outlet like the Times could be used to begin to corroborate these estimates from public health and medical researchers. At the very least, the fact that researchers estimate the true scale of death in Gaza to be three or more times the official tally should bear constant repetition in paragraphs that add context to daily news stories on the topic.
Sana Saeed, a leading critic of Western media’s coverage of Israel’s genocide, noted:
If your article can include a line about how the IDF denies yet another war crime that it’s very clearly committed, then your article can include how leading health studies are estimating that the number of slaughtered Palestinians exceeds 100,000.
‘Debate over credibility’
When the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs sought more identifying information about the list of Palestinians killed by Israel, the New York Times (5/15/24) leapt on this to insist that it “added fuel to a debate over the credibility of the Gazan authorities’ tallies of fatalities in the war.”
Western outlets haven’t just failed to consistently convey the full extent of the carnage in Gaza to their readers, they’ve actively downplayed it.
Take the Times story (5/15/24) headlined “How Many of Gaza’s Dead Are Women and Children? For 10,000, the Data Is Incomplete.” The article used the United Nation’s exclusion of some 10,000 confirmed casualties from the tally of women and children killed in Gaza, due to incomplete information, as an opportunity to launder Israeli claims discrediting the health ministry.
The UN’s acknowledgement that some data is incomplete has “added fuel to a debate over the credibility of the Gazan authorities’ tallies of fatalities in the war,” the article says. But who’s on either side of this “debate,” according to the Times? Affirming the tally’s credibility, we have Biden, the civilian casualty monitoring group Airwars and researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, according to the Times. On the other side, only Israel and the infamous neoconservative Elliott Abrams are credited.
The article acknowledged that the number of women and children dead can be used as an “indication of how many civilians have been killed, a question that lies at the heart of the criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war.” But nowhere in the piece was it mentioned that the UN secretary general has called Gaza a “graveyard for children,” or that just the month before, doctors in Gaza reported “a steady stream of children, elderly people and others who were clearly not combatants with single bullet wounds to the head or chest” (Guardian, 4/2/24), suggesting a practice of Israeli snipers targeting noncombatants.
In another article (1/22/24), headlined “The Decline in Deaths in Gaza,” the Times noted that “the daily death toll in Gaza has fallen in half over the past month, reflecting a change in war strategy.” Set aside that the article neglected to actually mention how many Palestinians had been killed by then. Instead, consider all the other factors that went unmentioned in the report: Had Israel’s devastating rampage up until then created new challenges to reporting fatalities? Was Israel’s strategy shifting focus to imposing a devastating blockade on humanitarian aid, eventually causing more starvation-related deaths? The answers are yes and yes.
‘Arguing for caution’
Credulously accepting Israeli and US claims that they were not responsible for the destruction of the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, CNN‘s Oliver Darcy (10/26/23) demanded of media outlets that quoted the Gaza Health Ministry: “Was there any regret repeating claims from the terrorist group?”
CNN similarly exemplifies Western media’s inclination to discredit the Gaza Health Ministry and downplay the death toll in Gaza. In February 2024, the Guardian (2/4/24) published the testimony of six CNN employees confirming that the network’s coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza is shaped by its management’s biased edicts that include restrictions on “quoting Hamas and reporting other Palestinian perspectives,” while “Israeli government statements are taken at face value.”
As FAIR (11/3/23) previously covered, after an Israeli strike on al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City killed hundreds of Palestinians, CNN (10/26/23) published an op-ed from its media reporter Oliver Darcy chastising Western outlets, including his own, for relying on health ministry claims about the strike. Instead, he demanded they retract their reporting, because Israel and the US had investigated the strike—a crime in which they were both implicated—and found no wrongdoing.
When CNN has published stories about the human consequences of Israel’s war, such as its coverage (8/16/24) of the health ministry’s toll surpassing 40,000, it has only made passing mention of the impact beyond the immediate death toll, referring to “the daily suffering, malnutrition and volatility in Gaza.” While in that report CNN apparently found no reason to bring up the Lancet letter published just one month earlier, it found plenty of space to uncritically state that “Israeli military officials have said they try to minimize harm to civilians in Gaza, and that Hamas bears the blame for using civilians as ‘human shields.’”
When Western outlets do publish the rare reports that convey a broader impact than just the health ministry tally, they still leave much to be desired. Take the Times’ coverage (7/11/24) of the Lancet letter projecting some 186,000 Palestinians killed by Israel. It started off by introducing the concept of excess deaths—which, almost a year into the genocide, may be the first time Times readers have been exposed to the concept—and explained that it “can provide a truer indication of the toll and scale of conflicts and other social upheaval.”
But right after mentioning the Lancet’s estimate, the Times said that it “immediately generated debate, with other researchers arguing for caution in any such projection.” What reason for caution did the Times provide? That any estimate would necessarily be tricky, because it would have to start with the health ministry’s data—which they acknowledged is imperfect, given the health system in Gaza’s almost total collapse. So instead of stressing a need for investigating the true cost of Israel’s war on Gaza, given the difficulty Palestinians are having reporting the toll, the Times found itself parroting urges against such inquiries, for the very same reason.
Israel’s assault on Gaza has been the first genocide live-streamed for the world to see. Journalists have more tools at their disposal than ever before to glean what information they can. Western media’s failure to do so will be recorded in history.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
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This post was originally published on American Jewish World Service – AJWS.
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This post was originally published on American Jewish World Service – AJWS.
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This post was originally published on American Jewish World Service – AJWS.
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A collection of Dissent’s writing on the union movement is out now. Get your copy today.
This post was originally published on Dissent Magazine.
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CNN (1/31/25) framed Elon Musk’s extra-constitutional power grab as part of “the war over federal spending.”
When President Donald Trump announced an unprecedented freeze on federal grants and loans last week, some of the most prominent US news outlets proved themselves largely uninterested in whether it was legal. Meanwhile, a few braver journalists called out the move as the constitutional crisis that it was (FAIR.org, 1/29/25).
When Democratic attorneys general rushed to challenge the move in court, with positive results, Trump rescinded the order. But the crisis is hardly over.
On the contrary: Elon Musk, the unelected centibillionaire who threw Nazi salutes at the inauguration, has wrested control of the Treasury Department’s payment system, after forcing out its most senior career civil servant, David Lebryk. As CNN (1/31/25) reported, the Treasury takeover happened after Trump’s team had repeatedly asked about the department’s ability to stop payments, to which Lebryk had insisted, “We don’t do that.”
These payments include everything from Social Security checks to tax refunds, federal employee salaries to contractor payments. It’s over $5 trillion a year, a fifth of the US economy. The database Musk and his tech bro allies in the non–congressionally approved “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) have access to also contains enormous amounts of sensitive personal information for most Americans, including Social Security numbers. And Musk and a 25-year-old former X employee have access to the code that controls the payment systems, allowing them to make irreversible changes to it, according to Wired (2/4/25).
At the same time, Musk has infiltrated the General Services Administration and the Office of Personnel Management—two other rather obscure and nonpolitical but hugely consequential agencies that manage federal offices, technology and employees (Wired, 1/28/25, 1/31/25).
‘An idea that crosses party lines’
The New York Times (1/31/25) put its seal of approval on Trump’s illegal attempt to freeze federal spending, calling the idea behind it “bipartisan.”
Instead of appropriately pushing the increasing lawlessness and opacity to the forefront of their reporting, the New York Times and Washington Post largely buried these stories, downplaying their earth-shattering break from democratic norms.
As Musk took over the Treasury system, the Times (1/31/25) did point out:
Control of the system could give Mr. Musk’s allies the ability to unilaterally cut off money intended for federal workers, bondholders and companies, and open a new front in the Trump administration’s efforts to halt federal payments.
And yet somehow this story struck editors as page 13 material.
Meanwhile, a piece (1/31/25) by the Times‘ Michael Shear published online the same day was deemed front-page material, causing even seasoned media critics to spit out their morning beverage at its breathtaking ability to bothsides the situation: “Beneath Trump’s Chaotic Spending Freeze: An Idea That Crosses Party Lines.”
Shear wrote that Trump is simply “continuing a mostly failed effort by a long series of presidents and Congress” to “somehow reverse the seemingly inexorable growth of the federal government, an issue that resonates with some Democrats as well as most Republicans.” He thus clearly communicated that he is not up for the task of reporting on this administration.
The Times published Musk’s Treasury takeover on page 18, under the rather nonchalant headline: “Elon Musk’s Team Now Has Access to Treasury’s Payments System.” The subhead read:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave Mr. Musk’s representatives at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending.
And hey, don’t worry, the article suggests:
Mr. Musk’s initiative is intended to be part of a broader review of the payments system to allow improper payments to be scrutinized, and is not an effort to arbitrarily block individual payments, the people familiar with the matter said.
At the Post, readers got language like, “The clash reflects an intensifying battle between Musk and the federal bureaucracy” (1/31/25), and “it is extremely unusual for anyone connected to political appointees to access” the payment systems (2/1/25). (In fact, it appears to be unprecedented—Independent, 2/3/25.)
‘Reminiscent of Stalin’
Wired (1/31/25): Musk’s team is “attempting to use White House security credentials to gain unusual access to GSA tech, deploying a suite of new AI software, and recreating the office in X’s image.”
There is another way to do journalism. It’s called connecting dots, asking questions, not accepting anonymous claims of benevolent intent—and helping people understand the gravity of the situation when unprecedented end-runs around democracy are happening before our very eyes. And it’s heartening to see quite a few news outlets engaging in it.
For instance, Wired has been doing a tenacious job following Musk’s assault on the government, connecting the dots between his actions and explaining the dangers to the country. It broke the news (1/28/25) that Musk workers from his various companies had taken over management positions at the Office of Personnel Management—well before Trump’s nominee to take over the OPM has even had a confirmation hearing. Its subhead noted: “One expert found the takeover reminiscent of Stalin.”
Wired explained that the installation of AI experts at OPM suggests a forthcoming effort to use AI on the reams of data it has access to in order to target federal employees for removal.
Regarding the GSA infiltration, Wired reported (1/31/25):
The access could give Musk’s proxies the ability to remote into laptops, listen in on meetings, read emails, among many other things, a former Biden official told Wired on Friday.
“Granting DOGE staff, many of whom aren’t government employees, unfettered access to internal government systems and sensitive data poses a huge security risk to the federal government and to the American public,” the Biden official said. “Not only will DOGE be able to review procurement-sensitive information about major government contracts, it’ll also be able to actively surveil government employees.”
Wired again put that danger (“the potential [for Musk minions] to remote into laptops, read emails, and more”) into its subhead—unlike the Times‘ muted headlines.
‘Incredibly dangerous’
Rolling Stone (2/3/25) pointed out that “the danger of operational access to the payments system is precisely that there are very little safeguards for its improper use or manipulation.”
Others are also raising alarms in their headlines, as at Rolling Stone (2/3/25): “Elon Musk’s Attempt to Control the Treasury Payment System Is Incredibly Dangerous.” The subhead explained: “Trump and Musk could use sensitive Treasury information to punish their enemies. Worse yet, they could break America’s payment system entirely.”
The piece, by Nathan Tankus, pointed out that there are glaring reasons to disbelieve administration claims about this being about “improper payments,” such as:
At 3:14 a.m. Sunday, Musk pledged to shut down supposedly “illegal payments” to Global Refuge, a faith-based organization that exists to provide “safety and support to refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants from across the world.”
Tankus also points out what the Post and Times won’t, which is that the seizure of the payment system means Trump and Musk
can just impound agency payments themselves. They could also possibly stop paying federal employees they have forced on paid administrative leave, coercing them to resign.
Even in bigger media, some critical voices could be heard. CNN‘s Zachary Wolf (2/1/25) asked some appropriate journalistic questions: “Has [Musk] taken an oath, like the federal workers he apparently has plans to fire, to uphold the Constitution?…. What are Musk’s conflicts of interests?”
Accessories to the coup
The Washington Post (2/4/25) assures readers that “the Education Department was created by Congress, and only Congress can eliminate it.”
The Washington Post put news about Musk’s takeovers on the front page today (2/4/25), as it reported on Trump preparing an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education, which Musk has apparently also infiltrated. But it still managed to sound rather sanguine about the threat: “The expected executive order would not shut down the agency, as there is widespread agreement in both parties that doing so would require congressional action.” Despite reporting daily on actions Trump and Musk have taken that have usurped congressional authority, the paper still seems to believe—and want readers to believe—against all evidence that our Constitution’s constraints on executive power continue to hold.
And the New York Times finally published an article (2/3/25) taking a deeper look “Inside Musk’s Aggressive Incursion Into the Federal Government,” as the headline stated. Still, it seemed to find it difficult to use language in its early framing paragraphs any stronger than to say that Musk’s actions “have challenged congressional authority and potentially breached civil service protections,” as it explains in the third paragraph. These moves are “creating major upheaval,” the fifth paragraph allowed, and the sixth said it “represented an extraordinary flexing of power by a private individual.”
The piece was not published in the print newspaper the next day; FAIR has yet to see it rise to the top of the paper’s homepage.
As Musk and Trump continue to behave like kings, it’s incumbent upon news media to not just report on their actions, but put them in the proper context for the public to understand the threat level they represent; otherwise, we can’t respond appropriately.
That kind of reporting takes real bravery in the kind of moment we are in: Musk has already (falsely) called it a crime to reveal the names of those working for him at the agencies DOGE is targeting, which Wired and others have done. The Trump-installed DC attorney general has obsequiously promised Musk to go after those who identify his underlings—and to prosecute “anyone who impedes your work or threatens your people” (New Republic, 2/3/25).
While that might sound laughable, media outlets have already paid Trump handsome settlements to settle lawsuits that should have been seen as similarly laughable (FAIR.org, 12/16/24; PBS, 1/29/25; New York Times, 1/30/25). When prominent news outlets won’t summon the courage to vigorously oppose this descent into autocracy, they are accessories to the coup. We must demand better from them, and support the outlets and journalists doing the critical work we as citizens require to defend our democracy.
ACTION: Tell the New York Times and Washington Post to treat Musk’s actions like the existential threat to democracy that they are.
CONTACT:
New York Times
Letters: letters@nytimes.com
Bluesky: @NYTimes.comWashington Post
Letters: letters@washpost.com,
Bluesky: @washingtonpost.comPlease remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
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NPR (2/1/25) investigates how a politician who surrounds himself with fellow billionaires can “work for the working class.” NPR‘s suggestion: tax cuts for the very wealthy.
“Can Trump’s Second Act Work for the Working Class While Giving Back to His Super Donors?” asks NPR.com (2/1/25). The answer, from NPR senior editor and correspondent Ron Elving, is a resounding—maybe!
Elving presents the politics of the second Trump administration as a perplexing paradox:
Today we are confronted with an alliance between those whom political scientists might call plutocrats and those who are increasingly labeled populists. The contrast is stark, but the symbiosis is unmistakable. And we all await the outcome as the populist in Trump tries to co-exist with his newfound ally Musk, the world’s richest man with abundant clout in the new administration.
After a meandering tour of US history from Andrew Jackson to William Jenning Bryan to Ross Perot, Elving concludes: “We may only be at the beginning of an era in which certain political figures can serve what are plausibly called populist causes by calling on the resources of the ultra-rich.” Huge, if true!
Elving’s evidence that Trump is a “populist”—or at least has a populist lurking inside him—is remarkably thin, however:
Trump has shown a certain affinity with, and owes a clear debt to, many of the little guys—what he called in 2017 “the forgotten men and women.”… With his small town, egalitarian rallies and appeals to “the forgotten man and woman,” he has revived the term populism in the political lexicon and gone further with it than anyone since Bryan’s heyday.
Trump “made a show of working a shift at a McDonald’s last fall,” Elving notes. And he “used his fame and Twitter account to popularize a fringe theory about then-President Obama being foreign born and thus ineligible to be president,” which “connected him to a hardcore of voters such as those who told pollsters they believed Obama was a Muslim.” Elving suggests that this is the sort of thing populists do.
But when it comes to offering examples of actual populist policies from the first Trump administration, Elving admits that there aren’t many to speak of:
If Trump’s rapid rise as a Washington outsider recalled those of 19th century populists, Trump’s actual performance as president was quite different. In fact it had more in common with the record of President William McKinley, the Ohio Republican who defeated Bryan in 1896 and again in 1900 while defending the gold standard and representing the interests of business and industry.
In fact, says Elving, “Trump in his first term pursued a relatively familiar list of Republican priorities,” with “his main legislative achievement” being “the passage of an enormous tax cut…that greatly benefited high-income earners and holders of wealth.” For genuine journalists, for whom politicians’ actions are more significant than their words, that would be the most meaningful predictor of what Trump is likely to do going forward.
But Trump’s second term, Elving suggests on the basis of nothing, could be quite different: “As Trump’s second term unfolds, the issues most likely to be vigorously pursued may be those where the interests of his populist base can be braided with those who sat in billionaire’s row on Inauguration Day.” Such as? “The renewal of the 2017 tax cuts is an area of commonality, as is the promise to shrink government.”
So—a restoration of the same tax cuts that “greatly benefited high-income earners and holders of wealth”? That how NPR thinks Trump in his second term “can serve what are plausibly called populist causes”?
All hail the unmistakable symbiosis!
ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to NPR public editor Kelly McBride here. or via Bluesky: @kellymcb.bsky.social. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread of this post.
FEATURED IMAGE: NPR depiction of candidate Donald Trump as a tribune of the working class.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
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Thomas Friedman has what Edward Said (Village Voice, 10/17/89) called “the special combination of disarming incoherence and unearned egoism.”
It is not often that I check the New York Times Opinion page to see what the paper’s three-time Pulitzer Prize–winning and mansion-dwelling foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman is up to. After all, I feel I’ve already exceeded my quota for masochism by wasting a full year of my life writing a book about the man, source of such ideas as that McDonald’s is the key to world peace, and that Iraqis needed to “Suck. On. This” as punishment for the 9/11 attacks—an event Friedman himself admitted Iraq had nothing to do with.
Employed in various posts at the United States’ newspaper of record since 1981—including as bureau chief in both Beirut and Jerusalem—Friedman has just entered his 30th year as foreign affairs columnist. His imperial imperiousness and pompous dedication to Orientalism came under fire from the get-go from none other than Edward Said, who remarked in a 1989 Village Voice intervention (10/17/89), titled “The Orientalist Express”:
It is not just the comic philistinism of Friedman’s ideas that I find so remarkably jejune, or his sassy and unbeguiling manner…. It is rather the special combination of disarming incoherence and unearned egoism that gives him his cockily alarming plausibility.
Noting that Friedman had “internalized the norms, if not the powers, of the secretary of state not just of the United States, but of all humanity,” Said called our journalist out on his habit of offering “advice to everyone about how much better they could be doing if they paid attention to him.” Had everyone been paying attention, they would have learned Friedman’s “moronic and hopelessly false dictum”—Said’s words—according to which “the Arab political tradition has produced only two types: the merchant and the messiah.”
Just for the hell of it, I checked up on Friedman on January 21, the day after Donald Trump’s reinauguration. Sure enough, there was his very first column of 2025, headlined: “President Trump, You Can Remake the Middle East if You Dare.” In other words, it was the latest version of how much better everyone could be doing if they paid attention to the self-appointed secretary of humanity.
‘Reborn as a strong region’
Friedman (New York Times, 1/21/25) counsels Trump: “The more credibly we threaten” Iran, the more likely you will get a Nobel Peace Prize.
You couldn’t ask for a more Orientalist ambition than “remaking” the Middle East, and Friedman has various suggestions for Trump on that front. First, he instructs the president that “your interest is to bring Israel and Saudi Arabia into a US-led alliance with our other Arab partners”—which basically boils down to rewarding the party that has since October 2023 been conducting straight-up genocide in the Gaza Strip with a normalization of relations with Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia, whose bloodthirsty ruler Mohammed bin Salman has long occupied a special place in Friedman’s heart.
Friedman continues with his roadmap:
Gaza, like the West Bank under the Oslo agreement, should be divided into Areas A and B for a four-year transition period. Eighty percent would be Area A (under the international force/Palestinian control), and 20% (basically the perimeter) would remain under Israeli military control until Israel’s security is assured.
Never mind how the old Oslo Accords panned out—the 1993 US-brokered agreement that was supposedly designed to pave the way for Israeli/Palestinian peace and Palestinian self-governance, i.e. a two-state solution. Friedman might do well to revisit his own assessment in 2000 that “the Israeli propaganda that the Palestinians mostly rule themselves in the West Bank is fatuous nonsense,” and that “Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land for more settlements is going on to this day—seven years into Oslo.”
Friedman warns Trump that
the Middle East is either going to be reborn as a strong region where normalized relations, trade and cooperation are defining objectives, or disintegrate into a few solid nation-states surrounded by vast zones of disorder, warlordism and terrorists who are chillingly expert at using drones.
Lest anyone jump to the conclusion that Friedman has at last gotten something right, rest assured that the drone-happy terrorists to which he is referring are not in fact the Israelis—despite the Israeli military’s established chilling expertise in said field.
‘Birth pangs of a new Middle East’
Friedman claimed that in Iraq, the US was “a well-armed external midwife, whom everyone on the ground both fears and trusts” (Jacobin, 7/26/12).
As for the alleged necessity that the Middle East “be reborn,” murderous obstetrics have long factored into the United States’ Orientalist approach to Arab and Muslim regions of the world; just recall then–Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s favorable assessment of Israel’s summer 2006 slaughter-fest in Lebanon as the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.”
That particular assault, which killed approximately 1,200 people in 34 days, was subsequently invoked by Friedman in 2009 as a positive precedent when Israel was once again ravaging the Gaza Strip. Declaring that Israel’s decision in 2006 to “exact enough pain on the civilians” of Lebanon was “not pretty, but it was logical,” Friedman prescribed the same “logical” approach to Gaza—to hell with the pesky Geneva Conventions, as well as Friedman’s own ostensible opposition to, um, terrorism.
Of a piece with the whole rebirth-by-mass-killing theme is the Orientalist exploitation of infantilizing terminology. And in that realm, too, Friedman has long excelled, including in his repeated references to Afghanistan—a nation decimated by the US with Friedman’s enthusiastic encouragement—as a “special needs baby.” Then there was the time he complained that the US was “babysitting a civil war” in Iraq—a baby-sitting job that, mind you, happened to have been unleashed by the very 2003 US invasion extensively cheer-led by Friedman, who in 2002 argued that such a war was the “most important task worth doing.”
As I note in my book, Friedman’s reliance on childish condescension is
merely one manifestation of a tradition of unabashed Orientalism that discredits Arabs and Muslims as agents capable of managing their own destinies and sets up a power scheme in which the United States and its military simultaneously occupy the positions of killer/torturer, liberator, educator and parent/babysitter.
As is the case with the 2006 “birth pangs” and the current Middle East that Trump has now been tasked with rebirthing, the Arab/Muslim world is often portrayed as having not even yet made it into infant form, instead awaiting violent expulsion from the imperial womb—as in Friedman’s eloquently cogent 2012 proclamation that Syria was in need of a “well-armed external midwife.”
‘Animal Planet’
As FAIR (2/6/24) noted, “The comparison of official enemies to vermin is a hallmark of propaganda in defense of genocide.”
Of course, Friedman’s Orientalist repertoire goes beyond infantilizing rhetoric and fetal fantasies. There was that time in 1988 that he decided that Palestinians could be collectively referred to as Ahmed—“I believe that as soon as Ahmed has a seat in the bus, he will limit his demands”—after which Noam Chomsky questioned whether journalists could also be promoted to chief diplomatic correspondent at the New York Times by suggesting that Hymie or Sambo be given a seat in the bus.
And just last year in the midst of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Friedman undertook to outdo himself with a column headlined “Understanding the Middle East Through the Animal Kingdom,” which as I observed at the time would have already been sufficiently grotesquely bonkers had the Israeli military establishment not taken the liberty of classifying its Palestinian victims as “human animals.”
The column hosted some nonsensical babble about parasitoid wasps and sifaka lemurs, along with the following information about our columnist’s investigative modus operandi: “Sometimes I contemplate the Middle East by watching CNN. Other times, I prefer Animal Planet.”
Anyway, Friedman is now clearly the best candidate to help Trump “Remake the Middle East if You Dare.” No matter that Friedman purports to be at odds with Trump’s nasty worldview; the two conveniently share a haughty and snotty antagonism vis-à-vis those “animal planet” parts of the world that need a “well-armed external midwife” as a mission civilisatrice.
If only Friedman himself could be rebirthed into something more human.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
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New York‘s headline (1/28/25) was accurate—but was it “riveting storytelling”?
When President Donald Trump ordered an unprecedented freeze on all federal grants and loans, a few news outlets responded with at least some degree of appropriate alarm and scrutiny.
“Trump’s Massive Power Grab,” read the headline for Politico‘s Playbook newsletter (1/28/25). “Trump’s Blatantly Illegal Funding Freeze Causes Nationwide Chaos,” announced the headline over a column by New York magazine’s Ed Kilgore (1/28/25).
The order, both sweeping and confusingly worded, called for a halt to disbursement of federal funds that Congress has already authorized. The memo required all such funding to be reviewed to make sure it aligns with Trump’s “policies and requirements,” including his barrage of executive orders. (After a federal judge temporarily blocked the order, the White House rescinded it.)
The memo specifically highlighted “financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology and the green new deal.” But no funding was excluded from the freeze, aside from Social Security, Medicare and “assistance directly received by individuals.”
As the New York Times (1/27/25) pointed out, this would appear to include “hundreds of billions of dollars in grants to state, local and tribal governments. Disaster relief aid. Education and transportation funding. Loans to small businesses.” Medicaid, which is distributed through the states, also seemed to be frozen.
Politico described “the first big question” as being: “Is this legal?” The answer provided by most legal scholars appeared to be, “hell, no.”
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the information offered by some in corporate media—with the multibillionaire-owned Washington Post among the worst offenders.
‘Democrats contend’
The New York Times (1/27/25) offered its readers agnosticism: “It is uncertain whether President Trump has the authority to unilaterally halt funds allocated by Congress.“
As competent and useful reporting explained, Trump has long declared his interest in impoundment, or the executive’s ability to cancel funding that Congress has approved. It’s something presidents had done on occasion in the past, but Richard Nixon took it to an extreme, attempting to cancel billions in federal spending. Congress responded by passing the Impoundment Control Act in 1974, which requires congressional permission for presidents to impound funds (Forbes, 1/28/25).
In other words, there’s been a clear law on the books for over 50 years that expressly prohibits what Trump was attempting here. It should have been an easy call for journalists, then, to answer Politico‘s basic and central question. Some failed this basic task.
The New York Times report (1/27/25), while raising the question of the move’s legality in paragraph four, didn’t even attempt to answer it, only offering a quote from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who argued, “Congress approved these investments and they are not optional; they are the law.“ The article gave readers no other information by which to judge “whether President Trump has the authority to unilaterally halt funds allocated by Congress.”
In its follow-up on the state-led lawsuit to challenge the funding freeze, the Times (1/28/25) briefly described the Impoundment Control Act, but then wrote that “Democrats contend” that Trump can’t unilaterally block funds that have already been approved, as if it were simply a partisan claim whether the law just described exists.
At Axios, co-founder Mike Allen’s brief report (1/28/25) didn’t even address legality, taking the “Why it matters” of Trump’s memo to be that it
will provide the administration with time to review agency programs and determine the best uses of funding for those programs consistent with the law and Trump’s priorities.
‘Generally allowed under the law’
The Washington Post‘s first takeaway (1/28/25): “The feared disruption highlighted the extent of the new Trump administration’s determination to target long-standing functions of the federal government.”
But the Washington Post took craven reporting to another level. In its report on the directive (1/28/25), by reporters Jeff Stein, Jacob Bogage and Emily Davies, the Post‘s headline and lead focused on the “confusion” in Washington. After describing the order and what it appeared to target, the reporters’ first attempt to make meaning of the order came in the eighth paragraph: “The feared disruption highlighted the extent of the new Trump administration’s determination to target long-standing functions of the federal government.”
The president tried to usurp Congress’s power of the purse by fiat, and the Beltway paper’s biggest takeaway was that it “highlights” the Trump administration’s “determination”—not to shred US democracy, but to “target long-standing functions of the federal government.”
But it gets worse. It took another eight paragraphs (that’s the 16th paragraph, if you’re counting) to find the Post‘s first mention of Politico‘s No. 1 question—is this legal? That came in the same Schumer quote the Times used, about how these expenditures “are not optional; they are the law.”
And the Post quickly cast doubt on that idea:
The order’s legality may be contested, but the president is generally allowed under the law to defer spending for a period of time if certain conditions are met, according to budget experts.
The article went on to note that the order “may not have given sufficient grounds under the law to pause the funding,” and that a “left-leaning” expert says that “pausing it over policy disagreements is not legal.” Meanwhile an expert from a “bipartisan” group was offered to argue that Trump “should be legally able to pause the money temporarily,” even if there might be some formal hoops to jump through to extend it.
In other words, the Post‘s framing of the story gave the impression that the memo was “confusing,” but probably mostly legal.
This comes shortly after the announcement of the Post‘s new mission statement, “Riveting Storytelling for All of America,” which owner Jeff Bezos hopes will expand the Post‘s conservative audience (FAIR.org, 1/22/25). As for holding the powerful to account? Well, you might want to look to a media outlet not owned by a toadying oligarch.
ACTION: Please tell the Washington Post not to downplay illegal actions when they are committed by a president its owner is trying to curry favor with.
CONTACT: You can send a message to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com, or via Bluesky @washingtonpost.com.
Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
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As you’ve heard by now, Ontario will head to the polls on February 27. This blog is part of our series outlining what we see as some of the key environmental issues voters should keep in mind as they talk to candidates and when they cast their ballots.
Ontario is Going the Wrong Way on Climate Action
In recent years, Ontario has had an abysmal record on climate change. The province has cancelled hundreds of renewable power projects, depriving us from affordable and reliable energy. Meanwhile, Ontario has been increasing our reliance on fossil fuels by building new gas plants, which is reversing the progress this province made in phasing out coal. A decision from the independent Ontario Energy Board was overturned at the request of Enbridge, a gas company, in order to ensure that more homes are dependent on gas for heating for decades to come. This move benefits Enbridge at the expense of everyone else, whether they are existing gas customers or new home buyers.
The federal government gets a lot of attention when it comes to climate change—and for good reason. But, there are a lot of areas related to climate change that are in provincial hands.
What to Look for in a Future Ontario Government
We need to elect a government that takes climate change seriously. Here’s what to look for.
A party that is serious about climate change needs to present a clear plan to ensure that Ontario does its part to reduce emissions. The plan should:
- Detail how it will decarbonize the electricity system, phasing out gas plants while building more wind and solar. Wind and solar are not only greener, they are also cheaper energy sources than gas and nuclear.
- Detail how it will help get Ontarians’ homes off of gas and give people the opportunity to get highly efficient heat pumps that reduce heating and cooling bills.
- Ensure that Ontarians can buy the electric cars that we’ll soon be making here by improving the affordability of EVs (with a rebate) and introducing a ZEV standard, like those in BC and Quebec.
- Support affordable, reliable public transportation options and safe commutes for cyclists and pedestrians.
- Address industrial carbon emissions though a cap-and-trade program or other mechanism to ensure that big polluters are held responsible for their emissions.
- Create energy-efficiency programs for the industrial, commercial and residential sectors.
A Greener Ontario is Within Reach
Our previous provincial leaders have turned their backs on climate change and bent over backwards to pander to fossil fuel interests. Ontario has built new gas plants, expanded the gas pipeline network to force gas onto new communities and provided special treatment to Enbridge to ensure more homes are hooked on gas. This will saddle Ontarians with higher electricity bills, increased health risks and greater damages from extreme weather events caused by climate change.
We need better. We need to tell all party leaders and candidates to protect Ontario’s clean energy future!
The post Ontario Needs a Government that Takes Climate Change Seriously appeared first on Environmental Defence.
This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
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This blog is part of our series outlining what we see as some of the key environmental issues voters should keep in mind as they talk to candidates and when they cast their ballots.
Ontario’s election is an opportunity for all candidates to put the environment – and preventing waste and litter – on their agendas.
Last year, work to implement a program that would eliminate billions of plastic containers from landing in dumps, incinerators, waterways and the natural environment across Ontario was abandoned. Deposit-return programs are known across Canada and around the world as the best way to ensure empties get recycled or refilled – instead of littered or wasted, but opposition from big grocery retailers has stalled progress on deposit return. Ontario must get back to work to expand the successful program for alcohol containers to non-alcoholic beverages.
It’s time for all parties to commit to reducing the amount of waste going to landfills, incinerators and litter. Get an expanded deposit return program back on track in Ontario so that we can join almost every other province in Canada to ensure empties end up where they belong – and out of the environment. Ontario also needs better rules and accountability for business, and low-carbon processing of organic waste.
What the next Ontario government must do to expand deposit return and reduce waste
When the federal government tackled plastic pollution, some provinces – including Ontario – claimed the federal government was stepping on their toes. However, Canada’s most populous province has done virtually nothing to prevent plastic from entering the waste stream and the environment at record rates. Instead of whining about successful federal measures, such as bans on harmful single-use plastics, the next government must take immediate steps to rein in plastic and other waste.
Concretely, here’s what the next government must do:
- Expand deposit return to include all non-alcoholic beverage containers as soon as possible by building on the existing successful program for alcoholic beverage containers and ensuring accessible return points for empties. This will take empties out of the waste stream and prevent litter.
- Require businesses to sort their waste to ensure that organics are composted instead of being shipped to landfills or incinerators and that recyclable materials – including glass, metal, paperboard and paper – are sent for environmentally-sound processing to be made into new materials.
- Extend the life of existing landfills by banning organics from them and ensure food waste, yard waste and other organic materials are processed into safe soil amendment instead of being landfilled or burned. This will help reduce the impact of organic waste, which generates climate-warming emissions in landfills and incinerators.
Waste has grown out of control in Ontario, opening the door to dangerous garbage-burning strategies that would saddle Ontario communities with harmful pollution.
We need better. We need to tell all party leaders and candidates that Ontario needs to cut the waste and protect the environment.
The post Stop the Waste and Expand Deposit Return to All Beverage Containers in Ontario appeared first on Environmental Defence.
This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
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This blog is part of our series outlining what we see as some of the key environmental issues voters should keep in mind as they talk to candidates and when they cast their ballots.
Time and time again, the news has shown that previous provincial governments will put the interests of well-connected developers above the needs of residents and the environment. Highway 413-related bills that claim to cut red tape, reduce gridlock and save you time will do nothing but pave over farms, forests and the Greenbelt – all without any review of the devastating environmental impacts.
Loss of Prime Farmland
Building Highway 413 would pave over 2,000 acres of precious prime farmland and put thousands more at serious risk from new sprawling subdivisions that will inevitably be developed along the route. While Ontario desperately needs more housing, sprawl is the most expensive and inefficient way to build homes.
Paving the Protected Greenbelt
Remember when past leaders promised to not touch the Greenbelt? Well, Highway 413 would also pave over about 400 acres of the southern portion of the Greenbelt – putting precious areas and endangered species at risk.
Compromising the Headwaters of the Credit and Humber Rivers
The proposed route of Highway 413 directly cuts through the headwaters of Etobicoke Creek, and both the Credit and Humber rivers. The paving of the headwaters, combined with the pollution from thousands of vehicles that would use the 6 to 10 lane highway, will degrade water quality and quantity downstream – impacting drinking water and living conditions for many species at risk, including endangered species. Paving the most important headwaters in the Greater Toronto Area also means our increasingly violent rainstorms will result in more flooding every year.
But, we can Stop it
Despite claims that construction of Highway 413 is imminent, nothing could be further from the truth: necessary planning and engineering work has not been completed and most of the land required to build the highway has not been acquired. There are also environmental values that the federal government is legally obligated to protect, like the 29 federally listed species-at-risk that are found where the 413 would be built. Several of these species, including the Redside Dace, Rapids’ Clubtail and Western Chorus Frog, are endangered. Both the federal Fisheries Act and Species at Risk Act mandate the protection of these species and, as a result, a number of permits will be required, which have yet to be secured.
Highway 413 should not be built. Estimates indicate that building this environmentally destructive highway will do little to improve commute times in the region (less than 30 seconds per trip) while it will cost taxpayers easily over $10 billion dollars. That’s a lot of money – and it’s money that should be spent to improve public transit throughout Ontario or improve regional road projects that have been deferred for many years.
We need to elect a government that moves Ontario away from farmland destroying highways that result in inefficient sprawl. What does that mean?
We need leaders who are serious about effective transportation and land use planning solutions in the Greater Toronto Area. Leaders who will:
- Cancel Highway 413 in favour of regional transportation solutions, not a 400-series highway
- Examine how to better solve traffic problems using less costly and environmentally destructive options, such as moving trucks to the underused Highway 407
- Enhance public transportation options, such as two-way on the Kitchener line that services Mount Pleasant, the Brampton Innovation District and Bramalea – while extending the long-awaited GO line in Caledon to South Bolton/Hwy 50 and Macville
We do not need Highway 413. There are better options available to solve traffic congestion while building affordable homes faster and protecting the incredible ecological and farmland values in Halton, Peel, and York regions that would be destroyed forever by this highway.
We can make that happen. We need to tell all party leaders and candidates to cancel Highway 413.
The post Highway 413 – The Destructive, Expensive and Unnecessary Highway appeared first on Environmental Defence.
This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
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This blog is part of our series outlining what we see as some of the key environmental issues voters should keep in mind as they talk to candidates and when they cast their ballots.
It has become increasingly clear that protecting sensitive natural areas, like wetlands, has not been a priority for Ontario. This has been demonstrated by the dismantling of critical policies and programs that were once in place to protect wetlands from the threats of sprawl. The Ontario Wetland Evaluation System and Conservation Authorities Act have both been gutted to accelerate urban sprawl at the expense of Ontario’s precious wetlands. Additionally, the new Provincial Planning Statement that was introduced in 2024 didn’t carry over policies that were once an important backstop for wetland protection. Why were these changes made? To benefit wealthy developers.
We need wetlands. There’s a reason why they’re referred to as “the kidneys of the earth.” They clean our water, store carbon, provide habitat for so many critters, and they help prevent floods – like the ones we experienced in the Greater Toronto Area last summer. Through providing these services, wetlands provide over $50 billion in benefits to our lives per year in southern Ontario alone.
But despite their importance, southern Ontario has already lost a majority of its original wetlands – over 72 per cent! Our remaining wetlands continue to be threatened by harmful human activities like draining, paving and filling for development. If we keep on this path of loss, life as we know it will drastically change. We need leaders that put wetland protection ahead of unnecessary sprawl.
What to look for in our future government
A party that’s serious about environmental protection must include a plan to ensure that southern Ontario’s remaining wetlands are protected. The right candidate will:
- Commit to no more wetland loss in southern Ontario
- Restore and strengthen the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System and the Conservation Authorities Act
- Amend the Provincial Planning Statement to include broader protections for wetlands
- Develop a strong framework to support the restoration of wetlands that have been degraded or destroyed
- Reinstate and implement existing laws and policies like the Wetland Conservation Strategy for Ontario and Great Lakes Protection Act to set and enforce targets for wetland protection
For too long, Ontario governments have turned their backs on wetlands and all the amazing things they do for us. Our future government must change course and prioritize the protection of our wetlands.
We need to tell all party leaders and candidates to protect Ontario’s wetlands!
The post Ontario’s Wetlands are Worth Protecting appeared first on Environmental Defence.
This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
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Four of our largest banks have recently withdrawn from the UN-backed Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA). This may seem like a setback for climate progress in Canada, but it simply underscores the limits of voluntary initiatives and the need for the government to enforce climate-aligned financial regulations.
This news also coincides with Mark Carney’s official entrance into the Liberal Party leadership race. For those who closely follow climate finance, this is happenstance because Mark Carney was the driving force behind the global NZBA initiative which our banks are now abandoning. This changing landscape of sustainable finance in Canada marks a moment for the potential leader of the Liberal Party of Canada to champion a climate-aligned financial system that addresses the shortcomings of these crumbling global initiatives.
In 2021, at COP26 in Glasgow, Mark Carney helped create the ‘Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero’ (GFANZ). This alliance is actually an alliance of alliances, including the Net-Zero Asset Managers Initiative (NZAMI), the Net-Zero Asset Owners Alliance (NZAOA) and the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) – a Matryoshka doll (Russian doll) of acronyms.
These alliances are voluntary initiatives which convene the biggest financial institutions in the world, to set goals and strategies to reach net-zero in their business activities. They operate under the assumption that more information will help lead us to a net-zero financial system.
However, NZBA has long been criticized by sustainable finance experts for being insufficient to drive change in the sector. After the latest updates to the NZBA guidelines, the initiative was criticized for providing “too much latitude for banks in deciding whether to take key steps that are central to credibly achieving portfolio alignment with science-based climate scenarios.“ This targets the core flaw of the GFANZ framework: guidelines are not enough.
In recent weeks, major US financial institutions have pulled out of these Carney-convened alliances. The U.S. currently faces a hostile legal environment toward climate-aligned investing, which is being labelled as ‘woke’ or ‘leftist.’ US-based financial institutions are facing lawsuits for climate-aligned finance initiatives, which critics argue is driving up energy bills for Americans. Faced with costly legal battles, the pretence of climate action is no longer profitable for America’s biggest banks, which are some of the largest fossil fuel financiers in the world. This ignores the evident economic and financial devastation of climate change, as underscored by the wildfires in Los Angeles, which are estimated to cost up to $150 billion in damages.
BMO, Scotiabank, National Bank, TD Bank Group, and CIBC have now followed suit, withdrawing from this global climate initiative. According to CBC, these banks cite “strategic realignment” and claim they can pursue their net-zero goals independently. Ironically, in recent climate finance hearings in Ottawa, these same bankers used their NZBA membership to argue against stronger climate regulations. Surely, according to their own logic, their withdrawal from this alliance indicates that it is the perfect time for regulation?
As prospective Liberal Party leaders design their platforms, they should take note of this moment. 78 per cent of Canadians support the government setting mandatory regulations to prevent banks and financial institutions from greenwashing their climate commitments. This is the case for all other parties; as we move toward an election, other parties too must introduce comprehensive regulations in their platforms. Whoever leads the next government must have a credible climate strategy, and commit to real regulation on climate-aligned finance.
This means implementing the Climate-Aligned Finance Act (CAFA), which had been under Senate review before parliament was prorogued. CAFA had cross-party support and had been endorsed by sustainable finance experts from across the world. Implementing a bill similar to CAFA would be a litmus test for the climate plans of prospective leaders, signalling to voters their genuine commitment to addressing climate change head-on, and putting long-term good ahead of short-term profit.
The post The Great Bank Exodus: what’s the story? appeared first on Environmental Defence.
This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
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CNN (6/10/24) on Tren de Aragua: “The scale of its operations is unknown, but crimes attributed to alleged members of the gang have worried elected officials.”
A CNN headline (6/10/24) last June menacingly warned readers about the United States’s latest dial-a-bogeyman, guaranteed to further whip up anti-immigrant vitriol in the country and justify ever more punitive border fortification: “This Is the Dangerous Venezuelan Gang Infiltrating the US That You Probably Know Nothing About But Should.”
The gang in question was Tren de Aragua, which formed in Tocorón prison in the Venezuelan state of Aragua, and spread to various South American countries before allegedly setting its sights on the US. Now the organization that you probably knew nothing about has achieved such a level of notoriety that President Donald Trump issued an executive order on his first day of returning to office, declaring the group (along with other regional drug cartels and gangs) to be a “foreign terrorist organization.”
Although there is approximately zero evidence of a smoking gun on the old terror front, the corporate media are doing their best to bring fantasy to life. And as usual, it’s the average refuge seeker who will suffer for it.
‘Invading criminal army’
Fox News (12/20/24): “The vicious gang has taken advantage of a lax southern border under the Biden-Harris administration, with many of its foot soldiers swarming the US and unleashing hell on unsuspecting communities.”
In the course of educating its audience about the little-known peril last year, CNN quoted a March letter to then-President Joe Biden from a group of Republican congressmembers, led by Florida’s Marco Rubio and María Elvira Salazar (incorrectly identified by CNN as Ana María Salazar). The letter sounded the alarm that the “invading criminal army” Tren de Aragua was positioned to “unleash an unprecedented reign of terror” across the US.
Rubio—the xenophobic son of Cuban immigrants to the United States and Trump’s new Secretary of State—took to social media (X, 6/17/24) to declare that Tren de Aragua was already “causing terror across America as a result of President Biden’s open border policy.” Rubio linked to Salazar’s post from the same day, in which she cast the outfit as a “vicious gang that the dictator Maduro is dumping into America through our open southern border”—a reference to current Venezuelan president and US enemy extraordinaire Nicolás Maduro. Maduro has himself accused the exiled right-wing Venezuelan politician Leopoldo López of being behind the gang.
Of course, the fact that Biden deported more migrants than Donald Trump did during his first term undermines the whole “open border” argument. Then again, racist propaganda has always been more useful than reality in crafting US policy. In July, the Biden administration bowed to pressure from Rubio et al. and designated Tren de Aragua a transnational criminal organization, thus elevating the gang “you probably know nothing about but should” into a supposed existential threat to the homeland.
In the months following the designation, the US corporate media fell into line with breathless reports on the “bloodthirsty” Tren de Aragua, as Fox News (12/20/24) put it in a December would-be exposé on how the gang has allegedly “immersed itself among the general population in the sanctuary city” of New York. As per Fox’s calculations, “many” of Tren de Aragua’s “foot soldiers” have also busied themselves by “swarming the US and unleashing hell on unsuspecting communities.” The article vaguely accused the gang of “all sorts of violent crime,” including (nonfatal) shootings of police officers and “gun smuggling into migrant shelters.”
‘Feared criminal organization’
“Its widening presence in the United States has become a political lightning rod for Republicans,” the New York Times (9/22/24) reported, “as they seek to blame the Biden administration’s border policy for allowing criminals into the country”—and the Times was happy to help them out by running a feature on a group responsible for 50 arrests nationwide, in a country that arrests 7 million people a year.
But it’s not just the predictable likes of Fox News that have permitted the Tren de Aragua hype to fuel a general persecution of migrants by implying that migrant shelters are gang hotbeds and that any undocumented person could be an “immersed” foot soldier. In back-to-back items in September, the New York Times (9/22/24, 9/23/24) explored how, in New York City, Tren de Aragua—a “feared criminal organization focused on sex trafficking, human smuggling and the drug trade”—is “believed to recruit Tren de Aragua members arriving in the United States from inside the city’s migrant shelters,” where gang members also reportedly “live, or have lived.” According to New York City police,
one of the largest challenges…is how quickly gang members have blended into the city’s fabric, not just among asylum seekers in shelters, but also by posing as delivery drivers on mopeds, in some cases transporting firearms inside food delivery packs.
The Times reported that Tren de Aragua members are said to “have similar identifying marks,” such as tattoos with clocks, anchors or crowns, as well as “Michael Jordan brand clothing and Chicago Bulls apparel.”
Given the widespread popularity of such apparel among certain demographics, and the NYPD’s notorious track record of racial profiling and selective stop-and-frisk harassment, such wardrobe analysis is a pretty good recipe for the further trampling of civil liberties. I myself have observed a disproportionate affinity for Jordan and the Chicago Bulls among young Venezuelan refuge seekers I personally know, all of whom happen to be quite opposed to Tren de Aragua—for reasons including the blanket vilification of Venezuelan immigrants that has attended the hullabaloo over the gang.
But what, precisely, does Tren de Aragua’s “unprecedented reign of terror” consist of? Well, the Times tells us that the NYPD
says the gang has primarily focused on snatching cellphones; retail thefts, especially high-end merchandise in department stores; and dealing a pink, powdery synthetic drug, known as Tusi.
Plus, in June, a 19-year-old Venezuelan migrant who might have been affiliated with Tren de Aragua was accused of shooting two police officers, who survived.
‘Expanding its deadly reach’
Wall Street Journal (9/12/24): “Tren de Aragua members are difficult to identify and track because they have entered the US through the southern border”—as opposed to gang members who are either homegrown or entered through the Canadian border, who are apparently easy to identify and track.
A September Wall Street Journal article (9/12/24), headlined “A Venezuelan Gang Is Expanding Its Deadly Reach to the US,” similarly warned that Tren de Aragua is
accused of robberies at Macy’s, Sunglass Hut and upscale stores, and moped-riding gang members also have been blamed for snatching phones from unsuspecting pedestrians.
While it is certainly shitty to have your phone stolen, it is quite a bit less “deadly” than the behavior exhibited by many police officers in the US, who can’t seem to kick the habit of killing Black people and Native Americans.
Never mind, too, that there are plenty of things it’s more rational to be afraid of in the land of the free than Tren de Aragua, such as the regularity of mass shootings in schools and the lethal for-profit healthcare system. A 2023 University of California, Riverside paper published in the Journal of the AMA (4/17/23) found poverty to be the fourth leading cause of death in the United States—hence the political utility, perhaps, of distracting Americans from actual problems with visions of marauding Venezuelan gangbangers.
Tempered by disclaimers
CBS New York (11/24/24): “Undocumented criminals as young as 11 years old are carrying out retail robberies and committing crimes on scooters.”
In reporting on Tren de Aragua, many media outlets purport to temper their sensationalism with the disclaimer that they are not in fact participating in a universal indictment of migrants. A November CBS New York intervention (11/24/24) on Tren de Aragua’s alleged attempts “to recruit children from migrant families” in shelters, while “blend[ing] in with the asylum seekers who began to arrive in the Big Apple in 2022,” held the following information until the very last line: “[Police] say it’s important to know that only a small portion of the migrant community is committing the majority of the crimes.”
In the midst of its own fearmongering, the New York Times (9/23/24) cautioned that “it’s important to note that overall crime in New York City has gone down as the number of migrants in the city has gone up.” NBC News (6/12/24) buried the observation that “criminologists have consistently found that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born Americans” at the tail end of its June rant on “‘Ghost Criminals’: How Venezuelan Gang Members Are Slipping Into the US.”
In the NBC piece, journalists Laura Strickler, Julia Ainsley, Didi Martinez and Tom Winter complained that “the cases involving the Tren de Aragua gang show how hard it is for US border agents to vet the criminal backgrounds of migrants from countries like Venezuela that won’t give the US any help” in providing individual criminal records. The huffiness of such statements might be amusing, were the US itself not guilty of a quite lengthy criminal background in Venezuela itself; ongoing US sanctions against the South American nation are literally deadly, and in 2017–18 alone reportedly caused more than 40,000 deaths, according to a study by the Washington, DC–based Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Sanctions are also a key driver of the migration from Venezuela to the US. But the preponderant role of US efforts to financially asphyxiate Venezuela in fueling mass Venezuelan migration is not a subject corporate media like to dwell on (FAIR.org, 6/13/22)—and even less, it seems, in reporting on their new favorite bogeyman. A fleeting reference to the relevance of US machinations appears in the Wall Street Journal piece on the “deadly reach” of Tren de Aragua:
The gang is looking for better opportunities than those in Venezuela, where the economy has capsized under Maduro’s rule, leading to hyperinflation and poverty made worse by US sanctions.
Given that poverty and economic oppression are traditionally known to be driving forces behind gang membership, the sanctions factor would seem to merit a bit more journalistic investigation—that is, were the US politico-media establishment interested in explaining criminal phenomena rather than casting gang members as organically and inexplicably savage.
The New York Times (9/22/24) lamented that, as Venezuela’s economic woes intensified, Tren de Aragua “began to profit off the millions of fleeing Venezuelans, exploiting, extorting and silencing vulnerable migrants.” Of course, such opportunities for profit would not exist if not for the twin US policies of sowing havoc worldwide while simultaneously criminalizing migration—but, again, revealing to readers how the world works is not the objective here.
‘Violent animals of MS-13’
Justin Anderson (FAIR.org, 7/22/18): The growth of MS-13 “from a small street gang in the US to a transnational criminal organization…provides an illuminating case study of how US foreign policy choices can backfire spectacularly.”
The media’s decontextualized coverage of Tren de Aragua brings back memories of the apocalyptic hype surrounding the presence in the US of the predominantly Salvadoran gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, which reached a peak during Trump’s first term and was aided by apparent mediatic amnesia as to how it was that MS-13 came to exist.
As Justin Anderson wrote in a 2018 article for FAIR (7/22/18), the gang had “become a major scapegoat for Donald Trump and right-wing media in rationalizing harsh immigration policies.” Anderson wasn’t exaggerating; that same year, the White House released a handy memo titled “What You Need to Know About the Violent Animals of MS-13,” in which the word “animals” appeared no fewer than nine times—as though a country responsible for bombing and otherwise terrorizing civilians across the globe were the arbiters of humanity. But as Anderson detailed, media coverage of the immigration debate largely obscured the fact that MS-13 was “Made in USA” in the first place.
Indeed, the origins of MS-13 are pretty straightforward. Once upon a Salvadoran civil war, which killed more than 75,000 people from 1979–92, the US in typical fashion backed the right-wing military that was ultimately responsible—along with allied paramilitary groups and death squads—for the overwhelming majority of “serious acts of violence,” as per the United Nations Truth Commission on El Salvador.
Fleeing this violence, many Salvadorans ended up in Los Angeles and environs, where the going was not exactly easy, either; as Anderson noted, LA
was at the time in the midst of violent gang turf wars stemming from the crack cocaine epidemic—itself partially the product of plummeting cocaine prices as the result of drug-smuggling by the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contra rebels.
In the Salvadoran community, gangs formed as a means of communal self-defense.
Following the end of the civil war, the US decided to deport a mass of prison-hardened gang members back to a country it had just helped destroy, where the ensuing US-backed neoliberal assault left many Salvadorans with few options for economic and social survival aside from gang membership. The double whammy of neoliberal violence and gang violence in turn fueled more US-bound migration, and voilà: Enter the “violent animals of MS-13” to make xenophobia great again, and justify any and all sociopathic border-fortification measures.
As Anderson pointed out at FAIR, the media could scarcely be bothered to delve into such relevant history—although
one article in the DC Metro Weekend section [of the Washington Post] (6/14/18) did mention immigration in relation to the civil war, but only in the context of where to get some tasty Salvadoran food in Maryland.
Perhaps some future article on Venezuelan arepa establishments will offer an insight or two as to Washington’s outsized hand in Venezuela’s decimation. In the meantime, a 2023 infographic on the “deadly consequences” of US-led sanctions on the country—published by the Venezuelanalysis website, using statistics from the US Government Accountability Office, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and other sources—revealed that coercive economic measures had thus far made some 2.5 million people food insecure. As of 2020, more than 100,000 deaths were attributed to sanctions.
‘Total elimination’
As with fabricated claims that immigrants were eating pets, the idea that Tren de Aragua had taken over a Colorado housing project didn’t have to be true to have a political impact (Washington Post, 9/6/24).
At an October rally in New York, Trump announced that, if elected president, he would “expedite removals of Tren de Aragua and other savage gangs like MS-13, which is equally vicious.” Earlier that month, he had expanded on rumors that Tren de Aragua had taken over an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado, a suburb of Denver: “I will rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered.”
Now that America is safely back in Trump’s hands, a surge in Tren de Aragua–centered propaganda will no doubt facilitate his pledge to carry out the “largest deportation operation in American history.” The brand-new designation of Tren de Aragua, MS-13 and other outfits as foreign terrorist organizations was accompanied by Trump’s declaration that it is the “policy of the United States to ensure the total elimination of these organizations’ presence in the United States”—whatever sort of action, military or otherwise, that may entail. The accompanying media offensive will surely be streamlined with the help of the reductionist “terrorist” label that has now been added to the linguistic arsenal.
Meanwhile, over on the frontlines of the invasion in Aurora, the Washington Post reported in September (9/6/24) that “some tenants” of the apartments in question had
held a news conference…and disputed the notion that the gang has taken over the complex. Instead, they said, the problem is that the apartment block has fallen into disrepair and is infested with bedbugs, cockroaches and rats.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
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The New York Times‘ Jess Bidgood (1/17/25) suggests Democrats should be wary of criticizing Donald Trump’s wealthy friends, “given the popularity of some of those billionaires.” (Elon Musk, pictured, is viewed unfavorably by 52% of poll respondents, with 36% having a positive opinion.)
Sometimes the headline says it all, as with the New York Times on January 17: “If Democrats Attack Trump’s Rich Pals as ‘Oligarchs,’ Will It Stick?”
The piece presents Elon Musk’s influence on the new administration as something “Democrats…have suggested”; the role of Trump’s billionaire allies is something Democrats “plan to invoke” in the fight over tax cuts; and the idea that Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos might be front and center at the inauguration isn’t meaningful in itself, so much as something Democrats saw as “an irresistible opportunity to further highlight those connections.”
Is it true that the Trump administration, slated to be the richest presidential administration in history, not even counting Elon Musk, represents “oligarchy“? Not the point. The important question is: Will such a charge (clearly defined as partisan) “stick”? What it means for a charge to “stick,” and what role media like themselves have in making it stick, are not things the Times would have you consider.
For its part, AP went with the headline (1/20/25): “Trump, a Populist President, Is Flanked by Tech Billionaires at His Inauguration,” over a piece noting it as a “shift from tradition, especially for a president who has characterized himself as a champion of the working class.” Is it a wacky juxtaposition—or a sign that elite media see the story as, not whether Trump actually is a champion of the working class, but whether he characterizes himself that way?
It would be work enough to counter the actual things actually happening without news media dedicating themselves to putting up a rhetorical scrim between us and the things we need to understand and resist.
ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your communication in the comments thread.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
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Shadi Hamid (Washington Post, 1/16/25): “Donald Trump might seem like a madman. But it turns out that might be a good thing—at least for the moment.”
Many leading US media outlets were quick to attribute the suspension of hostilities in Gaza to incoming president Donald Trump’s intervention. Ariel Kahana argued in the Wall Street Journal (1/15/25) that “Trump Forced Netanyahu to Make a Deal With the Devil”—Satan, in this formulation, being Hamas, as opposed to the parties responsible for more than 15 months of genocide. In the Washington Post (1/16/25), a Shadi Hamid column contended that “Trump’s ‘Madman Theory’ Worked in Gaza When All Else Failed.”
Other coverage highlighted how Trump’s team coordinated with the Biden administration in its final weeks. The Journal (1/15/25) foregrounded the “pointed debate over who deserves the credit” while the New York Times (1/15/25) marveled at the “remarkable collaboration between President Biden and President-elect Donald J. Trump, who temporarily put aside mutual animosity to achieve a mutual goal.” The Post (1/18/25) emphasized
how incoming and outgoing administration teams with little ideological affinity—and considerable political enmity—embarked on a virtually unprecedented collaboration to seal the ceasefire deal.
I ran a search using the news media aggregator Factiva and found that the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal ran a combined 19 articles containing the words “Gaza” and “ceasefire” in the five-day period from when the ceasefire was agreed upon, January 15, until it took effect on January 19. Yet these newspapers consistently ignored other crucial features of the environment in which the ceasefire came together.
‘Heavy losses on Israeli forces’
Foreign Policy (4/9/24): The Biden administration warned Israel not to “get bogged down in an endless quagmire with no way out.”
A major overlooked factor is that Israeli occupation forces faced fierce resistance from Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups in Gaza. Israeli media and former Israeli officials have described Israel as being in a “quagmire” in Gaza (Haaretz, 8/15/24, 9/16/24). International media reached the same conclusion (Irish Times, 4/7/24; Foreign Policy, 4/9/24).
As it became likely that a ceasefire would come to pass, Haaretz military analyst Amos Harel (1/14/25) wrote that
until a deal is signed, Israel is bleeding in Gaza…. The number of fallen soldiers in the area has risen to 15 in less than a week. It’s not just that time is running out for the hostages. Soldiers, too, are dying without any clear reason in a prolonged operation in Northern Gaza….
In practice, despite the heavy losses sustained by Hamas, it is clear that the operation has not yielded decisive results. The fighting in Jabaliya has subsided, but an estimated several dozen active [Palestinian fighters] remain there. A similar number are also active in Beit Hanoun and have managed to inflict relatively heavy losses on the Israeli forces.
Despite using nearly apocalyptic force against Gaza and inflicting incomprehensible suffering on its civilian population, the US/Israeli alliance could not vanquish Palestinian resistance forces, and Israel was forced to absorb substantial casualties.
However, the 19 Journal, Post and Times articles make only one mention of Israeli losses in Gaza. That occurred in the final sentence of a Post article (1/15/25), which read, “[Israel] says 405 soldiers have been killed during its military operation in Gaza”—a figure that cannot be verified because the Israeli military is secretive and censorious (+972, 5/20/24).
Economic toll
CNN (10/4/24): “As the conflict spills over into the wider region, the economic costs will spiral too.”
Other costs were also exacted from Israel. For months, 68,000 Israelis living near the Israel/Lebanon armistice line have been evacuated from their homes because of rockets Hezbollah has fired, which the group consistently said it did to pressure Israel into a Gaza ceasefire. Although Hezbollah has stopped since it signed a “ceasefire” with Israel (that Israel has ignored—FAIR.org, 1/9/25), Israelis have not gone back to their homes in the north, and are not expected to until March at the earliest (Haaretz, 1/1/25).
None of the 19 Journal, Times and Post pieces I examined make any reference to these almost 70,000 Israelis who have been driven from their homes by the Palestinians’ Lebanese allies.
The drawn-out genocide exacted economic costs on Israel as well. In October, CNN (10/4/24) said that Israelis’ living standards are declining and that, prior to the events of October 7, 2023,
the International Monetary Fund forecast that Israel’s economy would grow by an enviable 3.4% [in 2024]. Now, economists’ projections range from 1% to 1.9%. Growth [in 2025] is also expected to be weaker than earlier forecasts…. Inflation is accelerating, propelled by rising wages and soaring government spending to fund the war….
The conflict has caused Israel’s budget deficit—the difference between government spending and revenue, mostly from taxes—to double to 8% of GDP, from 4% before the war….
To shrink the fiscal hole, the government can’t rely on a healthy flow of tax revenue from businesses, many of which are collapsing, while others are reluctant to invest while it’s unclear how long the war will last.
A Reuters headline (10/15/24) the next day noted that Israeli GDP growth for April–June 2024 had to be “Revised Down to 0.3% as Gaza War Takes Economic Toll.”
Nevertheless, the 19 Journal, Times and Post articles in my data set contained zero references to Israel’s economic problems.
‘Costs piling up for importers’
New York Times (12/11/24): Yemeni attacks on cargo traffic in the Red Sea were “one of the most significant challenges that shipping has faced in a long time.”
Along similar lines, the Yemeni group Ansar Allah (usually referred to in Western media as the Houthis) has been intercepting commercial ships in the Red Sea since October 2023, promising to stop once there is a Gaza ceasefire. Ansar Allah’s commandeering the vessels has had a substantial impact on the global economy. A Defense Intelligence Agency report said that Red Sea shipping usually accounts for 10–15% of international maritime trade, and container shipping through those waters declined by roughly 90% from December 2023 to February 2024.
A December 2024 article in the New York Times (12/11/24) explained that Ansar Allah’s actions forced shipping companies to take a route “that is some 3,500 nautical miles and 10 days longer.” While “Western-led naval fleets were sent to the Red Sea…the attacks continued, and commercial vessels have, for the most part, stayed away.”
According to the report, “the costs are piling up for importers,” as shipping “rates have surged,” and economists say that “the Houthi attacks have contributed to inflation around the world.” The Times said that “the cost of shipping a container from China to a West Coast port in the United States is up 217% over 12 months.”
Meanwhile, AP (1/3/25) reported that “Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea have all but shuttered an Israeli port in the city of Eilat.”
Nor have Ansar Allah’s activities been limited to the seas. As AP pointed out:
In recent weeks, missiles and drones from Yemen have struck nearly every day…setting off air raid sirens in broad swaths of Israel…. The rocket fire is posing a threat to Israel’s economy, keeping many foreign airlines away and preventing the country from jump-starting its hard-hit tourism industry.
The 19 Gaza ceasefire articles in the Journal, Times and Post said nothing about the economic and military impact of Ansar Allah’s operations.
An accounting of the ceasefire is incomplete if it excludes how anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist forces in the Middle East thwarted US/Israeli designs for over 15 months, levying considerable battlefield and financial losses. Palestinians are protagonists in their own history, whether the US media like it or not.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
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Several conservative-led jurisdictions have proven that supporting renewable energy doesn’t mean abandoning careful money management. True “conservatives” care about open markets and fiscal responsibility. With more than twice as much investment now flowing into renewable energy worldwide, and twice as many jobs being created every year in renewables than conventional oil and gas, distaste for renewable energy is breaking down even amongst traditional “conservatives”.
Let’s take a hike through three jurisdictions, each with a conservative-leaning government, and see how they are approaching this issue.
Not all conservative-leaning governments treat the development of renewable energy the same. Despite sharing ideological leanings with other Canadian conservative jurisdictions like Ontario, and to a lesser extent Nova Scotia, and states such as Texas, Alberta remains an outlier, placing heavy restrictions on renewable power development.
But there is reason to hope.
Let’s look at Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who shares many political views with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith (at least until the current spat over using oil as leverage with President Trump’s threatened tariffs). When Ford first took office, he made a controversial decision about renewable energy. He cancelled Ontario’s wind energy program, tearing up 750 contracts with energy companies. This cost Ontario taxpayers $231 million – an expense Ford surprisingly claimed to be ‘proud’ of.
That was then and this is now, and today Ontario faces a growing political challenge – affordability. In August of 2024, Ford’s Minister of Energy Stephen Lece announced that the province needed to procure 5000 megawatts of power (enough electricity for 4.5M homes). To be clear, this wasn’t an announcement that the province would turn back to wind and solar power; it was an open call for ‘any and all’ power procurement proposals, and as Lece said, the government was energy-agnostic as to where it came from.
Agnosticism isn’t what we’re hoping to see from our leaders when it comes to green energy, but at least the door is open to renewables. This should not be mistaken for a shift towards renewables. If support for renewable energy was a spectrum, Ontario would be just to the left of Alberta.
It gets better. On January 13th, 2025 the Province of Nova Scotia and the Regional Municipality of Halifax announced that “Nearly half of Halifax’s municipal electricity will soon come from a Queens County wind farm, a move the city says will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by a quarter.”
Unlike Ontario’s thumb-on-the-scale approach, Nova Scotia is purchasing its future power directly from a new wind farm. All forms of power generation come with a cost, and in this case, there is an ecological footprint to the wind farm that the company and government are working to mitigate.
In January Nova Scotia announced an ambitious effort to reach NetZero by 2035 and have 80 per cent of its power sourced from renewables by 2030. According to report cards produced at the end of 2024, Nova Scotia got a C letter grade for its efforts so far. This announcement might improve its marks for 2025.
And this is from a conservative province. Tim Houston’s Progressive Conservatives won in a romp in the fall 2024 provincial election.
No comparison of conservative-led jurisdictions and their energy production values is complete without wandering through Texas. According to Power Up Texas, the state “is both the #1 energy producer and consumer in the country.” This isn’t the gospel according to “big green,” but from an alliance of businesses, chambers of commerce, power utilities and others.
For perspective, however, Texas is also the US’s number one producer of oil and coal. So, while 26 per cent of its energy comes from wind and solar, and they are among the leaders in battery storage and transmission, they are still the largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions, at 622.4 MT in 2020, or 13.5 per cent of all the emissions in the US. (Per capita, they are 10th)
However, the trend lines are positive: There are 210,433 electric vehicles registered in Texas and battery storage did not exist in Texas until 2014, now they are second in the country. Texas generated more solar energy in 2023 alone than all in-state solar generation before 2021 combined.
It probably goes without saying that Texas is a Republican state.
Ontario, Nova Scotia and Texas all have conservative leadership. To a greater or lesser extent, they have policy and regulatory environments that either allow for free market competition or actively encourage renewable energy development. But they are also – to a greater or lesser extent – embracing the policy, environmental and economic opportunities that come with renewable power. That means there’s still hope for Alberta.
Note to Readers: Restrictions placed on wind power permitting in the United States during the early days of Donald Trump’s Presidency will have yet unknown impacts.
The post How Some Conservative Governments Embrace Renewables appeared first on Environmental Defence.
This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
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Today, we’re bringing you the final profile in our series about the Top Ten Climate Villains in Canada. We’re spotlighting Micheal Binnion, the Mastermind of Petro Populism, who has worked for decades to embed support for fossil fuels in the highest levels of the Canadian government.
This series of satirical CVs for climate villains has helped reveal the names and faces of the corporate elite championing the fossil fuel industry. With these profiles, we hope to reinforce the public’s understanding that there are people with massive wealth and power who are trying to keep us hooked on their polluting fossil fuel products and advocate against climate policies, escalating the climate crisis. We hope that by highlighting the individuals, not just the companies, profiting from climate crises, you can better identify their bias in op-eds, public attacks on climate policies, or political endorsements.
There are many more fossil fuel profiteers and enablers who didn’t make it onto Environmental Defence’s list of the top ten worst climate villains. But, if you’ve followed this series or explored our website, you may have noticed some common tactics they use. This year, we’ll take a closer look at these strategies, including greenwashing, influencing governments, hindering the energy transition, and keeping us reliant on fossil fuel infrastructure. In 2025, we’ll be unveiling their playbook to expose how they operate in order to help everyone better understand the fossil fuel industry’s influence.
But that’s not all—we also know that people across Canada are taking action and fighting back. This year, we’ll also share inspiring stories of people who have stood up to the fossil fuel industry and won. We’ll also highlight the solutions within our reach that can reduce the industry’s hold on our future, showing that positive change is possible.
- Modern Miracle Network Inc, Founder & Executive Director: 2016-Present
- Questerre Energy Corporation, Founder & President: 2000 – Present
- Rupert’s Crossing Ltd: 1996 – Present (Binnion’s venture capital entity)
- Canada Strong & Free Network, Board member: 2020 – Present (Formerly the Manning Centre, a pro-oil, free market-oriented advocacy group)
- Manning Foundation: Former Chairman
- High Arctic Energy Services, Chairman: 2005 – Present
- Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Chairman: 2003 – 2015
- Red Leaf Resources Inc., Director: 2012 – 2015 (Resource extraction technology company focusing on shale oil)
- Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers: Former board member
- Ernst & Young: 1982 – 1988
Villain Career Profile
Michael Binnion has been a key figure behind the petro-populism movement, which uses industry resources to rile up and elevate the profile of communities supporting the fossil fuel industry and to coordinate attacks on those who are critical of the industry. This strategy portrays the oil and gas industry as under attack in order to galvanize people, especially those with ties to the industry, to “defend” it. Binnion’s role in this has been to link the oil and gas industry with politicians and industry front groups.
He has been relentless in his advocacy against climate policies in Canada. A 2019 Corporate Knights profile describes his work as offering “a well-connected and determined insider’s campaign to change our national conversation about both fossil fuels generally and carbon pricing in particular.” The same article also describes him as “relentless, publicly and privately” in trying to eliminate the federal carbon tax.
While his corporate day job may be as head of a shale (ie. fracking) gas company, his LinkedIn profile states “my passion remains political advocacy.” This is demonstrated by his leadership and lengthy tenure at free-market oriented think tanks and advocacy organizations, and support for pro-oil politicians and astroturf groups.
In 2016 Binnion founded the Modern Miracle Network (MMN) to promote, celebrate, and embrace fossil fuels as, you guessed it, “the miracle of modern hydrocarbons in Canada.” MMN, operating out of the same headquarters as Questerre Energy and with other Questarre employees in Director positions, hosts networking and education events that are pro-oil and activate opposition to climate regulations. MMN has financially supported and regularly promotes astroturf groups in the “Canada Proud” network. An astro-turf group is one which appears to be grassroots but are actually industry founded and funded. Since 2016, Binnion has promoted or been supportive of convoys of oil and gas workers going to Ottawa to fight for the industry, which were trial runs for the large anti-masking “Freedom convoy” that took over downtown Ottawa.
While Binnion’s oil and gas production ventures have not been as successful as his Climate Villain peers, he still boasts an annual compensation package from Questerre of over $620 thousand, roughly 8.5 times the average salary in Canada. His estimated net worth is $4 million.
Career Highlights
Fighting to Frack the Saint-Lawrence River
- With Binnion’s company, Questerre Energy, he championed the exploration of shale gas in Quebec. In his words “We are now on the front lines campaigning for a social license to operate in Quebec”
- Binnion lobbied against Quebec’s ban on fracking, and, more recently, against Quebec’s ban on oil and gas exploration, which was successfully passed in 2022. Binnion then took legal action against the Quebec government to “protect the rights of our shareholders” despite the government covering 75 per cent of the shutdown and remediation costs and companies receiving $100 million in compensation for their drilling licenses. In January of 2024 the Quebec Superior Court accepted Questerre’s application to stay key provisions (i.e. not apply) of the fossil fuel exploration ban while the judicial proceedings move forward.
- Binnion was a “driving force” behind the now-bunk Quebec Oil and Gas Association (QOGA) in the mid-2000s. It has been largely inactive since 2015 but originally included political insiders on the governance board.
Boosting Fossil Fuel Astroturf & Advocacy Groups
- Binnion has played a defining role in the Modern Miracle Network (MMN), Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), the Canada Strong and Free Network (CSFN), and the Manning Foundation. These organizations have promoted the profile and opinion of climate crisis deniers and advocated against climate policies and regulations on the fossil fuel industry.
Both the CSFN and the CTF are affiliated with the Atlas Network, a global association of libertarian think tanks that advocate against government intervention to solve the climate crisis. The Atlas Network stopped publicly sharing its membership in 2021, but these Canadian groups were listed the last year Atlas listed its members on its website.
Take Action: Tell Canada to Stop Big Oil’s Climate Villains
The Climate Villains campaign highlights the leaders of the fossil fuel industry that play key roles in expanding and financing climate-wrecking fossil fuels, blocking climate action, and spreading disinformation. These villains are more concerned about their profits and wealth than the future of the planet, and that’s why we’re profiling the ‘resume’ of each climate villain.
The post Michael Binnion: The Mastermind of Petro Populism appeared first on Environmental Defence.
This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
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Elon Musk was not the first supporter to celebrate a Trump victory by evoking Nazi Germany (PBS, 11/22/16).
There’s something about the start of a Trump presidency that makes grown men do strange things, like heiling Hitler.
Eight years ago, after Trump’s first election, white nationalist Richard Spencer couldn’t resist flashing a Nazi salute as he addressed a rally just blocks from the White House (PBS, 11/22/16).
This time around, a more prominent Trump supporter gave a Nazi salute in a bigger forum. “I never imagined we would see the day when what appears to be a Heil Hitler salute would be made behind the presidential seal,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler wrote on Twitter/X (1/20/25).
Nadler was referring to Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and Trump’s major patron. Having spent over $275 million backing Trump, Musk secured a speaking slot at Trump’s Inauguration Day rally at Capital One Arena.
Addressing the crowd from the same podium Trump would soon speak from, Musk gave a passionate Nazi salute. Then he did it again.
‘A Hitler salute is a Hitler salute’
The New York Times (1/20/25) reported “speculation” that Musk had given a Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration.
The New York Times (1/20/25) described the moment:
[Musk] grunted and placed his hand to his heart before extending his arm out above his head with his palm facing down. After he turned around, he repeated the motion to those behind him.
“My heart goes out to you,” Musk then said. “It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured.”
The Times story was headlined, “Elon Musk Ignites Online Speculation Over the Meaning of a Hand Gesture.”
But speculation wasn’t needed. “Whoever on a political stage, making a political speech in front of a partly far-right audience, elongates his arm diagonally in the air both forcefully and repeatedly, is making a Hitler salute,” wrote journalist Lenz Jacobsen. His story for the German newspaper Die Zeit (1/21/25) is headlined “A Hitler Salute Is a Hitler Salute Is a Hitler Salute.”
NYU history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat was no less certain. “That was a Nazi salute—and a very belligerent one too,” she wrote on X (1/20/25).
Ben-Ghiat was commenting on a widely shared video posted by PBS’s NewsHour, which reported that “Musk gave what appeared to be a fascist salute.”
In a sign of the dangers that lie ahead for media, particularly public media, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene gave Musk a pass for his racist salute, and instead took aim at PBS for posting video of it. Greene wrote on X (1/20/25):
I look forward to PBS NewsHour coming before my committee and explaining why lying and spreading propaganda to serve the Democrat party and attack Republicans is a good use of taxpayer funds.
We will be in touch soon.
Meanwhile, the axe has already fallen on a Milwaukee meteorologist. CBS 58—whose call letters, coincidentally, are WDJT—dropped Sam Kuffel the day after she posted about Musk’s salute on her personal Instagram account (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 1/22/25). Over a picture of Musk, Kuffel’s post read: “Dude Nazi saluted twice. TWICE. During the inauguration.”
‘The actual truth’
The idea that “Western Jewish populations” are “pushing…dialectical hatred of whites” is at the core of Nazi ideology. Musk declared it “the actual truth” (X, 11/15/23).
Reared in apartheid South Africa, Musk is no stranger to extremism. Like many on the far right, a favorite target of Musk’s is George Soros, the Jewish billionaire who funds lefty candidates and causes.
As Israeli newspaper Haaretz (1/20/25) reported:
Much of Musk’s criticism centers around Soros’ supposed role in the racist “great replacement theory,” whose proponents allege that Soros is funding waves of immigration that are meant to deliberately dilute the white population in order to reshape society and its politics. This conspiracy has been cited by white nationalists who have perpetrated deadly attacks in Charlottesville, Pittsburgh, El Paso and Buffalo.
Soros is bent on “destroying Western civilization,” says Musk, who after making his Nazi salute thanked Trump’s supporters for assuring “the future of civilization.”
Musk has endorsed explicitly antisemitic conspiracy theories. He responded “You have said the actual truth” (X, 11/15/23) to a user who posted:
Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them. I’m deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about Western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that [they] support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much.
Trump, of course, is also fluent in far-right ideology. His first wife, Ivana, said Trump kept a book of Hitler’s speeches near his bed (ABC, 12/20/23). As president, after white nationalists romped through Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us” in 2017, Trump famously said that some of them were “very fine people.”
And Musk isn’t just backing Trump; he’s also voiced support for far right candidates in Europe. “He has made recent statements in support of Germany’s far-right AfD party and British anti-immigration party Reform UK,” reported the BBC (1/21/25), which noted Musk’s “politics have increasingly shifted to the right.”
‘Musk stirs controversy’
Megan McArdle (Washington Post, 1/21/25) argues that democracy requires us to pretend that those who openly promote Nazi ideology are not actually doing so.
The only word my wife could utter as she handed me her phone Monday night was “watch.” And we did. Again and again, with our stomachs in knots.
My only comfort was knowing that Musk would be excoriated in the coming news cycle. But when I searched our hometown newspaper, the Washington Post, all I saw was a headline that read, “Elon Musk Gives Exuberant Speech at Inauguration.”
The post consisted of a one-minute video of Musk’s “high-energy speech,” and left out the jaw-dropping part: Musk, head on, eagerly giving a Nazi salute for all the world to see. The Post video only showed Musk’s second, comparatively lackluster salute, with his back to the cameras.
By late Tuesday morning, the Post had uploaded a new video that included a straight-on shot of Musk’s first salute, but under the anodyne headline: “Elon Musk Stirs Controversy Over Hand Gesture at Trump Rally.”
By Tuesday night, the Post had finally published its own story, as well as republished an AP story. The latter began:
Right-wing extremists are celebrating Elon Musk’s straight-arm gesture during a speech Monday, although his intention wasn’t totally clear.
Meanwhile, Post columnist Megan McArdle claimed Musk’s salute may have been nothing more than “an awkward attempt to embody what he said next: ‘My heart goes out to you.’” In her column—headlined “The Missing Context From the Elon Musk Salute” (1/21/25)—McArdle wrote that Musk “made other awkward gestures” in his speech:
That may just be how he moves when he’s excited. Musk has said he is mildly autistic, and even high-functioning autistic people struggle with reading, and sending, accurate social cues.
A mogul with prime seating
Jeff Bezos (X, 1/20/25) posted this close-quarters view of Donald Trump’s inauguration, declaring himself “excited to collaborate.”
For the Post, its weak coverage of Musk’s salute comes at a time when the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, has been busy supplicating himself before Trump (FAIR.org, 1/22/25).
Just ahead of the election, Bezos personally killed the Post’s endorsement of Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris (FAIR.org, 10/30/24). Since Trump’s win, Bezos and the company he founded, Amazon, have lavished Trump and his family with millions of dollars. And the Post recently spiked a drawing by Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes, which depicted Bezos and other tech billionaires groveling before Trump (FAIR.org, 1/7/25).
That groveling is what enabled Bezos to view Trump’s inauguration up close. “Donald Trump did everything but invite the tech moguls to join him in taking the oath,” wrote the Post’s Ruth Marcus (1/20/25):
The scene—moguls with prime dais seating inside the cozy Rotunda, while lawmakers and governors and other luminaries were relegated to watching on screens—could not have been more revealing.
Amid Bezos’s politicking, the Post is in freefall, hemorrhaging talent and readers—yet another gift to Trump.
‘Pure propaganda’
Zeit Online (1/21/25) masked an image of Musk’s gesture in deference to Germany’s anti-Nazi laws.
Musk, notably, hasn’t denied that he made a Nazi salute. Instead, he’s lashed out on X (1/21/25, 1/22/25), the platform he owns, blaming the “pure propaganda” media and “radical leftists” for stirring up controversy. Musk also wrote on X (1/20/25) that “the ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”
But as Vanity Fair’s Kase Wickman (1/21/25) noted, “people weren’t calling him Hitler”:
They were saying that he made a gesture that people who really dig Hitler typically make. It would be very easy to just plainly say that that wasn’t the intention, but Musk just let that pass.
Still, Musk has defenders, most notably Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu (X, 1/23/25) and the Anti-Defamation League. The latter claimed Musk “made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute.” Let’s all “take a breath,” the ADL posted on X (1/20/25).
Despite billing itself as a defender of civil rights and the final arbiter on antisemitism, the ADL has long prioritized its right-wing agenda above all (In These Times, 7/21/20).
With its defense of Musk, “ADL opted to gaslight,” Haaretz’s Ben Samuels wrote on X (1/21/25). Samuels’ recent story (1/21/25) is headlined “Musk’s ‘Fascist Salute’: US Jewish Establishment Failed Its First Test With Trump 2.0.”
Much of US corporate media also failed that first test.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
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In its message declaring the platform unavailable, TikTok played to Donald Trump’s vanity by saying it was “fortunate” to have his assistance.
So here we are. After both houses of Congress approved it, the president signed it and government attorneys successfully argued for it in federal court, the ban on TikTok went into effect for a few hours, which for some might have seemed like an eternity.
The law bans the social media platform used by 170 million Americans unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sells it. While the ban took effect the day before Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, the site was restored as Trump vowed to extend the app’s life by 90 days (AP, 1/19/25).
I have covered the move to ban TikTok for years (FAIR.org, 8/5/20, 5/25/23, 11/13/23, 3/14/24, 9/27/24), so I’ll summarize the problem: Anti-China hysteria (and Israel boosterism) led lawmakers in both parties to allege that TikTok harvests user data—which sounds sinister, but is actually par for the course with social media. A ban would hurt millions of people who rely on the app for their personal business and for news consumption, and would set a terrible anti–free speech precedent, forcing us all to ask what other foreign-owned media products could also face federal censorship.
Commercial realities
For the Hollywood Reporter (1/18/25), what made TikTok unique was that it “allowed any user, regardless of their social clout or level of fame, to reach millions at the click of the button.”
While many have rightfully protested the ban, it surely wasn’t any left-wing outcry that has caused Trump, who originally started the anti-TikTok sentiment (NPR, 8/6/20), to attempt to save the app’s life in the US.
Shutting down the platform would negatively impact a number of important US business sectors, including the music industry (Guardian, 1/18/25) and advertising (Adweek, 1/3/25). Small businesses, often lauded as the purest form of American entrepreneurialism in the conservative imagination, are acutely at risk (CBS News, 1/17/25); imagine upstart companies several decades ago losing their phone or mail service.
As the Hollywood Reporter (1/18/25) noted:
By 2023, TikTok was playing a major role in our economy. Thousands of retailers came to rely on TikTok Shop to reach customers, and by the following year TikTok was just as much of an ecommerce platform as a social network. TikTok claims it contributed $24.2 billion to the GDP in 2023, and supported some 224,000 American jobs, according to Oxford Economics, a research firm.
The state wanted to curb people’s access to Chinese apps, yet the ban fails to do that, as many TikTok users flocked to another Chinese app, RedNote (Global Times, 1/14/25; Slate, 1/16/25). (The right has alleged, with little or no evidence, that TikTok is used to advance Chinese state ideology—Fox News, 7/31/23; Free Press, 1/5/25).
‘Warm spot’ for TikTok
TikTok restored service on January 20 (Reuters, 1/20/25), but as of January 23, the app was still unavailable from Google and Apple‘s app stores.
Trump, ever the vain showman, found his own success on the app (Reuters, 6/3/24). “Trump has said he has a ‘warm spot’ for TikTok and has vowed to ‘save’ a platform on which his campaign generated ‘billions of views,’” reported USA Today (1/15/25). TikTok’s CEO is feeding Trump’s ego at an opportune time in hopes that Trump could save the app (Washington Post, 1/16/25).
Others on the right are seeing the problems with banning TikTok. The Murdoch-owned New York Post (1/18/25) ran an op-ed saying, “just because the anti-TikTok legislation is legal”—the word the authors are looking for is constitutional, not legal, but you get the idea—“doesn’t necessarily make it wise.” It reminded readers, “We must also grapple with an uncomfortable truth: Despite its Chinese Communist ties, TikTok became an unlikely bastion of free speech during the 2024 election season”—in contrast to “Meta’s Orwellian content moderation.”
Former GOP Wisconsin Rep. Mike Gallagher, a key architect of the ban, took to the Wall Street Journal (1/9/25), also Murdoch-owned, to defend the ban in a piece called “Congress Didn’t Ban TikTok,” which smelled more like last-minute damage control than a policy victory lap.
In other words, after federal lawmakers spent hours pushing through the ban and arguing for it in media outlets, and lawyers used precious resources to craft careful arguments in the court, it was all a waste of time.
TikTok could still go dark
Some US investors who hope to take over TikTok in a gun-to-the-head sale say that they don’t need to buy the algorithm—a claim some social media observers find dubious (CNN, 1/9/25).
But free speech advocates shouldn’t celebrate just yet. First of all, this could very well be merely a delay in a ban, rather than long-term preservation of the platform. TikTok could very well go dark eventually.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk, whose acquisition of Twitter (now known as X) has crushed free speech on that platform (El País, 5/24/23), created a cesspool of bigotry (Rolling Stone, 1/24/24; Guardian, 9/5/24) precipitated the site’s overall decline (Nieman Reports, 1/31/24; CNN, 9/5/24; NBC News, 11/13/24), is a potential buyer for TikTok (Bloomberg, 1/14/25). Such a move would consolidate social media under far-right billionaire control.
On Trump’s own social media network, Truth Social (1/19/25), Trump said of a future deal to save TikTok: “I would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture. By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to stay up.” Translation: state control. As is always the case with Trump, it’s hard to say how much he believes this.
Many believe it is unlikely ByteDance would spin off TikTok to another party. “ByteDance would prefer to shut down TikTok rather than sell it if the Chinese company exhausts all legal options,” Reuters (4/26/24) reported, citing several sources, as this would be tantamount to selling its trade secrets to rivals. It would also be
impossible to divest TikTok with its algorithms, as their intellectual property license is registered under ByteDance in China and thus difficult to disentangle from the parent company.
“Separating the algorithms from TikTok’s US assets would be an extremely complicated procedure,” Reuters said.
Power to censor
Putting the lie to the Supreme Court’s claim that the anti-TikTok law was “content agnostic, the New York Post (1/17/25) pointed to the platform’s “enormous potential to sway public opinion” as a “prime reason” to force a takeover.
The bipartisan ban on TikTok impacts any app with ties to its Chinese company ByteDance, so other less popular apps, like the video editor CapCut, are also feeling the pinch (USA Today, 1/19/25). The ban’s power to censor is still very much in effect.
Even if Trump simply chooses not to enforce the ban against TikTok, the law remains on the books, and the Supreme Court has provided politicians with judicial justification that free speech concerns can be subverted if you say the words “national security” and “foreign adversary” enough times (New York Times, 1/17/25). With journalists already fearing how Trump might retaliate against the press (FAIR.org, 11/14/24), this Supreme Court precedent will be another legal arrow in the executive branch’s quiver.
RedNote’s popularity has already put it in the crosshairs of the national security state. CBS News (1/16/25) reported that an unnamed US official said “RedNote, just like TikTok, could face an ultimatum to divest, or be banned.” Capitalizing on US government anxiety about RedNote, the Global Times (1/17/25), owned by China’s Communist Party, said, “Those malicious hypes won’t deter the momentum of positive engagement between Chinese and the US netizens.” It’s a cheeky little jab at anti-China demagogues, but that attitude could only encourage more US censorship of anything deemed in control of Beijing.
The lesson of this episode is that jingoistic paranoia is a dangerous disease. The New York Post editorial board (1/17/25), as if channeling George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove, said the US “must not kowtow to the commies and let China retain control of the company or its app.” The Post and other Trumpists clearly want Washington to snatch TikTok from ByteDance to kick dirt in China’s face in a would-be show of hegemonic dominance.
More tariffs, and war talk about so-called Chinese control of the Panama Canal, have negative consequences for everyday Americans (CounterSpin, 1/10/25). For example, the impending tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China could mean higher prices for consumers (CNBC, 1/20/25), especially for generic drugs (NBC News, 11/22/24), and they could alienate the US from global cooperation to “improve the resilience of supply chains, decarbonize production patterns, or increase workers’ rights” (Center for American Progress, 12/18/24).
And, of course, one of the prime victims of anti-Communist fervor has always been free speech; think HUAC and McCarthyism. TikTok has a little more time, and could remain a media service for millions of Americans after all, but the battle to defend free speech under the second Trump administration is just beginning.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
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Karla Guevara has seen major progress for LGBTQI+ rights in her lifetime. Fifteen years ago, when the Salvadoran trans activist founded Colectivo Alejandría, LGBTQI+ rights organizations like hers were denied legal standing and recognition. Within a decade, however, not only did her organization gain legal status, but other groups like hers had fought for and …
This post was originally published on American Jewish World Service – AJWS.
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As the Washington Post faces a staff rebellion and plummeting subscription rates, billionaire owner Jeff Bezos has introduced a new mission statement: “Riveting Storytelling for All of America.”
The Washington Post‘s new slogan, “Riveting Storytelling for All of America,” is “meant to be an internal rallying point for employees,” the New York Times (1/16/25) reported.
The new path forward, as introduced in a slide deck to staff by Suzi Watford, the paper’s chief strategy officer, demands that the paper “understand and represent interests across the country,” and “provide a forum for viewpoints, expert perspectives and conversation” (New York Times, 1/16/25). It will do this as “an AI-fueled platform for news” that delivers “vital news, ideas and insights for all Americans where, how and when they want it.”
This appears to mean shifting resources toward opinion, specifically opinions from the right. According to the New York Times report:
Bezos has expressed hopes that the Post would be read by more blue-collar Americans who live outside coastal cities, mentioning people like firefighters in Cleveland. He has also said that he is interested in expanding the Post’s audience among conservatives.
The Post has already begun to consider ways to sharply increase the amount of opinion commentary published on its website, according to two people with knowledge of the talks. An adviser to the Post, Lippe Oosterhof, has conducted brainstorming sessions about a new initiative that would make it easier to receive and publish opinion writing from outside contributors.
How AI is meant to play into this is unclear.
The Post already has more columnists than you can shake a stick at. This new direction sounds like the Foxification of the Washington Post, a move away from any attempt to hold the powerful to account, toward inexpensive clickbait punditry.
‘Make money’
The red area represents the proportion of Jeff Bezos’s total wealth that would be required to cover the Washington Post‘s losses for a year.
Watford’s slide deck presented three pillars of the Post‘s new model: “great journalism,” “happy customers” and “make money.” The Post lost roughly $77 million in 2023. (It also lost some 250,000 subscribers after Bezos killed the paper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris—FAIR.org, 10/30/24.)
In order to make money, its new “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” (yes, that’s what the Post slide deck apparently called it) is to reach 200 million “paying users.” The paper currently has about 3 million subscribers, making it an “audacious” goal indeed. As the Times pointed out, even if the Post could achieve the impossible task of monetizing every visit to its website, no major corporate media outlet has been getting more than 100 million monthly unique visits—paying and non-paying—outside of the spike in traffic around the election.
Back in 2019, the Post was claiming 80–90 million unique visitors per month. Those visits peaked in November 2020 at 114 million, but quickly and steadily dropped after Biden’s inauguration. The Post stopped posting its audience numbers online after January 2023, when they were down to 58 million.
Of course, most online corporate media have been struggling. The thing about the Post is that its absurdly wealthy owner, the second-richest person on Earth, can easily afford to lose $77 million a year. That’s 0.03% of Bezos’s current net worth.
‘We are deeply alarmed’
Guardian (1/15/25): “The plea from staff…comes a week after the Post laid off roughly 100 employees…roughly 4% of the publication’s staff.”
No doubt the Post needs help. Just days before the new mission statement was revealed, over 400 staff members signed a letter to Bezos asking for a meeting (Guardian, 1/15/25). The letter read:
We are deeply alarmed by recent leadership decisions that have led readers to question the integrity of this institution, broken with a tradition of transparency, and prompted some of our most distinguished colleagues to leave, with more departures imminent.
Bezos’s response—a slide deck about “riveting storytelling” on “an AI-driven platform” that prioritizes churning out opinions to draw in conservatives—is hardly likely to ease the mind of any serious journalist at the paper.
Nor is trying to “expand the Post audience among conservatives,” while still paying lip service to “great journalism,” likely to solve the Post‘s problems. As CNN‘s former CEO Chris Licht discovered (FAIR.org, 6/8/23), you can’t do good journalism while trying to appeal to both sides in the context of an increasingly radical right, because that side demands acceptance of lies and conspiracy theories that are incompatible with actual journalism.
When Bezos bought the Post (Extra!, 3/14), he assured the paper’s employees that “the paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners.” That sentiment was repeated in Watford’s slide deck this week. But Bezos’s actions in the past months—including the killing of the Harris endorsement, Amazon donating $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural fund and paying Melania Trump $40 million for her self-produced documentary, and, most recently, Bezos appearing onstage with other multibillionaires at Trump’s inauguration—make clear that the principle is as meaningless to Bezos as the slogan that debuted after Trump’s first election: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
That slogan will continue to adorn the front page for the time being, perhaps in the hope that readers searching for an actual news organization that holds those in power to account will be fooled into subscribing.
ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com.
Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
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Matt and Sam talk to historian Erik Baker about his new book, Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America.
This post was originally published on Dissent Magazine.
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To build a clean economy and avoid a climate disaster, Canada needs an emissions-free electricity supply. As we electrify everything, from our cars to our home heating systems, we need electricity to come from sources that don’t emit greenhouse gases.
That’s why Prime Minister Trudeau’s 2021 promise to deliver a net-zero electricity grid by 2035 was important. The target is also achievable – thanks to the coal phase out, Canada’s electricity grid is already over 80 per cent emissions-free.
To deliver on this goal, the federal government made important investments in renewable energy projects. Yet, reaching net zero also means phasing out polluting fossil fuel energy, so the government developed rules to impose a pollution limit on electricity producers. The rules, known as the Clean Electricity Regulations (CER), were finalized in December 2024. So, do they do the job? Let’s have a look.
The Clean Electricity Regulations are an important part of Canada’s climate plan.
The regulations work by placing an annual limit on the pollution from electricity produced using fossil fuels. Companies that provide electricity through wind and solar farms or nuclear plants aren’t affected by the regulations. Companies that use gas, on the other hand, will have to respect the annual limit by investing in technologies to reduce emissions – or reduce how long they run their plant.
Securing these regulations was an important victory, only made possible by the thousands of Canadians who demanded them. The regulations are expected to result in an estimated 180 Mt of GHG emissions reductions from the electricity sector between 2024 and 2050, equivalent to taking 55 million cars off the road for one year.
The regulations come up short of what is needed to tackle climate change.
Fossil fuel companies and some provincial governments, including Ontario and Alberta, used every trick in the book to prevent the regulations from being finalized. While they weren’t entirely successful, the final regulations are significantly weaker than the draft form published in June 2023.
The main issue is that gas-powered plants, the main source of pollution in Canada’s electricity grid since coal has largely been phased out, will be allowed to operate unregulated until 2035. Some newer gas plants will be exempt from pollution limits for much longer, going until 2049. Additionally, the annual limit placed on the plants is lenient and the rules accept offsets, meaning the purchase of carbon credits, as a suitable alternative to meeting the limit – up to a certain level.
In practice, this means Canada’s electricity grid will not reach net-zero emissions by 2035, despite the Prime Minister’s promise. In fact, the regulations do not guarantee our grid will be net-zero in 2040 or even 2045. In Ontario, some gas plants under construction, like the large Napanee plant, will likely not be subject to pollution limits until 2049. It also means local pollution from gas plants could continue to harm people’s health for decades.
Canada can meet its demand without new gas-powered plants.
Canada is in an enviable position. Our grid is already 85 per cent decarbonized. We have abundant wind, water and solar resources, and we are well on our way to phasing out coal. Phasing out gas is the final step.
In fact, modelling has shown that Canada can reach 100 percent zero-emissions electricity by 2035, even as electricity demand rapidly increases. Achieving this requires a significant increase in the rate of installation of renewable energy, as well as energy efficiency, interprovincial transmission and increased battery storage capacity.
Fossil gas is not a “bridge fuel” and it must be phased out.
Gas companies have tried to present fossil gas, better known as natural gas, as a cleaner “bridge fuel” that can act as an intermediary between coal and renewable energy. However, because of methane leaks throughout the supply chain in addition to emissions from combustion, the climate impact of fossil gas is significant. Current analysis finds when accounting for these “fugitive emissions” and methane gas’ powerful impact on the climate in the short term, gas is worse than coal when burned to generate electricity.
The world is rapidly moving towards renewable energy, and Canada should too.
At COP28, countries committed to tripling global renewable energy capacity by 2030. Canada formally adopted this goal. Momentum is building as countries install renewable energy at record speed. In 2023 alone, global renewable energy installations grew by 50 per cent. That includes Germany installing 17 GW of renewables and the UK installing 14 GW. Yet, despite vast potential for wind and solar, Canada has been slow to the race, installing just 2.3 GW in 2023.
Whether the Clean Electricity Regulations mandate it or not, it’s in our best interest to invest in renewable energy. Wind and solar, combined with greater energy efficiency, is the cheapest, cleanest and quickest way to meet our electricity needs while protecting our health and our future.
Ontario resident? Take action!
The post Canada’s Clean Electricity Regulations: What You Need To Know appeared first on Environmental Defence.
This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
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Ten months before the 2024 election, high-profile news outlets were already sounding the alarm: If Trump were to win another term, widespread fatigue, despair and activist burnout would probably minimize resistance.
Exhaustion and burnout are real phenomena that pose a significant challenge to political movements (Psychology Today, 6/24/20). But articles that focus on feelings of burnout, and exclude or downplay questions of changes in strategy amid shifting conditions, often have the effect—and occasionally the goal—of making everyday people seem and feel less powerful than they are.
A year ago, Politico‘s Michael Schaffer (1/26/24) was predicting that a Trump victory might “be met with avoidance, listlessness and apathy.”
Politico writer Michael Schaffer (1/26/24) noted a year ago that the shock of Trump’s 2016 victory “sparked a burst of activity that profoundly altered Washington”:
Donations to progressive advocacy groups soared. Traffic to political media spiked. Protests filled the calendar…. But now, as a second Trump term becomes an increasingly real possibility, there’s no consensus that anything similar would happen in January 2025.
While acknowledging that the post-2016 burst of activity had profoundly altered Washington, Politico warned Trump opponents that pioneering new strategies would only get them so far, since passivity in the face of a second Trump term “has as much to do with psychology as it does with the tactics or organizational skill of the activist class.”
Humans “respond to a sudden threat with a fight-or-flight instinct,” Schaffer observed, and for many, “the string of jolts that accompanied the first Trump months of 2017—the Muslim ban, the firing of James Comey, Charlottesville—spurred an impulse to fight.” The same was unlikely to be true of a second Trump win, he speculated, because for many it would amount to proof that fighting back “wasn’t enough,” and could “just as easily be met with avoidance, listlessness and apathy.”
Good journalists don’t pretend an energetic and cohesive resistance exists when it does not. But presenting opposition to authoritarians like Trump as pointless, ineffectual and doomed is journalistically irresponsible and historically illiterate, particularly when it’s clear that the initial backlash to Trump had an effect (New York Times, 12/18/17).
‘A weary shrug’
After the election, Politico again predicted a muted response to Trump’s second term. A Politico EU story (11/13/24) characterized the 2024 Trump resistance as “flaccid” (“Toto, we’re not in 2016 anymore,” read the subhead), and proclaimed that while Trump’s 2016 win had “sparked a global revolt,” his recent triumph has been “met with a weary shrug.”
The outlet suggested that Trump’s latest win had been inevitable—
part of a broader, inexorable rightward trend on both sides of the Atlantic, leaving a dejected liberal left to helplessly scratch their heads as the fickle tide of political history turns against them.
Which might leave anti-Trump readers wondering: Don’t humans have a role to play in turning history’s tide?
After the election, Politico‘s Schaffer (11/15/24) presented the exodus from the far-right X (formerly Twitter) as a sign that “the post-election progressive ferment that in 2016 gave us the resistance is going to be a lot quieter this time.”
A couple of days later, Schaffer (Politico, 11/15/24) wrote a column headlined “The Resistance Is Not Coming to Save You. It’s Tuning Out.” Noting a decline in critical coverage of Trump, Schaffer wrote that for a nation
wondering whether the return of Trump will drive an immediate return of the public fury and journalistic energy triggered by his first win, it makes for an early hint that the answer will be: Nope.
Where Trump’s first victory “triggered Blue America’s fight instinct,” he added, “the aftermath of this year’s win is looking a lot more like flight.” The question of why so many Americans are now in “fight or flight” mode went largely unexamined. Schaffer’s main takeaway was that Blue America cannot credibly blame a “feckless pre-election press” for “bungl[ing] the coverage” of the race this time around, as if alarmist corporate media coverage of crime, immigration, the economy and transgender issues didn’t contribute to Trump’s narrow victory in 2024.
He also faulted the initial resistance to Trump for being “organized around issues of identity,” citing as examples the 2017 Women’s March, the backlash to the Muslim ban, the 2017 counter-protest against a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, and the 2020 racial justice protests. But the fact that the Women’s March drew people of all genders, most participants in the 2020 racial justice protests were white, and Black Lives Matter may have been the largest protest movement in US history suggests that many Americans find issues of “identity” galvanizing rather than alienating.
And it is likelier that direct threats to people’s lives—say, those posed by mass deportations and abortion bans—will inspire more re-engagement than vague appeals to issues like preserving democracy.
Reformulated opposition
Truthout (11/16/24): “As we step out of our grieving and look ahead, there are reasons to believe that a new social movement cycle to confront Trumpism can emerge.”
It’s true that while Trump’s 2016 victory came as a horrific shock to millions, in part because Hillary Clinton was widely expected to win, the outcome of the 2024 election was less surprising, since no candidate seemed assured of victory. But torpor is just one aspect of an unfolding story; opposition to Trump’s agenda is not muted so much as it is being reformulated in response to changing conditions.
Thousands continue to protest Israel’s ongoing genocide, despite elite media outlets’ and universities’ war on free speech and student protesters. Two days after the 2024 election, more than 100,000 people joined a call organized by a coalition of 200 progressive groups, including the Working Families Party, Indivisible, United We Dream and Movement for Black Lives Action, and thousands signed up for follow-up actions.
As it did in and after 2016, Trump’s recent election has spurred thousands to join organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America, to which I belong. Public support for organized labor remains extremely high—70% of Americans approve of labor unions—and the US continues to experience an uptick in militant labor actions, including recent strikes at major companies like Starbucks and Amazon. Finally, many organizers are focused on developing strategies to combat Trump policies, like mass deportations, as soon as he attempts to impose them.
‘Get somebody else to do it’
“How Powerful Leaders Crush Dissent, Demobilizing Millions,” might have been a more appropriate headline for this New York Times piece (11/20/24).
The New York Times has also been obsessed with the allegedly neutered 2024 resistance. “In 2017, [anti-Trump voters] donned pink hats to march on Washington, registering their fury with Donald J. Trump by the hundreds of thousands,” reporter Katie Glueck (2/19/24) wrote, adding, “This year, [they] are grappling with another powerful sentiment: exhaustion.”
Weeks after the election, the paper published “‘Get Somebody Else to Do It’: Trump Resistance Encounters Fatigue” (11/20/24). The subhead read, “Donald J. Trump’s grass-roots opponents search for a new playbook as they reckon with how little they accomplished during his first term.”
In the piece itself, reporter Katie Benner offered a balance of voices of both the exhausted and the motivated, accompanied by a fairly nuanced assessment of the situation facing the anti-Trump resistance, describing “a sharp global reversal in the power of mass action” that may be partly due to governments’ authoritarian drift and declining willingness to change course in response to public pressure. But the paper’s headline writers erased that nuance and the role of repression, leaving only a sense that activists are personally failing. As headlines go, “How Powerful Leaders Crush Dissent, Demobilizing Millions” might have been more accurate.
In December, New York Times columnist and Trump critic Charles Blow (12/18/24) offered weary progressives absolution: “Temporarily Disconnected From Politics? Feel No Guilt About It.” Though he cautioned that it would be “a mistake for anyone to confuse a temporary disconnection for a permanent acquiescence,” he suggested that there were, at the moment, few ways to fight back.
After all, Blow wrote, “there is very little that average citizens can do about the way the administration takes shape”—seeming to forget that cabinet members must be confirmed by the Senate, which is an elected representative body. Even efforts to counter Trump’s agenda led by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), he noted, are “largely beyond the involvement of average citizens.” (That would probably be news to the ACLU, which is often seeking volunteers, and always seeking donations.)
Even columnists like Blow, who has called Trump an “aberration and abomination,” are apparently more interested in chronicling progressive fatigue than in contending with two troubling shifts noted by the New York Times: a global decline in the power of mass action, and self-proclaimed champion of democracy President Joe Biden’s refusal to respond to the majority of Americans who oppose Israel’s war.
When large groups of Americans cannot sway their leaders via forceful dissent, mass action or electoral campaigns—when participating in politics feels, and often is, useless—some degree of disengagement is inevitable.
‘In no mood to organize’
The Washington Post (11/10/24) presented the mood of today’s activists: “I’m feeling like I want to curl up in the fetal position.”
The Washington Post (11/10/24), under the headline, “A ‘Resistance’ Raced to Fight Trump’s First Term. Will It Rise Again?” noted in its subhead that some who had been a part of that resistance were “exhausted and feeling hopeless,” and “say they need a break.” The piece described an activist, who’d been “shocked into action” by Trump’s 2016 victory, as “in no mood to organize” in 2024. Although many had been “jolted” into opposing Trump in 2016, today’s resistance leaders “must contend with a swirl of other feelings: exhaustion, dejection, burnout.”
Yet despite their exhaustion, ordinary people around the country and world are still organizing, because they know how much worse things can get if they don’t—and because it’s their bodies, families and communities on the line. Having seen how hard it is to make change, even when a policy or cause has majority popular support, it’s no wonder that some are taking a short- to long-term break from politics.
It’s not the public but elite journalists, chastened by their tarnished reputation and their contributions to Trump’s rise, who have shrunk from challenging the powerful, whether those in power are genocide-supporting Democrats like Biden, or planet-betraying authoritarians like Trump.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
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CBS Evening News (1/13/25) cited Colorado’s 2021 Marshall Fire as another example of how climate disruption is making wildfires more destructive.
The devastation of the ongoing Los Angeles fires is an alarm going off, but also the result of society having hit the snooze button long ago (Democracy Now!, 1/9/25; CBS, 1/13/25). Game-changing fires destroyed Paradise, California (NPR, 11/8/23), in 2023, and Lahaina, Hawaii, in 2024—clear warnings, if any were still needed, that the climate catastrophe had arrived.
“The evidence connecting the climate crisis and extreme wildfires is clear,” the Nature Conservancy (7/9/24) said. “Increased global temperatures and reduced moisture lead to drier conditions and extended fire seasons.”
The scientific journal Fire Ecology (7/24/23) reported that “climate change is expected to continue to exacerbate impacts to forested ecosystems by increasing the frequency, size and severity of wildfires across the western United States.”
Now we are watching one of America’s largest cities burn. It’s a severe reminder that the kind of disruption we experienced in the beginning of the Covid pandemic in 2020 is the new normal under climate change.
The right-wing media, however, have found a culprit—it’s not climate change, but Democratic Party–led wokeness. The coverage demonstrates once again that the W-word can be used to blame literally anything in the Murdoch fantasyland.
‘Preoccupation With DEI’
Alyssia Finley (Wall Street Journal, 1/12/25): “A cynic might wonder if environmentalists interfered with fire prevention in hope of evicting humans.” Another cynic might wonder if the Journal publishes smears without evidence as part of its business model.
“Megyn Kelly sounded off on Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley and Mayor Karen Bass,” the New York Post (1/8/25) reported. Former Fox News host Kelly said “that the officials’ preoccupation with diversity, equity and inclusion [DEI] programs distracted them from the city’s fire-combating duties.”
Wall Street Journal editorial board member Allysia Finley (1/12/25) echoed the charge: “Bloated union contracts and DEI may not have directly hampered the fire response, but they illustrate the government’s wrongheaded priorities.” In other words, the paper didn’t have evidence to blame the fires on firefighter salaries or department diversity, but decided to insinuate as much anyway.
Other conservative journalists were more direct, like CNN pundit Scott Jennings, who went on CNN NewsNight (1/8/25) to assert:
As a matter of public policy in California, the main interest in the fire department lately has been in DEI programming and budget cuts, and now we have this massive fire, and people are upset.
As the Daily Beast (1/9/25) noted, “His response was part of a Republican kneejerk reaction that included President-elect Donald Trump blaming ‘liberals’ and state Gov. Gavin Newsom.”
The Washington Post (1/10/25) reported that Trump-supporting X owner Elon Musk
has been inundating his 212 million followers with posts casting blame for the blazes on Democrats and diversity policies, amplifying narratives that have taken hold among far-right activists and Republican leaders.
Liel Leibovitz, editor-at-large at the conservative Jewish magazine Tablet, blamed the LA devastation on the “woke religion” (New York Post, 1/9/25).
“There are many things we’ve learned that the Los Angeles Fire Department needs—and more women firefighters isn’t one of them,” moaned National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry (New York Post, 1/15/25). “Los Angeles for years has been in the grips of a bizarre obsession with recruiting more women firefighters.”
Blaming gay singers
Mentioned by Fox News (1/10/25): $13,000 allocated to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Heritage Month programs. Not mentioned by Fox News: a $126 million boost to the LAPD budget.
Fox & Friends (1/9/25, 1/9/25) blamed the city’s Democratic leaders and the fire chief for the destruction. Fox News Digital (1/10/25) said:
While Los Angeles officials were stripping millions in funding from their fire department ahead of one of the most destructive wildfires in state history, hundreds of thousands of dollars were allocated to fund programs such as a “Gay Men’s Chorus” and housing for the transgender homeless.
You may notice the shift from “millions” to “hundreds of thousands”—the latter, obviously, can’t explain what happened to the former. What can far better explain it is that the city focused much more on funding cops than firefighters (Intercept, 1/8/25). The mayor’s budget plan offered “an increase of more than $138 million for the Los Angeles Police Department; and a decrease of about $23 million for the LA Fire Department” (KTTV, 4/22/24). KABC (1/9/25) reported more recent numbers, saying the “fire department’s budget was cut by $17.6 million,” while the “city’s police department budget increased by $126 million,” according to the city’s controller.
And in 2023, the LA City Council approved salary increases for cops over objections that these pay boosts “would pull money away from mental health clinicians, homeless outreach workers and many other city needs” (LA Times, 8/23/23). The cop-pay deal was reportedly worth $1 billion (KNBC, 8/23/23).
LAFD cuts under Mayor Bass were, in fact, big news (KTTV, 1/15/25). Fox overlooked the comparison with the police, one regularly made by city beat reporters who cover public safety and city budgets, and went straight to blaming gay singers.
Crusade against ‘woke’
Contrary to the Daily Mail‘s headline (1/14/25), former California first lady Maria Shriver Maria Shriver did not “tear into LA’s woke leaders”; rather, she complained about LA’s insufficient funding of public needs.
Or take the Daily Mail (1/14/25), a right-wing British tabloid with a huge US footprint, whose headline said former California first lady “Maria Shriver Is Latest Celebrity to Tear Into LA’s Woke Leaders.” But the story went on to say that Shriver had decried the cuts to the LAFD, citing no evidence that she was fighting some culture war against women firefighters.
Shriver, the ex-wife of actor and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, was pointing the finger at austerity and calling for more public spending. In other words, Shriver was siding with LAFD Chief Kristin Crowley, who had complained that city budget cuts had failed her department (CNN, 1/12/25). The Mail’s insistence on calling this a crusade against “woke” is just another example of how tediously the conservative media apply this word to almost anything.
While these accusations highlight diversification in the LA firefighting force, the right never offers real evidence that these hiring practices lead to any kind of hindering of fire response, as University of Southern California education professor Shaun Harper (Time, 1/13/25) noted. If anything, the right admits that miserly budgeting, usually considered a virtue in the conservative philosophy, is the problem.
Equal opportunity disasters
These talking points among right-wing politicians and their sycophants in the media serve several purposes. They bury the idea that climate change, driven by fossil fuels and out-of-control growth, has anything to do with the rise in extreme weather. They pin the blame on Democrats: LA is a blue city in a blue state. And they continue the racist and sexist drumbeat that all of society’s ills can be pinned on the advancement of women and minorities.
There is, of course, an opportunity to look at political mismanagement, including the cutbacks in the fire department. But natural disasters—intensified by climate change and exacerbated by poor political leadership—have ravaged unwoke, Republican-dominated states, as well, meaning Democrats don’t have a monopoly on blame.
Hurricane Ian practically destroyed Sanibel Island in Florida, a state that has been living with Trumpism for some time under Gov. Ron DeSantis. Hurricane Helene also ravaged that state, as well as western North Carolina, a state that went to Trump in the last three elections. Hurricane Harvey drowned Texas’ largest city, Houston, and the rest of Texas has suffered power outages and shortages, due to both extreme cold and summer spikes in energy demand.
Climate change, and the catastrophes it brings to the earth, does not discriminate against localities based on their populations’ political leanings. But conservative media do.
Metastasizing mythology
Ari Paul (In These Times, 8/31/15): “The more progress made in racial and gender diversity, the more white male firefighters will denounce the changes and say that increased diversity is only the result of lowering standards.”
Meanwhile, real firefighters know what the real problem is. The Western Fire Chiefs Association (3/5/24) said:
Global warming pertains to the increased rise in Earth’s average surface temperature, largely caused by human activity, such as burning fossil fuels and deforestation. These practices emit greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) into the atmosphere. These gases trap heat, resulting in a gradual increase in global temperatures over time. Recent data on fire and trends suggests that global extreme fire incidents could rise by up to 14% by the year 2030, 30% by 2050, and 50% by the end of the century. The impact of global warming is seen particularly in the western United States, where record-setting wildfires have occurred in recent years. Fourteen of the 20 largest wildfires on record have been in California over the past 15 years.
Conservative media can ignore all this, because the notion that cultural liberalism has tainted firefighting isn’t new. I covered efforts to diversify the New York City Fire Department as a reporter for the city’s labor-focused weekly Chief-Leader, and I saw firsthand that the resistance to the efforts were based on the idea that minority men weren’t smart enough and women (white and otherwise) weren’t strong enough (PBS, 3/28/06; New York Times, 3/18/14; In These Times, 8/31/15).
What I found interesting in that case was that other major fire departments had achieved higher levels of integration, and no one was accusing those departments of falling behind in their duties. At the same time, while the FDNY resisted diversification, the New York Police Department, almost worshipped by right-wing media, embraced it (New York Post, 9/8/14, 6/10/16).
This racist and sexist mythology has metastasized in the Republican Party and its propaganda apparatus for years. With Trump coming back into power, these media outlets will feel more empowered to regurgitate this line of thinking, both during this disaster in LA and in the disasters ahead of us.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
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The Washington Post (1/3/25) argued that “serious accountability is possible” in Israel—by which it meant that Ariel Sharon once had to change his cabinet job after he let thousands of civilians be murdered.
In two instances in the past couple of weeks, the Washington Post has acknowledged criticisms made by FAIR activists and others. Post editors may not be backing down, but they are hearing you.
The first response was a Washington Post editorial (1/3/25) headlined “Readers Disagreed With Us on Israel and the ICC. Here’s Our Response.” This was an attempt to defend an earlier Post editorial, “The International Criminal Court Is Not the Venue to Hold Israel to Account” (11/24/24), which had been the subject of a FAIR Action Alert (11/26/24) and widespread criticism elsewhere (e.g., X, 11/25/24).
The centerpiece of the Post‘s defense of its editorial that said the ICC should not hold Israeli leaders responsible for war crimes was its claim that “serious accountability is possible, even probable,” from Israel’s own institutions.
Oddly, the evidence the paper offered for this was that after the IDF allowed right-wing Lebanese militias to slaughter thousands of Palestinian civilians at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee in 1982, Israel formed a commission to investigate the mass murder, and as a result, then–Defense Minister Ariel Sharon was made to resign from his post. This outcome was widely viewed as “show[ing] Israelis were willing to hold their top leaders to account,” the Post wrote.
The Post did not note that while stepping down as Defense minister, Sharon remained in the cabinet as a minister without portfolio, held one cabinet ministry after another throughout most of the 1980s and ’90s, and became prime minister of Israel from 2001–06. If that’s the Post‘s best example of Israelis “hold[ing] their top leaders to account,” hopes that anyone will face real justice in Israel for the war crimes against Gaza are very slim.
‘Extra careful…when it comes to our owner’
One of a dozen cartoons (Greater Quiet, 1/7/25) drawn in solidarity with the muzzled Ann Telnaes—this one by Ted Littleford of the New Haven Independent.
Post editorial page editor David Shipley made another retort to a criticism in a FAIR Action Alert (1/7/25) in an internal memo published by the media news site Status (1/10/25). Along with many others (e.g., Pennsylvania Capital-Star, 1/10/25), FAIR had criticized Shipley and the Post for killing a cartoon that lampooned billionaire Post owner Jeff Bezos’ obsequious relationship with Donald Trump, leading to the resignation of cartoonist Ann Telnaes.
FAIR’s Pete Tucker said it was “bizarre” for Shipley (New York Times, 1/3/25) to claim that he spiked Telnaes’ cartoon because an earlier column mentioned in passing Bezos dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Shipley claimed that his only bias was “against repetition”—as if the Post, like other papers, doesn’t routinely run cartoons on topics that columnists are also writing about. FAIR cited examples from recent weeks of Post cartoons that echoed Post columns.
In his memo, Shipley seemed to acknowledge this line of criticism: “It’s obviously true that we have published other pieces that are redundant and duplicative.” He admitted that he was being “extra careful,” and that his “scrutiny is on high when it comes to our owner.”
He defended this approach as necessary “to ensure the overall independence of our report.” By “exercising care” in coverage of their owner, “we preserve the ability to do what we are in business to do: to speak forthrightly and without fear about things that matter.”
In other words, if the Post doesn’t watch how it talks about Bezos, he might stop subsidizing it to the tune of 0.04% of his net worth annually—and then the paper won’t be able to talk “about things that matter.”
As if anything matters more than the nation’s most powerful oligarchs forming an alliance with Trump.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
