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Digging with their bare hands, rescuers in Myanmar have pulled several trapped people to safety in the days following a devastating 7.7-magnitude earthquake, videos circulating on social media show.
In one, a cell phone video taken by two teenage girls, ages 13 and 16, shows them trapped with their 75-year-old grandmother in the cramped darkness of a collapsed apartment building in Mandalay, a city near the epicenter of Friday’s quake.
“We’re trapped in here! We’re trapped in here!” one of them calls out desperately. One girl taps with something metallic on a concrete slab to signal to rescuers where they are.
Only the light of a mobile phone illuminates the claustrophobic scene. Briefly, we get a glimpse of the grandmother’s bloodied face.
Their cell phone signals reached residents, who worked feverishly to dig them out. Separate video footage shows a cluster of men lifting chunks of cement with their bare hands. “We’re ready to uncover them!” one shouts.
The final seconds of the footage shows the three being carried out of the rubble on stretchers on Sunday — a happy ending amid the gloom of the worst earthquake to hit Myanmar in decades.
The military-run country is ill-equipped to respond to the disaster. It is mired in a four-year civil war that has already displaced 3 million people.
So far, the quake has killed more than 3,000 people in Myanmar, according to the military junta that took power in a 2021 coup.
In another video, a 13-year-old girl named Pan Aye Chon is unearthed from the rubble of a collapsed monastery in Mandalay after three hours of digging by rescue workers.
While she survived the quake, family members say she’s heartbroken that many of her friends who were with her died.
When the shaking started midday Friday, the girl ran out of the monastery, but then turned around to go back to try to rescue her friends. Then part of the structure fell and trapped her, family members said.
In the capital, Naypyidaw, a 63-year-old woman was rescued from the rubble after being trapped for 91 hours, or nearly four days, Reuters reported.
Video showed orange uniform-clad rescuers in white helmets searching the partially collapsed remains of a building before the woman was carried out on a stretcher.
Reuters was able to confirm the location of the video as Naypyitaw from the buildings, the road layout and the entrance to the hospital, which matched satellite imagery of the area.
The date when the video was recorded could not be verified independently, Reuters said. However, a Myanmar Fire Services Department statement said the rescue took place on the morning of April 1.
Edited by Mat Pennington and Malcolm Foster
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If you thought SignalGate was bad, wait until you hear about ArchiveGate. Trump illegally fired the National Archivist—the first president in U.S. history to do so since the position was established in the 1930s. This wasn’t just about a change in leadership; it was revenge on the Archivist’s office alerting the DOJ about Trump’s stolen classified documents, which were stored around Mar-a-Lago, a known hub for foreign spies.
But it gets worse. Marco Rubio, who is currently the Trump/Putin lackey Secretary of State, is also serving as the acting National Archivist. This unprecedented conflict of interest raises serious concerns. Rubio is juggling three major roles—Secretary of State, head of USAID, and now, National Archivist. This gives him the power to greenlight the destruction of government records, including his own, without any checks and balances.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) plays a vital role in maintaining the integrity of our political system, overseeing the administration of the Electoral College, preserving government records, and ensuring transparency. Now, with Rubio in control, we face the potential destruction of key documents and rewriting of history that could threaten our democracy. It’s another avenue for Trump to lead a coup to stay in power, like his failed “fake electors” scheme to try to overturn the 2020 election.
As one listener points out in her commentary, edited for clarity, shared in a recent Gaslit Nation salon, we must stay vigilant of these corrupt moves. ArchiveGate is part of a broader plan to hold on to power. But remember, the people are the ultimate force. Together, we can stop this.
Want to enjoy Gaslit Nation ad-free? Join our community of listeners for bonus shows, ad-free episodes, exclusive Q&A sessions, our group chat, invites to live events like our Monday political salons at 4pm ET over Zoom, and more! Sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit!
Show Notes:
Reject Hypernormalization: Gaslit Nation Launches New Project, Survey https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/survey-reject-hypernormalization
Trump’s firing of the U.S. government archivist is far worse than it might seem: The National Archives and Records Administration does more than just preserve documents: It’s the scaffolding of the American political system. https://www.fastcompany.com/91277620/trump-firing-national-archivist-colleen-shogan
House Dems cite ‘fundamental conflict’ of Rubio’s acting appointments atop USAID and National Archives: Lawmakers’ concerns stem from a March 11 memo instructing USAID employees to prepare for mass destruction of agency records. https://www.govexec.com/management/2025/03/house-dems-cite-fundamental-conflict-rubios-acting-appointments-atop-usaid-and-national-archives/404013/
The ‘fake electors’ and their role in the 2020 election, explained https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/07/20/fake-electors-charges-trump-2020-election/
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This story originally appeared in Labor Notes on Mar. 28, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
In his broadest attack on federal workers and their unions to date, President Donald Trump on Thursday announced an Executive Order that claimed to end collective bargaining rights for nearly the whole federal workforce. Early estimates have the move affecting 700,000 to 1 million federal workers, including at the Veterans Administration and the Departments of Defense, Energy, State, Interior, Justice, Treasury, Health and Human Services, and even Agriculture.
This gutting of federal worker rights has the potential to be a pivotal, existential moment for the labor movement. It is a step that recognizes that the Trump administration’s rampage against the federal government is hitting a roadblock: unions.
Much remains to be seen: How quickly will the government move to execute the order? How much of it will stand up to challenges in court? Members of the Federal Unionists Network (FUN), who have been protesting ongoing firings and cuts, are holding an emergency organizing call on Sunday, March 30.
The move echoes past attacks on federal and public sector unions, including President Ronald Reagan firing 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981. Reagan’s move signaled “open season” on the labor movement, public and private sector alike.
The dubious mechanism that Trump is using to revoke these rights involves declaring wide swaths of the federal workforce to be too “sensitive” for union rights.
The Executive Order claims that workers across the government have “as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work.”
Historically the interpretation of this has been much narrower. While CIA operatives have not been eligible for collective bargaining, nurses at the Veterans Administration have. These rights have been law since the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, and in various forms for years prior, starting with an executive order by President Kennedy in 1962.
For example, the Veterans Administration has the largest concentration of civilian workers in the federal government, with more than 486,000 workers. The Trump Executive Order declares all of them to be excluded from collective bargaining rights.
The order names 10 departments in part or in full, and eight other governmental bodies like agencies or commissions, ranging from all civilian employees at the Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency to all workers at the Centers for Disease Control (a part of the Department of Health and Human Services) and the General Services Administration.
Federal unions immediately denounced the Executive Order, promising to challenge it in court. Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal union, said in a statement that AFGE “will fight relentlessly to protect our rights, our members, and all working Americans from these unprecedented attacks.”
It is unclear how quickly the federal government and its various agencies will act to nullify contracts and all that come with them.
At the Transportation Security Administration, where collective bargaining rights were axed in recent weeks, the impact was felt immediately: union representatives on union leave were called back to work, grievances were dropped, and contractual protections around scheduling were thrown out the window.
Some protests already in the works may become outlets for justified anger about the wholesale destruction of the federal labor movement.
Organizers with the FUN, a cross-union network of federal workers that has jumped into action as the crisis has deepened, are organizing local “Let Us Work” actions for federal workers impacted by layoffs and hosting the Sunday emergency organizing call March 30.
National mobilizations under the banner of “Hands Off” are also already planned for April 5.
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Two new Data for Progress surveys find that Democratic voters are deeply dissatisfied with party leadership and favor a more combative approach to opposing President Donald Trump. When asked to grade the Democratic Party’s response to Trump, 70% of Democratic voters gave the party a C or below, with 21% giving it an F.
The surveys, conducted among Democrats and Independents who lean Democratic, find that voters want a party leadership focused on fighting back against Trump and advocating for working-class Americans.
A strong majority of Democratic voters (61%) say Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is not doing enough to oppose Trump, and 51% believe he lacks a clear, long-term strategy. After reading about Schumer’s vote in favor of the Republican spending bill, a majority (51%) of Democratic voters believe Senate Democrats should select a new leader, compared to just 34% who think Schumer should remain in his role.
“Democratic voters are sending a clear message: they want leaders who will fight Trump and put working people first,” said Danielle Deiseroth, Executive Director of Data for Progress. “The base is tired of weak opposition and business-as-usual politics. This level of discontent is unsustainable for a Party looking to build back in the wake of major losses — at a certain point, Democratic leaders will need to show voters that they are taking a stronger stance against Trump, or step aside for someone who will.”
Additional key findings:
Read the full polls here
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The new documentary The Encampments, produced by Watermelon Pictures and BreakThrough News, is an insider’s look at the student protest movement to demand divestment from the U.S. and Israeli weapons industry and an end to the genocide in Gaza. The film focuses on last year’s student encampment at Columbia University and features student leaders including Mahmoud Khalil, who was chosen by the university as a liaison between the administration and students. Khalil, a U.S. permanent resident, has since been arrested and detained by immigration enforcement as part of the Trump administration’s attempt to deport immigrants who exercise their right to free speech and protest. “Columbia has gone to every extent to try to censor this movement,” says Munir Atalla, a producer for the film and a former film professor at Columbia.
We speak with Atalla; Sueda Polat, a Columbia graduate student and fellow campus negotiator with Khalil; and Grant Miner, a former Columbia graduate student and president of the student workers’ union who was expelled from the school over his participation in the protests. “Functionally, I was expelled for speaking out against genocide,” he says. All three of our guests emphasize their continued commitment to pro-Palestine activism even in the face of increasing institutional repression. The Encampments is opening nationwide in April.
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We’re joined by the four-time Grammy-winning musician Macklemore, a vocal proponent of Palestinian rights and critic of U.S. foreign policy. He serves as executive producer for the new documentary The Encampments, which follows last year’s student occupations of college campuses to protest U.S. backing of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. He tells Democracy Now! why he got involved with the film and the roots of his own activism, including the making of his song “Hind’s Hall,” named after the Columbia student occupation of the campus building Hamilton Hall, which itself was named in honor of the 5-year-old Palestinian child Hind Rajab. Rajab made headlines last year when audio of her pleading for help from emergency services in Gaza was released shortly before she was discovered killed by Israeli forces. “We are in urgent, dire times that require us as human beings coming together and fighting against fascism, fighting against genocide, and the only way to do that is by opening up the heart and realizing that collective liberation is the only solution,” Macklemore says.
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Photograph Source: Alan Turkus – CC BY 2.0
The well-prepared, abundantly funded Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025’s implementation overwhelms all that has come before. The ill-prepared, leaderless Democrats and opposition are stymied to stop it. No March on Washington like the 1963 March for civil and political rights or the 1967 March against the Vietnam War will slow down the Trump steamroll. Neither the high price of eggs nor Wall Street jitters have had any effect.
What to do? Could courts be the deciding factor to halt the United States slide towards fascism?
Rules are essential to any organized society. Ever since Hammurabi’s Code written laws have existed. Although the idea of rules may be a fiction unless they are physically implemented, their very existence since at least 1750 BC shows how societies have historically sought to govern themselves. When Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social network last month; “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” he directly challenged the relevance of laws. The man who twice swore to uphold the U.S. Constitution placed his saving the country above the law. Trump’s attacks on the judiciary and its role in government checks and balances are more than a constitutional crisis; there is now a societal crisis between liberalism and fascism.
Having consensual rules and implementing them are fundamental to stable societies. The Dominican Republic, for example, has had 32 constitutions since its independence in 1844. The United States, on the other hand, has had one constitution since 1789; it is the oldest written national constitution in force in the world and has been amended only 27 times. The U.S. Constitution is the constitutional gold standard; it has had international influence. The 1848 Swiss Constitution, for example, is in many ways a cut and paste of the U.S. one, something my Swiss friends don’t like to admit.
The implementation of the written law or commonly agreed upon laws such as in the unwritten constitution of the United Kingdom separates liberal societies from fascist states. Fascism revolves around an authoritarian leader who believes he is the incarnation of the nation; someone who acts individually as if he had no obligations to obey society’s laws.
In a very short period of time, President Trump has shown that he has no intention to respect the rule of law and uphold the oath of office he took on January 20, 2025. An example: A federal judge ruled that the government should not deport Venezuelan men to El Salvador without due process. The deportation went ahead anyway. “If anyone is being detained or removed from based on the administration’s assertion that they can do so without judicial review or due process, the president is asserting dictatorial power and ‘constitutional crisis’ doesn’t capture the gravity of the situation,” a Columbia University law professor was quoted in The New York Times.
Trump then called for the impeachment of the judge who made the ruling. “If a President doesn’t have the right to throw murderers, and other criminals, out of our Country because a Radical Left Lunatic Judge wants to assume the role of President, then our Country is in very big trouble, and destined to fail!” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Supreme Court Chief Judge John Roberts, in an unusual public statement indirectly rebuking Trump’s threat, said that “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” the Republican appointed Justice declared. “The normal review process exists for that purpose.”
Where will the confrontation between Trump and the judiciary lead? The federal judge, James Boasberg, moved to hold the government in contempt for not following his order. “The government again evaded its obligations,” he wrote. Not following judge’s decisions is a Trump Administration pattern. In refusing to provide Judge Boasberg with details of the mass deportation, the Department of Justice argued that “This is a case about the President’s plenary authority, derived from Article II and the mandate of the electorate,” and that “’[J]udicial deference and restraint’ are required to avoid undue interference with the Executive Branch.”
Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson also threatened the courts. “We do have authority over the federal courts,” he said at a press conference. We can eliminate an entire district court,” he boasted.
“The problem with this administration is not just acute episodes like what is happening with Judge Boasberg and the Venezuelan deportations,” another law professor was quoted in The Times’ article. “It’s a chronic disrespect for constitutional norms and for the other branches of government.”
Trump and Musk are moving to consolidate presidential power at the expense of the Constitution’s separation of powers. In addition to the deportation ruling, CNN reported; “[A] judge in Rhode Island hearing a dispute over a government-wide freeze…added a cautionary footnote: ‘This is what it all comes down to: we may choose to survive as a country by respecting our Constitution, the laws and norms of political and civil behavior…Or, we may ignore these things at our own peril.’ A judge in Seattle declared in a separate case; ‘It has become ever-more apparent that to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals.’”
As far as the case involving the United States Institute of Peace (USIP); DOGE and Washington D.C. police forcibly entered its building, evicting the USIP president George Moose and others. “I’m very offended by how DOGE has operated at the Institute and treated American citizens trying to do a job that they were statutorily tasked to do at the Institute,” District Judge Beryl Howell said. “I mean, this conduct of using law enforcement, threatening criminal investigation, using armed law enforcement from three different agencies … to carry out the executive order… with all that targeting probably terrorizing employees and staff at the institute when there are so many other lawful ways to accomplish the goals [of the executive order] …Why?” Howell asked. “Why those ways here — just because DOGE is in a rush?”
(For more information on the USIP case, you can listen to Rachel Maddow at https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP82XFM5w/)
Whatever protests are organized against the MAGA president, whatever MAGA failures occur because of the price of eggs, inflation/recession or the downslide on Wall Street, the legal battles taking place warrant close attention. According to Bloomberg News, “[I]n the first four weeks of the new administration, at least 74 lawsuits were filed, and of those, 58 were brought in federal district courts in Washington, Boston, Seattle and suburban Maryland.”
Cases will soon reach the Supreme Court. Judges Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts seem prepared to break with the conservative majority to join the three liberal judges. If that happens, there will be more than a just a constitutional crisis. The confrontation between Trump and the courts will be a tipping point between liberalism and fascism.
As Harvard Law Professor and constitutional expert Laurence Tribe eloquently stated in The Guardian; “The president, abetted by the supine acquiescence of the Republican Congress and licensed by a US supreme court partly of his own making, is not just temporarily deconstructing the institutions that comprise our democracy. He and his circle are making a bid to reshape the US altogether by systematically erasing and distorting the historical underpinnings of our 235-year-old experiment in self-government under law.”
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New Delhi, March 27, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the arrest of journalist Dilwar Hussain Mozumdar for reporting on a protest over alleged financial misconduct at a bank run by northeastern India’s Assam state government.
On March 25, Mozumdar, a reporter with the local digital outlet The CrossCurrent, covered a protest outside Assam Co-operative Apex Bank, after which he was summoned to Panbazar police station in Guwahati, Assam’s largest city, and arrested.
“The arrest of Dilwar Hussain Mozumdar is a blatant attempt to intimidate and silence independent journalism,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “Authorities must immediately release Mozumdar, drop any pending charges against him, and cease using legal harassment to muzzle journalists reporting on issues of public interest.”
The CrossCurrents has been consistently reporting on financial issues at the bank, where Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is a director.
A Press Club of India statement and a Facebook post by Mozumdar said that the journalist questioned the bank’s managing director, Dambara Saikia, and then received a call from the police as soon as he left the bank, telling him to report to the station.
Authorities have filed two cases against Mozumdar. In the first, a security guard at the bank accused him of making offensive and derogatory remarks, in violation of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, The CrossCurrent’s editor Arup Kalita told CPJ.
In the second, Saikia alleged that Mozumdar unlawfully entered the bank’s office, attempted to steal documents, disrupted operations, and threatened employees, Kalita added.
Mozumdar was granted bail in the first case and was scheduled for release on Thursday. However, he was rearrested by the police in connection with the second case, Kalita said. Mozumdar plans to apply for bail in the second case on Friday.
At a news conference on Thursday, Chief Minister Sarma denied that press freedom had been violated, defended Mozumdar’s arrest, and said that those working for independent online portals were not real journalists as they lacked state accreditation.
CPJ’s emails to Assam police and the Assam Co-operative Apex Bank requesting comment did not receive any responses.
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New York, March 27, 2025 — Following the White House’s decision to ban Associated Press (AP) reporters from covering White House media events, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has joined the amicus brief filed by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) outlining how the Trump administration’s decision violates the First Amendment.
In an alarming retaliation against the free press in the United States, on February 12, 2025, the Trump administration barred AP from covering White House events and accessing the Oval Office and Air Force One after its decision to continue referring to the Gulf of Mexico by its internationally known name.
RCFP filed the amicus brief on February 24, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asserting that the exclusion of the AP from accessing White House events on the basis of its editorial viewpoint violates the First Amendment. CPJ and News/Media Alliance joined as co-amici on March 24, 2025.
“The Trump administration’s arbitrary ban of AP’s access to media events stifles freedom of speech and violates the First Amendment at a time when independent journalism is most needed,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “AP’s essential reporting ensures news outlets around the world can keep their audiences informed. The Trump administration must adhere to its stated commitment to freedom of expression and refrain from retaliating against news organizations for their independent editorial decisions.”
National and international newspapers, radio stations, and television broadcasters rely heavily on the AP’s reporting to deliver the news to an audience of four billion viewers each day. The White House’s decision effectively blocks media outlets’ from delivering the news to this audience.
This decision is part of a concerning pattern of retaliation against the media in the first weeks of President Trump’s administration.
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About the Committee to Protect Journalists
The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide. We defend the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal.
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Ten years ago, 21 young people filed a long shot lawsuit against the federal government, arguing that it wasn’t doing enough to protect them from climate change. Their campaign came to an end this week without a court victory, but having made a different kind of impact: They brought an innovative legal approach to the climate fight that has inspired similar cases, at least two of which have been successful.
The case, Juliana v. United States, has “forever changed the legal paradigm,” said Julia Olson, chief legal counsel for Our Children’s Trust, which represented the youth. It “ignited the global youth climate movement,” she said, “and forced a reexamination of children’s rights in the context of climate change.”
The plaintiffs argued that, by supporting the production and burning of fossil fuels, the federal government violated their constitutional right to “life, liberty, personal security, dignity, bodily integrity, and their cultural and religious practices.” The case endured fierce pushback from the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered its dismissal twice — once in 2020 and again in May 2024.
On Monday, the United States Supreme Court declined to reinstate the complaint, ruling that the youth had not shown that they have standing to sue the government. That dashed the last remaining hope that the suit could move forward.
Although Juliana wasn’t the first youth-led climate lawsuit — six were filed worldwide between 2011 and 2015 — it precipitated a rapid increase in such cases. By one count from the nonprofit ClimaTalk, young people filed 18 cases between 2016 and 2020 and at least another half dozen since then. Like Juliana, many argued that governments have an obligation to address climate change to defend individual freedoms, such as the right to life or to a healthy environment.
Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said Juliana made clear that U.S. “federal courts are not going to embrace a constitutional right to a stable climate system” — a point Judge Andrew Hurwitz of the Ninth Circuit made when he noted in a 2020 opinion that “the plaintiffs’ impressive case for redress must be presented to the political branches of government.” For that reason, Gerrard said, such cases may fare better in states that have written environmental rights into their constitutions.
Those states include Montana and Hawaiʻi, where Our Children’s Trust has won landmark victories. The first came in Montana when a judge ruled that the 16 youth who sued the state over its support of the fossil fuel industry have a constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment.” The state Supreme Court affirmed the ruling in December when it ruled that the state must consider climate impacts when reviewing fossil fuel projects.
Last June, Our Children’s Trust reached a historic settlement with the Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation that requires it to decarbonize transportation by 2045. The unprecedented agreement also mandates that the agency work to mitigate climate change, align its investments and clean energy goals, and plant at least 1,000 trees annually. Mesina D., one of the 13 plaintiffs in the case, attributed that victory to “the blueprint laid by the Juliana youth plaintiffs.”
“Thanks to these 21 Americans, young people everywhere now know they can raise their voices and demand the protection of their constitutional rights to life and liberty,” she said in a statement.
Many of them are doing just that. Olson said she’s helping Our Children’s Trust litigate or develop eight more state-level climate cases. She’s also working with the Juliana plaintiffs to decide whether to bring their case before an international venue like the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which could issue a nonbinding, but nevertheless symbolic, decision. That would mirror a strategy 16 children attempted in 2019 when they brought a climate change petition against five countries under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. (The U.N. told them in 2021 to begin by suing their native countries and return if they lost.)
That’s not to say anyone’s given up on federal action. Because the Ninth Circuit dismissed the case without prejudice, the plaintiffs are free to try again. “These claims are not closed by any means,” Olson said. Our Children’s Trust is already working on a federal case that she hopes to launch soon.
James May, an emeritus law professor and founder of the Global Environmental Rights Institute at Widener University Delaware Law School, agreed that another lawsuit is worth a shot so that constitutional rights claims can be heard on their merits.
He also believes the Juliana case was a “huge missed opportunity” for the Biden administration, which talked a lot about the need to address climate change but whose Justice Department repeatedly asked judges to dismiss the case. The administration “didn’t have to agree that there was a constitutional right that had been violated,” May said, but it could have settled the case by agreeing to take concrete steps to address greenhouse gas emissions.
“The Obama, Trump, Biden, and [second] Trump administrations fought this case harder than any case in American history,” May said. “It sounds so dramatic, but it’s true. Never before has the federal government sought interlocutory relief to the extent it did in this case.”
In a statement, the Department of Justice welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision as the end of what it called a “long saga” that “has tied up the United States in litigation.” Adam Gustafson, the acting assistant attorney general of the department’s environment and natural resources division, also said in the statement that “the Justice Department is enforcing our nation’s environmental laws and safeguarding America’s air, water, and natural resources. Cases like Juliana distract from those enforcement efforts.”
Despite the setback, the work of those 21 youth and the pioneering case they brought radically reshaped the climate fight by engaging young people and more broadly mobilizing the environmental movement. Since 2015, more than 80 members of Congress, including senators Jeff Merkley, Cory Booker, and Bernie Sanders, have endorsed legislation affirming the climate- and environment-related rights of children and filed amicus briefs in Juliana. More than 400 organizations supported the lawsuit, and 350,000 people signed petitions calling for courts to hear it. The case is being taught in law schools, and it has inspired books and the Netflix documentary Youth v. Gov.
“Hats off to the litigants,” May said. “They literally changed the world.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The world’s biggest youth climate lawsuit lost in court, but it ‘changed the world’ on Mar 27, 2025.
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The first phone call between Putin and Trump was described as ‘frank’. Putin did it his way, as Frank Sinatra might have said. Say what we like, the Russian leader rejected the proposal for an immediate ceasefire. At the same time, London GPs were sending out text messages asking if people had served in HM Forces, which of course some misconstrued as the preliminaries of a call-up. The UK was meanwhile continuing to support Ukraine despite Putin saying a ceasefire would never work if foreign military aid and intelligence was still being shared. Nor did it help that the mass shutdown of Heathrow Airport after a fire at a nearby electricity substation aroused additional suspicion, conforming as it did to the hybrid form of war so favoured by Russia in Europe. Despite Counter Terrorism Command on the case, a mistake by an electrical engineer wax suggested.
‘One Trident sub could ‘incinerate 40 Russian cities’: Why Putin should fear Britain’s nuclear arsenal,’ read another London headline. This was just as US, UK and Turkish defence companies were informed they would be excluded from the new figure of €150 billion ($163 billion) in EU defence funding, unless of course they signed defence and security pacts with Brussels. More remarkable perhaps was Trump welcoming the idea of the US—as a former British colony—re-joining the Commonwealth. ‘I Love King Charles,’ he posted on Truth Social: ‘Sounds good to me!’ An affinity unmatched, it should be said, by the number of British subjects reportedly refused entry into the US despite valid visas.
‘So it was these two great leaders coming together for the betterment of mankind,’ rhapsodised US envoy Steve Witkoff about the Trump-Putin confab, ‘and it was honestly a privilege and an honour for me to sit there and listen to that conversation.’ Despite the Times of London reminding readers that Putin had flattered and deceived 5 US presidents, Trump spoke of improved relations, with the two agreeing that negotiations on the 30-day truce should begin ‘immediately’—which our very own wily Sam Kiley of the Independent called ‘an entirely Putin-constructed process.’ Witkoff then confirmed it was Putin who had ordered the Russian military to halt attacks on energy plants in Ukraine, though the actual timing of the Russian hit of the Ukrainian energy infrastructure of Slovyansk in the Donetsk would be disputed by Witkoff. This was before the Special Envoy’s snub of Keir Starmer’s peace efforts in a Tucker Carlson (anti-Zelenskyy, pro-Putin) interview. ‘So bold are Putin’s ceasefire demands,’ came the next London headline, ‘it’s hard to believe he is entirely serious.’
It was considered no surprise therefore that the Russian leader delayed the call with Trump by more than 50 minutes. Had it been Zelenskyy, we have to assume smoke would have billowed from US ears. Then news reached London of the NHL (National Hockey League) saying it would be ‘inappropriate’ to comment on Russia and the US hosting hockey matches together. At least the more punctual Trump and Zelenskyy chat was termed ‘a very good telephone call,’ much of it ‘in order to align both Russia and Ukraine in terms of their requests and needs.’ Trump even offered to help return the missing 35,000 children from occupied areas of Ukraine, though it remained unclear how he would navigate his own recent funding cut to Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab which was responsible for the database on the mass abductions.
‘Obviously this is the world descending into worse and worse standards of targeting civilians,’ said the late UK politician Clare Short about Iraq and Gaza. So much for the presently broken ceasefire in Gaza. A tragedy of such epic proportions, it deserves far more than my feeble mention. (‘Life is the farce we all must play,’ wrote Arthur Rimbaud.) There have been so many instances of Israeli–Palestinian ceasefires that even the most persevering of Egyptian, UN or Qatari mediators must want to walk. Recent temporary truces in 2008, 2014, 2021, 2023 were all shattered. Just like the one last week shortly after UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy stated that Israel was breaking international humanitarian law—before being shut down by his own party. Gazan ceasefires are so fragile that Palestinians must know in their hearts they will be followed by renewed tensions or violence.
I’ve mentioned in the past WWI Christmas ceasefires returning to slaughter. While the Korean War Armistice of 1953 between North Korea, China, and the UN Command (mainly South Korea and the US) compares favourably to what we might see one day in Ukraine, the Korean War is still just a ceasefire. As for the 1973 Paris Peace Accords which began as a ceasefire, these did end US military involvement but fighting resumed soon afterwards between North and South Vietnam. There was the 1991 Gulf War in which Coalition forces declared a ceasefire after driving Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. It ended combat operations but tensions remained and eventually led to the 2003 Iraq War. At least in Northern Ireland there was the 1998 Good Friday Agreement between the British and Irish governments, and most Northern Irish political parties, resulting in a political ceasefire that ended decades of sectarian violence. Since 2016 we’ve seen several localised and temporary Syrian Civil War ceasefires brokered by the UN, Russia, and Turkey. The Nagorno-Karabakh ones of 1994, 2020, and 2023 have just been followed by the Swiss Federal Assembly’s National Council and Council of States adopting a resolution titled ‘Peace Forum for Nagorno-Karabakh: The Possibility of Armenian Return.’ In short, ceasefires are everywhere and don’t always last.
Meanwhile, Ukraine launched a massive drone attack near a Russian strategic bomber base. A vast and portentous apocalyptic cloud was filmed rising immediately afterwards into the sky above Engels, home to Russian Tu-95 and Tu-160 nuclear capable heavy strategic bombers. This type of thing would have been at least one good reason why those follow-up discussions in Riyadh—for what were the first parallel negotiations since 2022—included Sergei Beseda, former head of the FSB spy agency’s fifth directorate.
As Russia launched another drone attack on Kyiv this time killing seven people including a five-year-old child, some flights at Heathrow Airport resumed but still with one or two Brits convinced it was sabotage, ignoring the fact cock-ups usually trump conspiracies. It was of course the same week that the death of former KGB colonel turned UK secret agent Oleg Gordievsky was announced, a Russian who influenced far more Cold War policies than Putin before and after he was betrayed by KGB spy Aldrich Ames of the CIA. One of Gordievsky’s MI6 Moscow handlers carried a green Harrods bag and ate a Mars bar in order to confirm Gordievsky’s imminent getaway to him to a UK safe house. Let’s just hope there are no more such shenanigans and nothing but a constructive openness before a nice, long and lasting Easter ceasefire.
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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Peter Bach.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.