Laurel Williams, Staff - The Pew Charitable Trust Conservation Project - Pew Research Center
Stephan:
Here is some more good news from the Biden administration about preparing the United States for reducing the dynamics creating climate change. It isn’t even being covered by most of the media, nor is much else about climate change. We’re having an election in which most of the news is about Criminal Trump’s lies and corruption.
The best locations for large-scale solar farms are flat areas with a high percentage of sunny, clear days and with straightforward access to transmission lines to ensure the solar power can move to the U.S. energy grid, according to the Department of Energy. Credit: BLM Nevada / Flickr
Faced with growing urgency over the need to address climate change, coupled with technological advances that will enable solar energy development in more places, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is working to balance solar development and conservation in the U.S. West.
The BLM, which stewards more than 245 million acres across the country, announced in late 2022 that it would be updating its Western solar plan. The previous plan, completed in 2012, covered Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah. The current planning effort has been expanded to cover those six states plus Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. After conducting an extensive public scoping process, the BLM released a draft solar programmatic […]
This is the Israeli government’s mindset. I don’t think there is anything else to say.
Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich is pictured outside Damascus gate in Jerusalem on June 5, 2024. Credit: Eyal Warshavsky / Sopa Images / Lightrocket / Getty
A top Israeli official suggested on Monday that he believes it is “morally justified” for Israel to wipe out Gaza’s population through famine and starvation, in chilling statements that pro-Palestine advocates say openly indicate genocidal intent.
Speaking at a conference hosted by the far right Israel Hayom newspaper, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich complained about having to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, saying that international norms are stopping Israel from taking what he claims is the “moral” path of starving 2 million Palestinians to death.
“We are bringing in aid because there is no choice,” Smotrich said, Israeli outlets reported. “We can’t, in the current global reality, manage a war. Nobody will let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned.”
“Humanitarian in exchange for humanitarian is morally justified, but what can […]
This is the latest evil from The Heritage Foundation. Fascists liked the Cold War, it created the military-industrial industries President Eisenhower warned us about, and for a small group of fascists it was astonishingly profitable. The people who fund The Heritage Foundation would like another run down that profit street. Criminal Trump would be only to happy to help them make it happen.
Credit: AdobeStock
At a time when all three major nuclear powers are upgrading their nuclear arsenals, when Russian leader Vladimir Putin has threatened that there are circumstances in which he would consider using such weapons in Ukraine, and when the one remaining U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control agreement is hanging by a thread, the last thing the world needs is an accelerated nuclear arms race.
But someone forgot to tell the Heritage Foundation, which just issued a report that, if implemented, would spark a nuclear competition that would rival the worst days of the Cold War.
The Heritage report summarizes its proposed nuclear buildup as follows:
“These expansions will include a larger ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) force, additional warheads on America’s ground-based strategic deterrent, and a modest road-mobile variant of the ground-based strategic deterrent. In the immediate term, the United States will upload non-strategic nuclear warheads from the ready reserve stockpile to existing theater capabilities.”
Beyond its jargon-laced call for more nuclear weapons, the Heritage report makes the […]
Criminal Trump is the only political leader in any country who is congratulating criminal Putin on making the better deal on the largest prisoner exchange between Russia and the United States since the end of the Cold War. It tells us a great deal about MAGAt worldthat he said this to a mass of MAGAt supporters and no one seems to find it weird. I certainly do.
Criminal Trump Credit: Joe Raedle / Getty
U.S. Republican nominee Donald Trump commended Russian President Vladimir Putin over a historic prisoner swap deal struck last week, suggesting the Russian leader got the better end of the agreement.
“I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal. Did you see the deal we made?” Trump told a crowd of supporters at a campaign rally in Atlanta on Saturday as he criticized the Biden administration for its handling of the swap.
The former U.S. president, who is bidding for a second term in the White House amid a string of court cases against him, said the prisoner exchange led to the release of “some of the greatest killers” in the world.
“We got our people back, but boy we make some horrible, horrible deals,” Trump said. “It’s nice to say we got ’em back, but does that set a bad precedent?” he added.
For over a decade the MAGAt (formerly Republican) Party has been trying to dismantle public education. In Project 2025 they go so far as to propose to eliminate the Department of Education. And in Red states like Oklahoma, as this article describes, MAGAt legislators and state officials as actively breaching the Founders fundamental firewall between church and state. As a result teachers are revolting, and many are just walking away from their careers. To give some context to this constant attempt by MAGAts to destroy public education, American children are the least literate and numerate children in the developed world, and there is a growing insufficiency of teachers in public schools, particularly in MAGAt-controlled states. This is going to have long-term generational consequences. Already 54% of Americans can’t read past 6th grade level, and 43% can’t read past 5th grade. Nor can they do fraction or percentage calculations. What does that mean? It means the United States is deliberately abandoning its ability to be a scientific world leader.
Oklahoma christofascist State School Superintendent Ryan Walters Credit: The Oklahoman
Educators in Oklahoma are refusing a state order to incorporate the Bible into their lesson plans, setting up an inevitable showdown with the start of the school year just weeks away.
Ryan Walters, the state superintendent of public instruction, last week released guidelines to schools for how they should be integrating the Bible into classrooms, saying educators who are against the initiative “will comply, and I will use every means to make sure of it.”
The message from some schools in the state: Bring it on.
“I suspect that the first thing that will happen is he will target a specific school district or multiple school districts who he believes are not complying with his directive, those school districts will then have to make a choice as to whether to bend [to] his whim or to sue,” said Rob Miller, superintendent of Bixby Public Schools.
“And I can tell you that if Bixby was one of those schools that he selected to come after, we would file a lawsuit,” Miller told The Hill.
