April Ehrlich, , McKenzie Funk, and Tony Schick, Staff Writers - Oregon Public Broadcasting | ProPublica | Oregon Public Broadcasting - ProPublica | Oregon Public Broadcasting
Stephan:
I have hiked and backpacked in the wonderful old forests described in this report, and consider the devastation being done to them reported in this piece as evil and to the detriment of the wellbeing of the planet and the matrix of life. What is happening to these forests is an example of what is wrong with the United States. The Founders, for all their racial problems, basically had in mind a democratic republic that fostered wellbeing. Instead, what we have become is a country with only one social value and priority: greed and the profit it produces.
To give access to loggers within the Blue and Gold project area, the BLM plans to improve “existing roads” like the one pictured here, which would include clearing underbrush and potentially cutting trees. Credit: Leah Nash, special to ProPublica
Reporting Highlights
Earth Day Promise: In 2022, President Joe Biden announced a new effort to protect old forests, which are key to the fight against climate change. But it hasn’t made much of a difference.
Logging Continues: The Bureau of Land Management has allowed timber companies to cut these forests at a faster pace since Biden’s executive order than in the decade that preceded it.
Legal Battles: Conservation groups keep suing over what they claim are rushed timber sales, and they keep winning — but under a Trump administration, they may be unable to keep up.
On Earth Day in 2022, President Joe Biden stood among cherry blossoms and towering Douglas firs in a Seattle park to declare the importance of big, old trees. “There used to be a hell of a lot more forests like this,” he said, calling them “our planet’s lungs” and extolling […]
Antonio Planas and The Associated Press, Staff Writer and AP Staff - NBC News
Stephan:
Texas is once again leading the Red states into christofascism and ignorance, transforming their public school system into religious indoctrination rather than education. We are already the least literate and numerate country amongst the world’s developed democracies. And I predict that during the time of Trump the Red Blue Schism is going to become something we have never seen since the Civil War.
The curriculum adopted by the state education board, which is controlled by elected Republicans, is optional for schools, but they will receive additional funding if they implement it.
The Texas Board of Education narrowly voted Friday to allow Bible-based curriculum in elementary schools.
The curriculum adopted by the Texas State Board of Education, which is controlled by elected Republicans, is optional for schools to implement, but they will receive additional funding if they do so. The materials could appear in classrooms as early as next school year.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has voiced support for the lesson plans, which were provided by the state’s education agency that oversees the more than 5 million students in Texas public schools.
The vote passed 8-7.
Staci Childs, who is an attorney and a Democrat who voted against the Bible curriculum at Friday’s hearing, said she believes it will be challenged in court.
“So if those facts alone, if a parent or a teacher who didn’t feel comfortable teaching this were to bring this up to […]
One of the central problems American society faces is that an increasing number of men, particularly White men, and definitely including Trump himself, are so unclear and insecure about what honorable manhood is. Male insecurity is the hallmark of the MAGAt world. There has never been a time in the last 250 years when a President-elect was a convicted sexual molester, who appointed so many people for leading spots in his administration who are also sexual aggressors insecure about their manhood, and women who enable such men.
Republican President-elect Donald Trump, a man with major masculinity issues. Fred Greaves / Reuters
Donald Trump’s universe is fixated on the concept of male “virility,” Politico’s Marc Caputo told CNN anchor Erin Burnett on Friday evening — and that’s a major source of the scandals unfolding in his cabinet picks.
Specifically, Trump has nominated a string of people, from former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) to Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, to conspiracy theorist and former environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with various sexual misconduct allegations in their past. And now yet another of Trump’s picks, Linda McMahon, is facing a lawsuit alleging she overlooked sexual abuse of children by a World Wrestling Entertainment employee starting in the 1980s.
“Understand that the suit was just filed,” said Caputo. “It’s going to take a long time to work through the courts. And Linda McMahon’s confirmation vote will be long in the past by the time this thing gets adjudicated, right? So in addition to the fact that Trump probably doesn’t give it much stock, just a guess, there’s the fact that the timing […]
Yet another report about how inferior United States’ healthcare is, and how many women die and children are born what is called “preterm” as this article describes. And, of course, all these problems are worst in the states Republicans govern because the voters in those states seem unable to figure out that the inferior quality of life and shorter lifespans they experience are the result of Republican governance. I know that sounds politically partisan, but it is not. It is simply a statement of objectively verifiable facts.
For the third yearin a row, high preterm birth rates earned the U.S. only a D+ in a March of Dimes report on the state of maternal and infant health.
The big picture: Black, Latina, Native American and Pacific Islander women experience disproportionate rates of preterm births, infant mortality and maternal deaths.
People in the South and Midwest experience the worst outcomes.
Context: March of Dimes says “an alarmingly high preterm birth rate” is one of the contributing factors “to maternal and infant mortality and morbidity.”
By the numbers: The rate of preterm births, defined as those happening before week 37 of gestation, was 10.4% in the U.S. during 2023, according to the report.
That means 1 in 10 babies born, or about 370,000 births, happened preterm.
Although the national rate has been steady for the last three years, preterm birth rates increased in 24 states compared to 2022. They include Arkansas, Indiana and Iowa.
The rate of preterm births for Hispanics was 10.1%. It was 12.4% for American Indian/Alaska Native and Pacific Islander people and 14.7% for Black people.
Of the sex molesters, hucksters, and sickos Trump has picked for his administration Chris Wright, who would take over the Department of Energy, is hardly getting mentioned. And yet if he is confirmed he could literally damage Earth itself, and the matrix of life. He has publicly stated, as this article, quotes, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition, either.” The question is: are the Republican Senators so spineless and obsequious that they would actually confirm such a person? Please contact your Senators and tell them to vote against his appointment. The quality of your life literally depends on their doing so.
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Chris Wright, an executive of the oil and gas industry, as his pick to head the United States Department of Energy (DOE).
Wright is expected to back Trump’s agenda of maximizing oil and gas production while boosting electricity generation.
“There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition, either,” said Wright last year in a video post on his LinkedIn profile.
Wright, who has no political experience, has compared efforts to curb global heating by Democrats to communism in the former Soviet Union.
The fracking CEO has also referred to net zero as a “sinister goal,” The Telegraph reported.
In an unconventional move, Wright consumed fracking fluid on camera in 2019 to show that it wasn’t dangerous.
A self-described “tech nerd,” Wright has written about the necessity of producing more fossil fuels to help people get out of poverty, reported Reuters.
