With a blast of bombast, Donald Trump made clear once again this week that he wants to dump or renegotiate the Iran nuclear agreement—known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—which he calls “an embarrassment to the United States.” He also says he has already made up his mind about what to do, but he’s not telling anybody what he has decided. […]
Twenty-seven companies that urged the Trump regime to stick with the Paris Climate Accord also contributed a total of $3.3 million to the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) that has worked assiduously to dump President Obama’s signature Clean Power Plan. That plan was designed specifically to reduce greenhouse emissions from U.S. power plants in 2030 by 32 […]
Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. She is co-director of the Afghan Women’s Mission, a U.S.-based non-profit solidarity organization that funds the social, political, and humanitarian projects of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. By […]
In a statement this week, some fourscore nuclear nonproliferation experts urged Pr*sident Donald Trump and Congress not to abandon the 2015 multilateral agreement hammered out in negotiations among Iran, Germany, the United States, and the other four permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. By Meteor Blades Since the nuclear deal was implemented in January 2016, the […]
The Environmental Protection Agency plans to let the lease on its state-of-the-art Houston laboratory expire in 2020. And nobody at the agency is saying whether space for the laboratory will be leased somewhere else in Houston or nearby or even whether the lab itself will continue at all. Environmental advocates and labor union officials are not happy. They […]
Kathryn Miles, author of the new book Quakeland: On the Road To America’s Next Devastating Earthquake, has written a piece at Politico on the kind of subject most people don’t think about until after a disaster. She explores what would happen if a big earthquake struck at or near Cushing, Oklahoma, a crossroads of 14 major oil pipelines and […]
Tribes will rally Saturday to demand names of white supremacist killers be removed at Yellowstone: By Meteor Blades The Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council, which represents all tribes in Montana and Wyoming, has been calling for the name changes since December 2014. One is Mount Doane named for Gustavus Cheyney Doane. He was prominent in the first […]
The Institute for Policy Studies and Prosperity Now (formerly the Corporation for Enterprise Development) published a new 25-page study this week – the Road to Zero Wealth – that has grim news on the economic racial divide. The team of four authors scrutinized what it means to be middle class by examining the wealth gap rather than income […]
In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, we learned that Harris County, Texas, where Houston is located, is home to 13 abandoned industrial sites so populated by toxic waste that over the years they’ve been assigned Superfund cleanup status by the Environmental Protection Agency. We also learned from the work of two Associated Press reporters that seven of those […]
A federal appeals court Monday granted the Trump regime’s request to stop implementation of an Obama era Environmental Protection Agency plan requiring new pollution controls at two of the nation’s oldest and dirtiest coal-fired power plants in Utah. By Meteor Blades The plan was designed as part of the EPA’s “regional haze rule” promulgated under the 1990 Clean Air […]
At The Conversation, Thaddeus R. Miller and Mikhail Chester write—6 rules for rebuilding infrastructure in an era of ‘unprecedented’ weather events. By Meteor Blades Unfortunately, Harvey delivered and then some with early estimates of the damage at over US$190 billion, which would make it the costliest storm in U.S. history. The rain dumped on the Houston area by Harvey has been […]
As part of its Nuclear Posture Review—the first since the 2010 review was completed—the Trump regime is said to be considering the building of a “mini-nuke,” a nuclear bomb with a low explosive yield. Advocates have long claimed this would improve U.S. deterrence. Approval of such a development would overturn the Obama administration’s policy of limiting reliance on […]
The Tampa Bay area appears to be in the direct path of Hurricane Irma, which may remain a category 4 hurricane when it comes ashore in Florida this weekend. Irma has already killed at least 18 people in the Caribbean on Barbuda, St Martin, and the British Virgin Islands, where this biggest hurricane in at […]
Nikki Haley, who didn’t have a lick of foreign policy experience before Pr*sident Donald Trump appointed her to be ambassador to the United Nations, delivered a speech on Iran’s compliance with the 2015 multinational nuclear agreement to the American Enterprise Institute Tuesday. It was quite the pile of manure. A compilation of lies that contradicted the latest report […]
Mark Hertsgaard at The Nation writes—Climate Denialism Is Literally Killing Us: The tragedy of Hurricane Harvey starts with the suffering of innocents like Jordyn Grace, the 3-year-old who survived the flood by clinging to the body of her drowned mother, who had prayed with her last breaths. At least 60 people died in Texas because of the storm, over […]