Sunday, October 6, 2024
■ Today's Top News
"Donald Trump kept his promise. He cut taxes for the wealthiest."
By Common Dreams Staff
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, went on Fox News on Sunday morning to lay out the case for the Democratic ticket and attack Republicans' economic policies.
In a 15-minute interview with Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream, Walz pushed back on many right-wing talking points and drew a sharp distinction between the two parties economic leadership. He celebrated the work of U.S. Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, and attacked former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee.
"We saw a blockbuster jobs report this week," Walz said. "We saw interest rates come down, and we've also seen that Vice President Harris is laying out a middle-class agenda."
"I was in Ohio yesterday, in Cleveland, in Cincinnati, and talking about this," he added. "Folks in Ohio know that Donald Trump's policies led to 180,000 manufacturing jobs leaving."
Walz mentioned the high unemployment rates that the U.S. faced when Trump left office, though those were affected by the pandemic, as well as Harris' intention to address price gouging by corporations, a popular initiative.
Walz drew particular attention to Trump and Harris' tax plans.
"I think the fundamental difference here is, Donald Trump kept his promise. He cut taxes for the wealthiest," Walz said, before explaining that Harris, on the other hand, was "asking those at the top to pay their fair share" so as to pay for programs such as the child tax credit.
Bream tried to corner Walz on abortion and immigration but the governor maintained his composure, seeming to be more poised than he had been during the vice presidential debate on Tuesday night. He called Bream's inquiries into whether there would limits to late-term abortions a "distraction."
Bream also grilled Walz on some personal statements that have been called into question. Seeming to want to draw a contrast with Trump, Walz said "I will own up when I misspeak."
This was Walz' first appearance on a Sunday morning talk show since he was named Harris' running mate. Both Dana Bash and Jake Tapper of CNN have recently commented on Harris and Walz' absence from television programs, suggesting they should make more appearances.
"Our politicians have failed us," a campaigner said. "European leaders' continued support for the fossil fuel industry raises serious questions about their commitment to effective climate action."
By Edward Carver
Renowned activist Greta Thunberg was detained on Saturday at a climate protest in Brussels aimed at ending European Union fossil fuel subsidies.
The protest included hundreds of campaigners from Extinction Rebellion and other groups; they came together under the name United for Climate Justice (UCJ). One group of them marched in an area near the European Parliament, while another group that included Thunberg blocked a section of the Boulevard du Jardin Botanique.
"Our politicians have failed us," Paolo Destilo, a UCJ spokesperson, told Politico. "European leaders' continued support for the fossil fuel industry raises serious questions about their commitment to effective climate action."
Another UCJ spokesperson, Angela Huston Gold, pointed to devastating floods that recently hit Europe and Africa as a warning sign for the planet.
"Increasingly frequent and extreme natural disasters are likely to claim a billion victims by the end of the century, mainly due to the use of fossil fuels," Huston Gold said in a statement, citing a 2023 study in Energies, a journal. "To avoid ecological and social collapse, fossil fuel subsidies must end now."
The European Commission published a report last year showing that the EU spent 123 billion euros ($135 billion) on fossil fuel subsidies in 2022, an increase on previous years that was caused by policy decisions following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (2022 was the last year included in the report.) The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development listed still higher figures for 2022.
EU's Eighth Environment Action Program, which entered into force in May 2022, calls for a phaseout of fossil fuel subsidies, but national governments haven't taken action, so progress is "uncertain," according to the European Environment Agency, which is part of the EU.
Thunberg on Saturday told Politico that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who's been in office since 2019, was not a green champion.
UCJ on Tuesday sent an open letter to von der Leyen and other EU institutional leaders calling for a phaseout of fossil fuel subsidies by 2025. "The EU should provide technical and financial assistance to member states facing challenges in meeting phaseout deadlines and offer incentives for achieving milestones ahead of schedule," it says.
Staffers at the European Commission were in fact among the demonstrators in Brussels on Saturday, Politico reported.
"There's a lot of tools the institutions have now to fight climate change, but since the [European Parliament elections in June] there's been a lot of backtracking," one commission staffer told Politico, given anonymity in order to speak freely.
"It's now all about competitiveness and the 'clean industrial deal,' whatever that means," the staffer added. "The urgency has been lost—the Parliament has shifted to the right, the commission in many ways has shifted to the right—and discussion of the climate has faded into the background."
Thunberg, who's now 21, came to fame as a 15-year-old activist in Sweden who helped form the global school strikes for climate movement. She's been arrested numerous times, including at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Denmark earlier this month.
Thunberg and other activists who sat with interlocked arms on the Boulevard du Jardin Botanique were arrested and taken to the police station, according to The Brussels Times.
The Israeli military announced a "new phase" of the war in Gaza while conducting its most severe airstrikes so far in Beirut.
By Common Dreams Staff
Israeli forces stepped up attacks in both the Gaza Strip and Lebanon overnight and into Sunday.
Israeli forces bombed a mosque and a school-turned-shelter in Gaza, killing 26 and injuring dozens more, according to the Palestinian health ministry; the Israeli military described the two sites as Hamas "command and control centers" but provided no evidence.
The Israeli military also on Sunday announced a "new phase" of the war in Gaza, issuing new evacuation orders that cover most of the northern part of the enclave, The New York Times reported. The military said it would send more soldiers and weapons to Gaza to "destroy terrorist infrastructures and undermine Hamas' capabilities until all the war's goals are achieved."
Al Jazeera's Moath al-Kahlout reported that "the situation here in northern Gaza is deteriorating as the Israeli army intensifies its bombing." He said that children, women, and journalists were among the victims.
"An entire family was killed by the Israeli army in the overnight attacks," he added.
Meanwhile, Israel conducted the "most severe" airstrikes so far on Beirut, "pounding" the city overnight, according to The Guardian. The strikes were in southern Beirut and its suburban outskirts, which are seen as a Hezbollah stronghold and have been heavily targeted by Israeli forces for the past two weeks.
Al Jazeera journalist Ali Hashem, reporting from Beirut, described a "massive air strike" on Sunday near the city's international airport—an area that Israel has been bombarding for days. He said that daytime strikes are particularly harrowing.
"During the nights there are warnings," Hashem reported. "During the days there are no warnings."
Hashem said that emergency services have been prevented from getting into the suburban area where many of the strikes are taking place.
The Lebanese health ministry said Sunday that 23 people were killed and 93 injured in Israeli strikes on Saturday.
The Israeli military continues to advance its ground incursion in southern Lebanon. On Sunday, it ordered people in 25 villages to evacuate immediately, "signaling it's expanding its ground offensive," Al Jazeera reported
Filippo Grandi, the United Nations' high commissioner for refugees, visited Beirut on Sunday and called for a cease-fire—saying it was "desperately needed"—and international humanitarian aid.
"All of these rivers should be treated as hazmat sites," a local official in western North Carolina said.
By Edward Carver
Local officials, academic researchers, and volunteer responders have raised concerns about chemical and biological contamination brought by the floodwaters of Hurricane Helene in the southeastern U.S. last week, which potentially threaten the safety not only of drinking water but also the quality of soil—leading experts to call for tighter regulations on stored pollutants.
Helene struck Florida as a Category 4 hurricane on September 26 and swept through a number of states in the days that followed. Most of the damage came from extreme rainfall that triggered flooding. The storm killed at least 232 people.
The biological and chemical threats posed by floodwaters are typically manifold, often containing, for example, e. coli from overflowing sewage systems.
While it's not yet clear what bacteria or chemicals Helene's floodwaters may have contained, the storm passed through hundreds of industrial sites with toxic pollutants, including paper mills, fertilizer factories, oil and gas storage facilities, and even a retired nuclear plant, according to three researchers at Rice University, writing in The Conversation this week.
The researchers called for tighter regulations on the storage and release of chemical pollutants.
"Hazardous releases remain largely invisible due to limited disclosure requirements and scant public information," they wrote. "Even emergency responders often don’t know exactly which hazardous chemicals they are facing in emergency situations."
"We believe this limited public information on rising chemical threats from our changing climate should be front-page news every hurricane season," they added. "Communities should be aware of the risks of hosting vulnerable industrial infrastructure, particularly as rising global temperatures increase the risk of extreme downpours and powerful hurricanes."
The devastation of infrastructure and the lack of drinking water in cities such Asheville, North Carolina, has rightly received national media attention following the storm. In North Carolina alone, more than 700,000 households lost power, and 170,000 still didn't have it as of Thursday.
Yet the National Weather Service warns that while floodwaters can create clear-cut devastation, "what you can't see can be just as dangerous." Helene also brought with it public health concerns that are less obvious, including to other, non-public sources of drinking water.
Helene's floodwaters overran many wells, rendering them unsafe to drink, at least until treatment and testing can be done. North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services advised residents not to use contaminated well water earlier this week.
One problem following Helene is that most studies of flooding's impact on drinking water have been done in coastal areas, and it's not clear how they apply to the mountainous areas of North Carolina that took the worst hit from the storm.
"We don't have a lot of knowledge about mountain flooding, from a hydrology standpoint," Kelsey Pieper, a professor in environmental engineering at Northeastern University, told Inside Climate News.
"Water velocities tend to be higher in mountain floodings because it's getting funneled into the valley, where the water is accumulating. In a coastal area, you’re going to see more water spreading out," she said. "The flooding mechanisms are different, and we know very little."
Wells tested in eastern North Carolina after Hurricane Florence in 2018 showed some detections of e. coli or total fecal coliform, which were partly attributed to industrialized hog farms in the area, Inside Climate News reported.
Crops are often rendered unsafe after flooding due to biological or chemical contamination, according to Food Safety Alliance.
Natural bodies of water are also often unsafe to swim in following floods. Virginia Department of Health and other agencies warned people to avoid them after Helene.
The period after a tropical storm brings increased risk of both biological contaminants, such as bacteria and viruses, and chemical contaminants, such as heavy metals and pesticides, according to the Duke University Superfund Research Center.
Following Helene, a grassroots volunteer cleanup effort has sprung up in western North Carolina, but it brings risks for the volunteers because of the potential contamination.
"We were supposed to get a big shipment of gloves, coveralls, masks, respirators, but we aren't," Rachel Bennett, a coordinating volunteer in the town of Marshall, which sits along the banks of the French Broad River, told the Citizen Times, an Asheville newspaper. "So, we're hoping to get more. Those are the big things because we're in cleanup right now. We need thick things."
"Right now, it's boots, and it's hard to get people to put on gloves, because when you're in this, you're like, 'I'm already exposed,'" she added.
A Marshall resident conducted a soil test this week but the results haven't come back yet, the newspaper reported.
"All of these rivers should be treated as hazmat sites," Buncombe County spokesperson Stacey Wood said at a briefing Friday, according to a local journalist. Buncombe County encompasses Asheville and Marshall is just outside it.
The Rice University researchers called for better preparation for future storms in the form of stronger regulation. They've developed a map showing the U.S. areas that are most vulnerable to chemical pollution brought on by floodwaters. One hotspot is the area of Texas and Louisiana full of petrochemical industry sites.
The climate crisis, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, and likely contributed to Helene's development, experts have said.
In addition to their immediate damage, storms like Helene can have surprising long-term impacts. A study published in Nature this week found that tropical storms—even those far less deadly than Helene—typically lead to many thousands of excess deaths in the 15 years that follow their arrival.
"Complete blocks are being destroyed one after another," Al Jazeera reported.
By Common Dreams Staff
Israeli forces stepped up attacks in both the Gaza Strip and Lebanon overnight and into Sunday.
Israeli forces bombed a mosque and a school-turned-shelter in Gaza, killing 26 and injuring dozens more, according to the Palestinian health ministry; the Israeli military described the two sites as Hamas "command and control centers" but provided no evidence.
The Israeli military also on Sunday announced a "new phase" of the war in Gaza, issuing new evacuation orders that cover most of the northern part of the enclave, The New York Times reported. The military said it would send more soldiers and weapons to Gaza to "destroy terrorist infrastructures and undermine Hamas' capabilities until all the war's goals are achieved."
Al Jazeera's Moath al-Kahlout reported that "the situation here in northern Gaza is deteriorating as the Israeli army intensifies its bombing." He said that children, women, and journalists were among the victims.
"An entire family was killed by the Israeli army in the overnight attacks," he added.
Meanwhile, Israel conducted the "most severe" airstrikes so far on Beirut, "pounding" the city overnight, according to The Guardian. The strikes were in southern Beirut and its suburban outskirts, which are seen as a Hezbollah stronghold and have been heavily targeted by Israeli forces for the past two weeks.
Al Jazeera journalist Ali Hashem, reporting from Beirut, described a "massive air strike" on Sunday near the city's international airport—an area that Israel has been bombarding for days. He said that daytime strikes are particularly harrowing.
"During the nights there are warnings," Hashem reported. "During the days there are no warnings."
Hashem said that emergency services have been prevented from getting into the suburban area where many of the strikes are taking place.
The Lebanese health ministry said Sunday that 23 people were killed and 93 injured in Israeli strikes on Saturday.
The Israeli military continues to advance its ground incursion in southern Lebanon. On Sunday, it ordered people in 25 villages to evacuate immediately, "signaling it's expanding its ground offensive," Al Jazeera reported
Filippo Grandi, the United Nations' high commissioner for refugees, visited Beirut on Sunday and called for a cease-fire—saying it was "desperately needed"—and international humanitarian aid.
"The polls are tight and the Electoral College is rigged to give Trump an edge, but Our Revolution can turn the tide by turning out progressive voters in key battleground states."
By Jessica Corbett
Just over a month away from the U.S. general election, the largest progressive political organizing group in the country announced Friday that it is aiming to encourage 5 million voters in seven battleground states to vote against former Republican President Donald Trump.
Our Revolution hopes to reach voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin via door-knocking, phone calls, and text messages ahead of the November election, in which Trump is facing Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
The get-out-the-vote effort comes after surveying over 1,400 Our Revolution members who live in swing states. The results, the group said, "present worrying signs for the Harris campaign" and "suggest that the Trump campaign is actively engaging young and progressive voters."
Joseph Geevarghese is the executive director of Our Revolution, which grew out of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) 2016 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. The group leader said Friday that "the polls are tight and the Electoral College is rigged to give Trump an edge, but Our Revolution can turn the tide by turning out progressive voters in key battleground states."
In the 2020 election, President Joe Biden "narrowly beat Trump by less than 300,000 votes in these states four years ago, which means that our 1.2 million supporters in the swing states could be the margin of victory in 2024," Geevarghese noted.
"After hearing from progressive swing state residents and our organizers on the ground, we are sounding the alarm on the lack of enthusiasm amongst this key voting bloc," he added. "In the coming weeks, Our Revolution will continue urging the Harris campaign to release bold policy plans aimed at motivating the party's progressive base, and we are committed to doing everything we can to mobilize support against another disastrous Trump presidency."
As the group detailed Friday, its polling—first reported by Semafor—found:
- 1 in 4 Our Revolution members in swing states know progressives who are planning not to vote or to vote third party;
- 3 in 4 of our swing state supporters believe Harris needs to get more specific on policy and do more interviews to clarify her positions to earn the votes of undecided people they know;
- 80% say that celebrities coming out for Harris are unlikely to sway their undecided friends and neighbors;
- 80% think the escalating war in the Middle East is a sign of trouble for the Harris campaign;
- 2 out of 3 said they've received outreach from the Trump campaign—including grassroots Trump canvassers and door knockers, and they're being bombarded by Trump ads; and
- 54% of Our Revolution swing state supporters report they're seeing more Trump signs than Harris signs in neighbors' yards.
Since the president passed the torch to Harris this summer following a disastrous debate performance against Trump, she has racked up endorsements from leading groups, including People's Action, Popular Democracy, and the Working Families Party. Harris won the first-ever endorsement of the youth-led gun violence prevention movement March for Our Lives and has support from various reproductive rights, labor, and climate organizations—even some that declined to back Biden.
However, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters declined to endorse for the first time since 1996, and the Uncommitted National Movement—which is critical of U.S. support for Israel's annihilation of Gaza—announced last month that "Harris' unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear campaign statement in support of upholding existing U.S. and international human rights law has made it impossible for us to endorse her."
Uncommitted also made clear that it "opposes a Donald Trump presidency, whose agenda includes plans to accelerate the killing in Gaza while intensifying the suppression of anti-war organizing," and "is not recommending a third-party vote in the presidential election, especially as third-party votes in key swing states could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency given our country's broken Electoral College system."
Despite recent polling that suggests U.S. voter support for Harris would grow if she backed an arms embargo against the Israeli military, Harris is not making clear attempts to win over Uncommitted voters. Leaders from the movement told Reuters that they were not invited to her Friday meeting with Arab American and Muslim leaders in Flint, Michigan.
Efforts to convince Michigan voters to support Harris will continue this weekend. Sanders and United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain—whose union endorsed her this summer—have three events in the state in the coming days. They plan to talk about corporate greed, healthcare, and manufacturing in the state.
Meanwhile, Harris this weekend plans to head to North Carolina, which was just devastated by Hurricane Helene.
The Sunrise Movement—a youth-led climate group that launched a campaign to defeat Trump and reach 1.5 million young swing state voters in August—intends to boost efforts to elect Harris in the weeks ahead, specifically focusing on North Carolina.
"Young climate voters could decide the election in North Carolina and put Harris over the edge," Sunrise organizer Paul Campion said in a statement Friday. "We're focused on reaching a group of 84,000 young voters between the ages of 18 and 26 who are very concerned about climate change but aren't regular voters. We're talking with them about the devastation of Helene and how Donald Trump's Project 2025 agenda would worsen the climate crisis, making disasters like Helene more frequent and severe."
Shiva Rajbhandari, a North Carolina student organizer, said that "people are angry. We're watching homes be swept away, entire towns consumed by floodwaters, and Donald Trump is joking about how climate change will create more waterfront property."
"Big Oil just murdered 200 people," the 20-year-old declared. "People know who's responsible for the climate crisis, and we're going to hold them accountable in November."
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