"Ireland will always speak up for human rights and international law. Nothing will distract from that."
By Jon Queally
Ireland's Taoiseach Simon Harris on Sunday responded to charges by the Israeli government—which earlier in the day shuttered its embassy in Dublin—by saying the Irish government has not been "anti-Israel" in its positions over the war in Gaza, but rather "pro-peace, pro-human rights, and pro-international law."
In a statement explaining the official closure of the diplomatic outpost, Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar said the "decision to close the Israeli embassy in Dublin was made in light of the extreme anti-Israel policy of the Irish government."
The ministry's statement noted that "the Israeli ambassador in Dublin was returned to Israel at the time following Ireland's decision to unilaterally recognize a 'Palestinian state'," which took place in May of this year.
Saar said Ireland had used "antisemitic rhetoric" against Israel, though did not specify what language he was referring to, and also accused the country of "crossing every red line in its relations with Israel."
In addition to formally recognizing a Palestinian state, the government of Ireland has also backed South Africa in its genocide case against Israel, brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) earlier this year.
In his Sunday response to Israel's decision, Harris said he was "deeply disappointed" in the move even as he "utterly rejected" Israeli assertions.
"Ireland's foreign policy is founded on our deep commitment to dialogue and to the peaceful resolution of disputes," Harris said, adding that embassies worldwide "play a very important role" in maintaining that commitment.
"Ireland wants a two-state solution and for Israel and Palestine to live in peace and security," he concluded. "Ireland will always speak up for human rights and international law. Nothing will distract from that."
In a separate reaction to Israel's decision, Micheál Martin, the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, said there were no plans to retaliate diplomatically or reciprocate by closing the Irish embassy in Israel.
"The continuation of the war in Gaza and the loss of innocent lives is simply unacceptable and contravenes international law," Martin said. "It represents the collective punishment of the Palestinian people in Gaza. We need an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages and a surge of humanitarian aid into Gaza."
"Ireland and Israel will continue to maintain diplomatic relations," he added. " Inherent in that is the right to agree and disagree on fundamental points."
“Another ship is going down. Holy shit!” said a sailor from a nearby boat who was filming the incident in the Black Sea's Kirch strait.
By Common Dreams Staff
A pair of Russian oil vessels on Sunday sunk in the Black Sea, according to reports, causing what Russian officials termed an "oil spill emergency" and touching off fears of an ecological disaster.
"Today two tankers, Volgoneft 212 and Volgoneft 239, were damaged due to a storm in the waters of the Black Sea," said the Federal Agency for Sea and Inland Water Transport in a statement. "There are 15 people on board of one ship and 14 people on the other. The damage caused an oil spill emergency."
It was subsequently reported that one of the vessels, and later the second, had sunk in the violent seas of the Kirch strait, which connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov. One person was reportedly killed, according to Russian officials, and an estimated 4,300 tonnes of oil product was on each vessel, though the amount spilled was not immediately known.
Footage taken by nearby ships captured portions of the disaster as it unfolded:
Sinking tankers
“Another ship is going down. Holy shit!” said a sailor from a nearby boat as the filming took place.
Paul Johnston, head of Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter in the U.K., warned of possible grave consequences from the maritime disaster.
"Any oil or petrochemical spill in these waters has the potential to be serious," Johnston said. "It is likely to be driven by prevailing wind and currents (moving now to the North-East) and in the current weather conditions is likely to be extremely difficult to contain. If it is driven ashore, then it will cause fouling of the shoreline which will be extremely difficult to clean up."
Russian outlets reported the oil product on board at least one of the vessels was mazut, a viscous and heavy fuel oil primarily used as a fuel oil in power plants, for shipping, or other industries.
"Any environmental impact will depend on the type of oil spilled," added Johnston. "Heavy residual fuel oils will tend to cause more visible damage than refined fractions and marine gas oil which will tend to disperse and break up quite rapidly."
A relentless series of assaults in central and northern Gaza by Israeli forces, according to reports on the ground, have killed numerous civilians—including children, rescue workers, and journalist—in recent days with no end in sight.
By Jon Queally
Rescue workers, children, and journalists are among the civilians killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza on Sunday, as the death toll continues to mount in a military campaign Amnesty International earlier this month said has all the markings of an active and ongoing genocide.
"Due to the rising Israeli bombings and killings in northern Gaza, we have run out of body bags to bury the dead," said Palestinian journalist Hossam Sabath, reporting from northern Gaza on Sunday. "Now we resort to using any piece of clothing or a blanket for their burial."
On the ground in the town of Beit Hanoun, where Israeli troops reportedly killed at least 20 people—including civilians—in a series of raids in the area on Sunday, Sabath said the the "scenes of charred bodies are too distressing for us to broadcast. However, they are part of the documented evidence of genocide involving the burning of people alive. We are ready to hand them over to any human rights organization."
Israeli troops killed at least 22 Palestinians, most of them in the northern Gaza Strip, on Sunday in airstrikes and other attacks on targets that included a school sheltering displaced Gazans, medics and residents said.
They said at least 11 of the dead were killed in three separate Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City houses, nine were killed in the towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia camp and two were killed by drone fire in Rafah.
Residents said clusters of houses were bombed and some set ablaze in the three towns. The Israeli army has been operating in the towns for over two months.
In Beit Hanoun, Israeli forces besieged families sheltering in Khalil Aweida school before storming it and ordering them to head towards Gaza City, the medics and residents said.
Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, quoted witnesses who reported "severe injuries" among those who survived the attacks further north.
"They have nowhere to go because the Israeli military forces are encircling the area with tanks and armored vehicles, and hammering the school with heavy artillery," Mahmoud reported.
A family of four were among those killed, including two children, after the classroom where they were sheltering took a “direct hit” from Israeli artillery fire that arrived without prior warning, the outlet reported.
“Many of the injured are in the courtyard of the school and inside the other classrooms," according to Mahmoud. "They can't get any treatment because none of the hospitals in Beit Hanoon are operational."
Separately, Al-Jazeera reports Sunday that an Israeli bombing killed three members of the Palestinian civil defense search-and-rescue team in central Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp. The new agency also reported that one of its own staff, cameraman Ahmed al-Louh, was killed in the same attack.
In its first response to the incident, Gaza's government media office condemned the killing of al-Louh and called on the international community to act against the systematic crimes against Palestinian journalists. "The number of martyred journalists has now risen to 195 with the martyrdom of colleague Ahmed al-Louh," the office stated.
Al Jazeera reiterated its condemnation of the attack, describing al-Louh's death as part of a broader assault on press freedom in Gaza. "Ahmed al-Louh was dedicated to documenting the realities of the ongoing conflict under the most dangerous conditions," the network said.
"The unprecedented killing of journalists by the Israeli military continues with impunity," said fellow reporter Sharif Kouddous.
On Dec. 5, Amnesty International released a 296-page report—featuring interviews with survivors and witnesses of Israel's large-scale campaign of bombing, displacement, arbitrary detention, and destruction of Gaza's agricultural land and civilian infrastructure—that conclude what Israel has been doing in Gaza amounts to genocide.
"Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them," said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty's secretary-general, upon release of the document. "Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now."
As the weekend's latest catalog of death and injuries suggests, it has not stopped.
Instead of privatization, said one Democratic lawmaker, "Fire his former pick for postmaster, DeJoy, and let a real professional run it like it should be run. The first priority is delivering mail. Cut the Pentagon's bloat if you want to save money."
By Jon Queally
After weekend reporting indicated President-elect Donald Trump is actively thinking about avenues to privatize the U.S. Postal Service, progressives decried any such efforts and once again directed their ire on the much-reviled Postermaster General, appointed to run the USPS during Trump's first term.
Citing people familiar with recent talks within the incoming team's camp, the Washington Post reported Saturday that Trump is "keen" for a privatization scheme that would hand the USPS over to for-profit, private interests.
According to the Post:
Trump has discussed his desire to overhaul the Postal Service at his Mar-a-Lago estate with Howard Lutnick, his pick for commerce secretary and the co-chair of his presidential transition, the people said. Earlier this month, Trump also convened a group of transition officials to ask for their views on privatizing the agency, one of the people said.
Told of the mail agency's annual financial losses, Trump said the government should not subsidize the organization, the people said. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations.
Trump's hostility to government programs that serve the public interest—including Medicare, Social Security, public education, and consumer protection agencies—is well-documented.
"The United States Postal Service is a crucial asset that was built and is owned by all of us, and there is zero mandate from the public to turn it over to an oligarch."
Trump's attacks on the Postal Service, including his blessing of the 2020 appointment of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a former logistics industry executive, sparked alarm about Republican desires to gut the agency from the inside out.
While calls to fire DeJoy from the USPS top leadership post persisted during the last year of Trump's first term and remained constant during Biden's time in office, he remains Postmaster General despite repeated accusations that his ultimate aim is to diminish the agency to such an extend that it will be more possible to justify its dismantling.
While the Post's reporting on Saturday stated that Trump's "specific plans for overhauling the Postal Service" in his upcoming term "were not immediately clear," it did quote Casey Mulligan, who served as a top economic advisor during the last administration, who touted the private sectors performance compared to a Postal Service he claimed was too slow and costly.
"We didn't finish the job in the first term, but we should finish it now," said Mulligan.
Progressive defenders of the Postal Service, in response, denounced any future effort to privatize the agency, one of the most popular among the U.S. public.
"The Post Office is in our constitution," said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) on Saturday. "There is no way we let Donald Trump privatize it. Fire his former pick for postmaster, DeJoy, and let a real professional run it like it should be run. The first priority is delivering mail. Cut the Pentagon's bloat if you want to save money."
Former Ohio state senator Nina Turner also defended the USPS, saying that "72% of Americans approve of the U.S. Postal Service, it's how many seniors receive medication, especially in rural areas."
Progressive critics of right-wing attacks on the Postal Service have noted for years that the "financial performance" issues are a direct result of the "burdensome and unnecessary" pre-funding of liabilities mandated by the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which forces the USPS to pay billions each year towards future postal worker retirement benefits.
"No matter what your partisan stripe," said Micah Rasmussen, director of the The Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, "we should be able to agree the United States Postal Service is a crucial asset that was built and is owned by all of us, and there is zero mandate from the public to turn it over to an oligarch."
"If Amazon chooses to ignore us, they’re the ones ruining Christmas for millions of families. We’re not just fighting for a contract; we’re fighting for the future of worker power at Amazon and beyond."
By Jon Queally
Workers at a Amazon warehouse and delivery center in New York announced approval of strike authorizations on Friday, giving the retail giant—who have refused to negotiate for months—until Sunday to come to the bargaining table or risk a major work stoppage at the height of the holiday shopping season.
The unions representing Amazon workers at two New York City facilities—the JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island and the DBK4 delivery center in Queens—cited the company's "illegal refusal to recognize their union and negotiate a contract" to address low wages and dangerous working conditions as the reason for the strike authorization.
"We just want what everyone else in America wants—to do our jobs and get paid enough to take care of ourselves and our families. And Amazon isn't letting us do that."
"Amazon is pushing its workers closer to the picket line by failing to show them the respect they have earned," said Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien in a statement. "We've been clear: Amazon has until December 15 to come to the table and bargain for a contract. If these white-collar criminals want to keep breaking the law, they better get ready for a fight."
The workers are demanding:
A living wage with fair pay increases.
Safer working conditions to prevent injuries and fatalities.
Job security and protection from arbitrary firings.
Dignity and respect for all employees.
In June, over 5,500 workers at JFK8—who first voted in favor of creating a union in 2022—joined the Teamsters and chartered the Amazon Labor Union (ALU)-IBT Local 1. Despite consolidating their organizing strength with the backing of the Teamsters, Amazon management has dragged their feet on bargaining a first contract, hardly surprising given the company's long-standing hostility to organized labor.
"Amazon's refusal to negotiate is a direct attack on our rights," said Connor Spence, president of ALU-IBT Local 1, on Friday. "If Amazon chooses to ignore us, they’re the ones ruining Christmas for millions of families. We’re not just fighting for a contract; we’re fighting for the future of worker power at Amazon and beyond."
Rank-and-file members said their demands are reasonable, especially as the company—owned by the world's second-richest man, Jeff Bezos—continues to rake in massive profits year after year as one of the world's largest companies.
"We aren't asking for much," said James Saccardo, a worker at JFK8. "We just want what everyone else in America wants—to do our jobs and get paid enough to take care of ourselves and our families. And Amazon isn't letting us do that."
In Queens, where Amazon workers at DBK4—the corporation's largest delivery station in the city—voted nearly unanimously to authorize a strike of their own.
"Driving for Amazon is tough," said Luc Rene, a driver who works out of DBK4. "What's even tougher is fighting a mega-corporation that constantly breaks the law and games the system. But we won't give up."
"Every horror story you read about Amazon is true, but worse," said Justine, a warehouse worker in New York in a video produced by More Perfect Union.
A strike at this time of year, the busiest for the retail giant, reports labor correspondent Jessica Burbank for Drop Site News, "would hit them where it hurts. The scale of the strike would be unprecedented, including the major hubs of New York and San Bernadino, California."
According to Burbank:
Amazon now has a workforce of over 700,000, making it the largest employer of warehouse workers in the nation. If a contract is won at these initial 20 bargaining units, it has the potential to impact working conditions for thousands of workers, and inspire union organizing efforts at Amazon facilities across the country.
For Amazon workers who voted to unionize their warehouses in March of 2022, this has been a long time coming. “Thousands of Amazon workers courageously cast their ballots to form a union at JFK8 in Staten Island,” Smalls said in a text. “We shocked the world, we had won against a corporate giant and hoped that step would propel us forward to help create a better workplace.” For years, Amazon stalled on recognizing the union, and has not yet met union representatives at the negotiating table.
Smalls said, “I’m excited to see workers take control, take the next step and move even further down the path to victory when they exercise their right to strike.” He continued, “We celebrated as we inspired thousands of others to hope for the same.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Saturday issued his support for the union workers.
"Amazon delivery drivers and warehouse workers deserve decent wages, benefits and working conditions—and the right to form a union," said Sanders. "I strongly support the thousands of Amazon workers who will go on strike tomorrow if Amazon doesn't end its illegal union busting."
The workers at JFK8 said people could support the union's effort in various ways "at this critical time," including:
Donate to the Solidarity Fund: Help workers sustain their fight by contributing to the strike fund.
Show Up on the Picket Line: Join workers at JFK8 to demonstrate solidarity and hold Amazon accountable for their illegal refusal to negotiate a union contract.
Spread the Word: Use social media and local networks to raise awareness about the workers’ struggle and the importance of their fight for justice at Amazon.
Contact Elected Officials: Urge representatives to publicly support JFK8 workers and pressure Amazon to negotiate in good faith.
For his part, former labor secretary and economist Robert Reich said he had no sympathy for the retail giant's refusal to bargain in good faith with the workers who make its business model possible.
"Amazon had $15 billion in profits last quarter," said Reich. "Don't tell me they can't afford to bargain a fair contract."
"My friends, you don’t have to be a PhD in political science to understand that this is not democracy. This is not one person, one vote. This is not all of us coming together to decide our future. This is oligarchy."
By Jon Queally
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is escalating his fight against the U.S. oligarchy with a new campaign directed at the nation's wealthiest individuals—including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg—who he says are key culprits in a global race to the bottom that is stripping people worldwide of political agency while impoverishing billions so that the rich can amass increasingly obscene levels of wealth.
Announcing a new series that will detail how "billionaire oligarchs" in the U.S. "manipulate the global economy, purchase our elections, avoid paying taxes, and increasingly control our government," Sanders said in a Friday night video address that it makes him laugh when mainstream pundits talk openly about the nefarious oligarchic structures in other places, but refuse to acknowledge the issue in domestic terms.
"Strangely enough, the term 'oligarchy' is very rarely used to describe what's happening in the United States or in fact, what's happening around the world," said Sanders. "But guess what? Oligarchy is a global phenomenon, and it is headquartered right here in the United States."
Bernie Sanders talks about the oligarchy
While rarely discussed in the corporate press or by most elected officials, argues Sanders, the reality is that a "small number of incredibly wealthy billionaires own and control much of the global economy. Period. End of discussion. And increasingly they own and control our government through a corrupt campaign finance system."
Since the the victory of President-elect Donald Trump in November, Sanders has been increasingly outspoken about his frustrations over the failure of the Democratic Party to adequately confront the contradictions presented by a party that purports to represent the interests of the working class yet remains so beholden to corporate interests and the wealthy that lavish it with campaign contributions.
In a missive to supporters last month, Sanders bemoaned how "just 150 billionaire families spent nearly $2 billion to get their candidates elected" in this year's elections, which included giving to both major political parties. Such a reality, he said, must be challenged.
As part of his new effort announced Friday, Sanders' office said the two-time Democratic presidential candidate would be hosting a series of discussions with the leading experts on various topics related to the form and function of U.S. oligarchy and expose the incoming Trump administration's "ties to the billionaire class," including their efforts to further erode democracy, gut regulations, enrich themselves, and undermine the common good.
"In my view," said Sanders, "this issue of oligarchy is the most important issue facing our country and world because it touches on everything else." He said the climate crisis, healthcare, worker protections, and the fight against poverty are all adversely effected by the power of the wealthy elites who control the economy and the political sphere.
"My friends, you don’t have to be a PhD in political science to understand that this is not democracy," he said. "This is not one person, one vote. This is not all of us coming together to decide our future. This is oligarchy."
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Public health advocates, federal lawmakers, and other critics responded with alarm to The New York Times reporting on Friday that an attorney helping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. select officials for the next Trump administration tried to get the U.S. regulators to revoke approval of the polio vaccine in 2022.
"The United States has been a leader in the global fight to eradicate polio, which is poised to become only the second disease in history to be eliminated from the face of the earth after smallpox," said Liza Barrie, Public Citizen's campaign director for global vaccines access. "Undermining polio vaccination efforts now risks reversing decades of progress and unraveling one of the greatest public health achievements of all time."
Public Citizen is among various organizations that have criticized President-elect Donald Trump's choice of Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, with the watchdog's co-president, Robert Weissman, saying that "he shouldn't be allowed in the building... let alone be placed in charge of the nation's public health agency."
Although Kennedy's nomination requires Senate confirmation, he is already speaking with candidates for top health positions, with help from Aaron Siri, an attorney who represented RFK Jr. during his own presidential campaign, the Times reported. Siri also represents the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) in petitions asking the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) "to withdraw or suspend approval of vaccines not only for polio, but also for hepatitis B."
According to the newspaper:
Mr. Siri is also representing ICAN in petitioning the FDA to "pause distribution" of 13 other vaccines, including combination products that cover tetanus, diphtheria, polio, and hepatitis A, until their makers disclose details about aluminum, an ingredient researchers have associated with a small increase in asthma cases.
Mr. Siri declined to be interviewed, but said all of his petitions were filed on behalf of clients. Katie Miller, a spokeswoman for Mr. Kennedy, said Mr. Siri has been advising Mr. Kennedy but has not discussed his petitions with any of the health nominees. She added, "Mr. Kennedy has long said that he wants transparency in vaccines and to give people choice."
After the article was published, Siri called it a "typical NYT hit piece plainly written by those lacking basic reading and thinking skills," and posted a series of responses on social media. He wrote in part that "ICAN's petition to the FDA seeks to revoke a particular polio vaccine, IPOL, and only for infants and children and only until a proper trial is conducted, because IPOL was licensed in 1990 by Sanofi based on pediatric trials that, according to FDA, reviewed safety for only three days after injection."
The Times pointed out that experts consider placebo-controlled trials that would deny some children polio shots unethical, because "you're substituting a theoretical risk for a real risk," as Dr. Paul A. Offit, a vaccine expert at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, explained. "The real risks are the diseases."
Ayman Chit, head of vaccines for North America at Sanofi, told the newspaper that development of the vaccine began in 1977, over 280 million people worldwide have received it, and there have been more than 300 studies, some with up to six months of follow-up.
Trump, who is less than six weeks out from returning to office, has sent mixed messages on vaccines in recent interviews.
Asked about RFK Jr.'s anti-vaccine record during a Time "Person of the Year" interview published Thursday, the president-elect said that "we're going to be able to do very serious testing" and certain vaccines could be made unavailable "if I think it's dangerous."
Trump toldNBC News last weekend: "Hey, look, I'm not against vaccines. The polio vaccine is the greatest thing. If somebody told me to get rid of the polio vaccine, they're going to have to work real hard to convince me. I think vaccines are—certain vaccines—are incredible. But maybe some aren't. And if they aren't, we have to find out."
Both comments generated concern—like the Friday reporting in the Times, which University of Alabama law professor and MSNBC columnist Joyce White Vance called "absolutely terrifying."
She was far from alone. HuffPost senior front page editor Philip Lewis said that "this is just so dangerous and ridiculous" while Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan declared, "We are so—and I use this word advisedly—fucked."
Ryan Cooper, managing editor at The American Prospect, warned that "they want your kids dead."
Author and musician Mikel Jollett similarly said, "So if you're wondering if Donald Trump is trying to kill your kids, yes, yes he is."
Multiple critics altered Trump's campaign slogan to "Make Polio Great Again."
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) responded with a video on social media:
Without naming anyone, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a polio survivor, put out a lengthy statement on Friday.
"The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and held out the promise of eradicating a terrible disease. Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed—they're dangerous," he said in part. "Anyone seeking the Senate's consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts."
Victims of a scheme in which a pair of Pennsylvania judges conspired to funnel thousands of children into private detention centers in exchange for millions of dollars in kickbacks expressed outrage following U.S. President Joe Biden's Thursday commutation of one of the men's sentences.
In 2010, former Luzerne County Judge Michael Conahan pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges and was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison after he and co-conspirator Mark Ciavarella shut down a county-run juvenile detention facility and then took nearly $3 million in payments from the builder and co-owner of for-profit lockups, into which the judges sent children as young as 8 years old.
"It's a big slap in the face for us once again," Amanda Lorah—who was sentenced by Conahan to five years of juvenile detention over a high school fight—toldWBRE.
Sandy Fonzo, whose son killed himself after being sentenced to juvenile detention, said in a statement: "I am shocked and I am hurt. Conahan's actions destroyed families, including mine, and my son's death is a tragic reminder of the consequences of his abuse of power."
"This pardon feels like an injustice for all of us who still suffer," Fonzo added. "Right now I am processing and doing the best I can to cope with the pain that this has brought back."
Many of Conahan's victims were first-time or low-level offenders. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court would later throw out thousands of cases adjudicated by the Conahan and Ciaverella, the latter of whom is serving a 28-year sentence for his role in the scheme.
Conahan—who is 72 and had been under house arrest since being transferred from prison during the Covid-19 pandemic—was one of around 1,500 people who received commutations or pardons from Biden on Thursday. While the sweeping move was welcomed by criminal justice reform advocates, many also decried the president's decision to not grant clemency to any of the 40 men with federal death sentences.
Others have called on Biden—who earlier this month pardoned his son Hunter Biden after promising he wouldn't—to grant clemency to people including Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier and environmental lawyer Steven Donziger.
"There's never going to be any closure for us."
"So he wants to talk about Conahan and everybody else, but what is Joe Biden doing for all of these kids who absolutely got nothing, and almost no justice in this whole thing that happened?" said Lorah. "So it's nothing for us, but it seems that Conahan is just getting a slap on the wrist every which way he possibly could still today."
"There's never going to be any closure for us," she added. "There's never going to be, somehow, some way, these two men are always going to pop up, but now, when you think about the president of the United States letting him get away with this, who even wants to live in this country at this point? I'm totally shocked, I can't believe this."
Palestinians carrying empty pots line up to receive meals distributed by charity organizations in Khan Younis, Gaza on December 13, 2024.
(Photo: Doaa Albaz/Anadolu via Getty Images)
As Israel continues to decimate the Gaza Strip with American weapons, 77 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives this week demanded that the Biden administration "provide a full assessment of the status of Israel's compliance with all relevant U.S. policies and laws, including National Security Memorandum 20 (NSM-20) and Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act."
Reps. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), and Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) spearheaded the Thursday letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, with less than six weeks left in President Joe Biden's term.
Since Biden issued NSM-20 in February, his administration has repeatedly accepted the Israel government's assurances about the use of U.S. weapons, despite reports from journalists and human rights groups about how they have helped Israeli forces slaughter at least 44,875 Palestinians and injure another 106,454 people in the besieged enclave over the past 14 months.
"Our concerns remain urgent and largely unresolved, including arbitrary restrictions on humanitarian aid and insufficient delivery routes."
House Democrats' letter begins by declaring support for "Israel's right to self-defense," denouncing the Hamas-led October 2023 attack, and endorsing the Biden administration's efforts "to broker a bilateral cease-fire that includes the release of hostages," noting the deal recently negotiated for the Israeli government and the Lebanese group Hezbollah.
"Further, we condemn the unprecedented Iranian attacks against Israel launched on April 13, 2024, and October 1, 2024," the letter states, declining to mention the Israeli actions that led to those responses. "We must continue to avoid a major regional conflict—and we welcome the concerted diplomatic efforts by the U.S. and our allies to prevent further escalation."
"We are also deeply troubled by the continued level of civilian casualties and humanitarian suffering in Gaza," the lawmakers wrote, citing the administration's October 13 letter imposing a 30-day deadline for Israel to improve humanitarian conditions in Palestinian territory. "That deadline has expired, and while some progress has been made, we believe the Israeli government has not yet fulfilled the requirements outlined in your letter."
Asked during a November 12 press conference if the Israeli government has met the administration's demands, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said that "we have not made an assessment that they are in violation of U.S. law."
Shortly after that, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) forced votes on resolutions to block the sale of 120mm tank rounds, 120mm high-explosive mortar rounds, and Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) to Israel, but they didn't pass.
Progressives and Democrats in Congress have been sounding the alarm about U.S. government complicity in Israel's armed assault and starvation campaign—which have led to an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice—to varying degrees since October 2023, including with a May letter led by Crow and Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) and signed by 85 others.
Citing that letter on Thursday, the 77 House Democrats wrote that "our concerns remain urgent and largely unresolved, including arbitrary restrictions on humanitarian aid and insufficient delivery routes, among others. As a result, Gaza's civilian population is facing dire famine."
"We believe further administrative action must be taken to ensure Israel upholds the assurances it provided in March 2024 to facilitate, and not directly or indirectly obstruct, U.S. humanitarian assistance," the letter concludes. "We remain committed to a negotiated solution that can bring an end to the fighting, free the remaining hostages, surge humanitarian aid, and lay the groundwork to rebuild Gaza with a legitimate Palestinian governing body. We thank you and the administration for its ongoing work to achieve those shared goals."
At a time in American history when the most influential leaders of the U.S. need to stand up loudly and clearly for the rule of law, democracy, and decency, they are leading the charge in the opposite direction.
And Doug Burgum proves it. Backing false climate solutions is hardly less corrosive than outright climate denial when it comes to the goal of mitigating climate change.
By Hannah Story Brown
Trump has spent the month since the election firing off a rapid torrent of Cabinet picks. His nominees generally fall into two types: obviously whacko (see Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, RFK Jr.) and superficially normal (think Marco Rubio, Doug Burgum, Pam Bondi). While the headline-grabbing scandals and general trumpery of the first group easily draw scorn, it’s important that we not grade the second group on a credulous curve, overlooking the economic interests behind their soothingly conventional manner.
That’s a lesson we should remember from the last Trump administration, when scandal-plagued appointees like Scott Pruitt at EPA and Ryan Zinke at Interior were replaced by more circumspect villains like Andrew Wheeler at EPA and David Bernhardt at Interior. Wheeler and Bernhardt wreaked havoc on environmental, public health, and public lands protection while evading the mockery invited by their predecessors.
Even a wannabe-authoritarian like Trump wants his administration to have a veneer of power and legitimacy, and the scandals of Pruitt and Zinke compromised that illusion. As I recapped for our series of Trump retrospectives, Pruitt “misspent millions in public funds on 24/7 private security, first-class plane tickets, chartered jets, and renovations, while misusing EPA staffers to find his wife a job and do his personal errands,” while Zinke “resigned amid over a dozen ongoing ethics investigations.” Mockery can be politically useful, insofar as it deflates authoritarian egos. But corruption doesn’t have to be sensational to be consequential—and those are the harder stories to tell.
Billionaire Burgum and His Billionaire Buddies
Trump’s pick for Interior Secretary and energy czar, the billionaire former software executive and North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, appears to be more in the mold of Bernhardt than Zinke: staunchly anti-regulation, pro-corporate, pro-oil.
Backing false climate solutions is hardly less corrosive than outright climate denial when it comes to the goal of mitigating climate change. It just makes Burgum a more slippery villain.
Bernhardt, a former oil lobbyist, had so many potential conflicts of interest at Interior that he walked around with a card listing them all. Burgum leases his family land for oil and gas drilling to Continental Resources, which is owned by his billionaire friend and collaborator Harold Hamm. Hamm’s name might be familiar to you, as he is the billionaire with whom Burgum is orchestrating Trump’s energy policies. Burgum also leases land to oil company Hess, whose billionaire CEO John Hess gave Burgum $25,000 for his 2016 gubernatorial campaign. Burgum’s spouse also owns over $100,000 of stock in fossil fuel companies, according to Burgum’s 2023 financial disclosure.
Harold Hamm organized the dinner between Trump and oil executives last spring where Trump asked for $1 billion in donations in order to demolish Biden’s climate agenda; Burgum attended it. (Eighteen days after that dinner, Hamm’s Continental Resources donated $1 million to Trump.) Hamm and other Big Oil executives present at that dinner have defied congressional Democrats’ requests for information about this meeting. John Hess, meanwhile, was scrutinized by the Biden administration’s Federal Trade Commission for colluding with OPEC and Saudi Arabia on oil pricing, and as a result of their preliminary investigation he was banned from joining Chevron’s board. Hess has said he may appeal this ban once Trump takes office. If confirmed, Burgum will have personal ties to these “drill-ionaires” in the crosshairs of federal oversight while helming the federal agency that leases the land and issues the permits to drillers.
Burgum told wealthy Trump donors that the “the No. 1 thing that President Trump could do on Day 1” would be to “stop the hostile attack against all American energy, and I mean all. Whether it’s baseload electricity, whether it’s oil, whether it’s gas, whether it’s ethanol, there is an attack on liquid fuels.” In reality, every single year of the Biden presidency, the U.S. produced more crude oil than any other nation at any other time, and remained the world’s largest methane gas producer, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Burgum is Bullish on Carbon Capture Bullsh*t
As governor of North Dakota, Burgum has been a vocal supporter of the controversial Summit Carbon Capture Pipeline, which would transport carbon captured from ethanol production facilities across state lines and sequester it underground in North Dakota. As Molly Taft brilliantly documented in “Unrest in Carbon Country,” opposition to Summit’s carbon pipeline and the use of eminent domain to seize land for it has united people across parties and walks of life in the rural Midwest.
Burgum’s support for the massive carbon pipeline project is unsurprising when you consider that Harold Hamm’s Continental Resources is one of the project’s main investors. But more broadly, Burgum’s support for carbon capture should not be understood as an admission of the need to mitigate climate change, but rather as an extension of a shrewd maneuver from the oil and gas industry to secure federal climate funding for a technology that helps them extract more oil and gas.
Capturing the carbon created as a byproduct of industrial processes in order to pump it back underground and recover more oil and gas from a well—also known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR)—has become increasingly important to the fossil fuel industry as oil reserves and the productivity of existing wells diminish. As the great Amy Westervelt explained last week:
“The carbon capture and storage (CCS) boom is neither a greenwashing campaign nor a genuine attempt to tackle carbon emissions, it has been driven almost entirely by the industry’s increasing reliance on EOR to deal with oil fields in decline. Compressed carbon turns out to be the best way to get dwindling oil reserves out of the ground, but it’s also one of the more expensive methods. Solution? Re-brand the process as a climate solution and get taxpayers to fund it. That is what the 45Q tax credit, passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, is all about.”
And that is definitely what carbon capture is about for the oil industry in North Dakota. The state’s primary drilling region, the Bakken formation, contains a massive amount of hard-to-get oil. The Bakken has a low “recovery factor” of less than 10 percent of oil in place being extracted. The fracking boom in the Bakken basin, which made Harold Hamm’s Continental Resources a fortune, unlocked more productivity for oil extraction. But enhanced oil recovery could potentially extend production further, prolonging the polluting lifespan of fossil fuel extraction even as major producers in the Bakken can foresee the time when production dwindles.
As Molly Taft reported for Drilled, “In April, North Dakota’s top oil and gas regulator warned that without importing CO2 from outside states, production in the Bakken could go into ‘terminal decline.’ Governor Burgum…called enhanced oil recovery carbon capture’s ‘biggest prize.’”
Earlier this year, Reutersreported that while Summit Carbon Solutions “has repeatedly pledged its project will not be used by drillers to boost output from oil fields,” its message to prospective clients from North Dakota’s oil industry is decidedly different: “if you want to use our project for enhanced oil recovery (EOR), where gas is pumped into oil fields to increase production, just write a check.”
Burgum’s support for carbon capture is among the factors that led some to view him as a less extreme pick than climate change deniers Chris Wright and Lee Zeldin, who Trump has tapped to head the Energy Department and the EPA. When he ran for president in 2023, USA Todayreported that “Burgum believes human activity has caused climate change, and as governor he made it a goal to get the Roughrider State carbon-neutral by 2030. But he rejects the Democratic worldview of using regulation to curtail fossil fuel use and instead emphasizes innovative technology to capture carbon emissions.” After Burgum was tapped by Trump for Interior, Politicodeemed Burgum to be “maybe the best hope for policymakers who favor an ‘abundance agenda.’”
Burgum’s selection has indeed gathered praise from pro-development voices on the center and right, including Alec Stapp of Institute for Progress, who called Burgum a “YIMBY abundance guy.” Joe Pitts of American Enterprise Institute called his selection “really, really good news.” Matt Yglesias called him “a totally solid pick who’ll do good things.” In what a telling glimpse into what the abundance agenda may be gunning for—cheap energy for AI data centers—Thomas Hochman of the Foundation for American Innovation tweeted that Burgum would help the U.S. “win the AI arms race.” Christopher Barnard of the American Conservation Coalition tweeted that he was “excited to see how [Burgum] drains the permitting swamp over the next 4 years.”
Backing false climate solutions is hardly less corrosive than outright climate denial when it comes to the goal of mitigating climate change. It just makes Burgum a more slippery villain. His gubernatorial track record gives us a sense of what we might expect from him at Interior. As governor, Burgum opposed a federal rule requiring gas companies to cut down on methane leaks when drilling on federal and tribal lands, while his state sued the Biden administration’s Interior Department for establishing conservation as a valid use of federal lands. Burgum opposed a federal rule reducing mercury emissions from coal plants that cause cancer, heart attacks, and developmental delays in children, while exempting the coal industry from $100 million in taxes over five years. Burgum applauded federal funding going to corporations pushing false climate solutions like carbon capture from coal production and gas-powered hydrogen production, but wants to repeal federal subsidies for consumers purchasing electric vehicles.
Unfortunately for the climate left, there will be little solace in “I told you so” when Burgum reveals himself to be just as irredeemably oily as the rest of Trump’s pollution promoters.
Trumpy Dumpty is thin on the facts, policies and programs, but he is as cunning as a hungry shark in detecting weakness in his opponents, especially the Democratic Party.
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