Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams

Faith leaders are calling on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to immediately free a pair of pastors who advocates say were wrongfully detained by ICE agents in Texas on Thursday while traveling to a religious retreat.

Pastor Nepthalí Zozaya Saucedo and his wife, pastor Cinthia Saraí Cardona Otero, were detained by federal immigration enforcers after arriving at McAllen International Airport.

According to the couple and their church leaders, the longtime pastors at the Comunidad Cristiana Emanuel Assemblies of God congregation in Edinburg, Texas were on their way to a marriage retreat in North Carolina organized by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association when they were detained and taken to a US Border Patrol processing center in McAllen.

At a Friday press conference hosted by leaders from the Assemblies of God and the Latino Christian National Network, LCN board member Sandy Ovalle said that the couple has valid R-1 religious worker visas.

“We are calling for their immediate release, the protection of their due process rights, and an urgent oversight into ICE’s conduct,” Ovalle said. “No one should be pressured to give up their rights under the threat of losing their children.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told Religion News Service that the pastors are “illegal aliens” who overstayed their visas.

Addressing the conference by phone from the detention center, Nepthalí said that the couple was threatened with separation from their US citizen children if they did not sign papers authorizing their “voluntary” deportation.

“They spoke with us about separation—to be separated from our children and even as married people,” he said, according to Religion News Service. “They spoke about how much time that we could end up spending here.”

Speaking during the press conference, Comunidad Cristiana Emanuel senior pastor Sarai Martinez Luna said, “I think it’s very cruel that somebody that had no status for deportation be pressured to sign a voluntary deportation based on the separation of their children.”

Friday’s news conference followed a Wednesday press briefing by faith leaders at the Texas Capitol in Austin to condemn the killings of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine, Juan Jairo Coronilla Durán in Florida, and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston.

“This is not of God. This is no peace that we want a part of because let’s be honest, this isn’t a peacekeeping initiative. This is a terror campaign with the mission of traumatizing our neighbors until they self-deport,” said Dan De Leon, senior pastor at Friends Congregational Church in College Station. “We don’t need terror. We need peace.”

Elyse Rosenberg of the National Council of Jewish Women and Temple Beth Shalom in Austin said during the press conference that “throughout our history, we have repeatedly seen first-hand the consequences of governments exercising unchecked power on vulnerable populations.”

Friday’s event also preceded nationwide vigils in more than 300 communities across the nation on Saturday to demand justice for the dozens of people who have been killed by federal enforcers or died in ICE custody during President Donald Trump’s second term.

“We refuse to grieve quietly. We refuse to accept this terror and violence as inevitable," Crystal Cron, executive director of Presente! Maine, said ahead of the vigils. “Johan Sebastián should still be here with his wife and daughter—and instead, his name joins a growing list of people killed by an institution that treats our communities as disposable.”

“This is bigger than one shooting,” Cron added. “We will not stop fighting until there is justice for the Durán Guerrero family and a total dismantling of this lawless, criminal agency that took him from them.”

Maine Democrats on Saturday overwhelmingly nominated Troy Jackson, a former state Senate president and logger by trade, as their party’s nominee to challenge longtime Republican incumbent Susan Collins in November’s high-stakes US Senate election.

“Well, thank you, Maine,” Jackson, 58, said after securing the votes of 566 of 571 delegates during Saturday’s special Democratic convention at Cross Insurance Center in Bangor. “Today we turn the page, today this becomes a general election campaign, and today we win the work of defeating Susan Collins in November.”

“For nearly 30 years, Collins has told Maine that she is ‘concerned’,” Jackson said, referring to the 73-year-old incumbent’s go-to word when President Donald Trump and Republicans attack rights and justice. “She was concerned while she rubber-stamped Trump’s Medicaid cuts and gutted our healthcare.”

“She’s concerned when she cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy,” he continued. “Concerned when she confirmed justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. And really tragically, she was concerned when she gave [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] billions to terrorize our neighbors and murder people in the streets with no accountability.”

“But concern does not lower the costs of groceries or gas,” Jackson said. “Concern does not keep our monitoring wards of rural hospitals like down in Lincoln County open. Concern does not restore all the rights that she’s taken away. Maine does not need another six years of concern. We need someone with courage. We need a fighter, and we need a senator who remembers exactly who sent them to Washington.”

“So if you’ve ever been ignored, underestimated, pushed around, or told that you have to wait your turn while the rich cut the line, I’m asking you to stand with us in this campaign,” he continued. “If you believe in your heart that healthcare is a right, stand with us. And if you believe that workers deserve power, stand with us. And if you believe our freedoms are worth defending, stand with us.”

“And if you believe that Maine deserves a senator who will fight like hell for working-class people, well, stand with us,” Jackson added. “We have a party to unite, we have a movement to build, and we have a senator to defeat.”

Jackson’s improbably rapid rise followed former Democratic nominee Graham Platner’s withdrawal from the race earlier this month amid allegations of sexual assault and abusive behavior. Supporters of Platner’s progressive platform warned at the time that they would not back a replacement candidate who did not share the same pro-worker, anti-war agenda.

While Collins spokeswoman Blake Kernen called Jackson a “low-energy version” of Platner, Maine Democrats decided the fifth-generation lumberjack fit the bill.

“The working class has been left behind and forgotten about,” Shelly Mountain, a former Aroostook County Democratic Committee chairwoman and Jackson delegate at the convention, told NBC News. “He is definitely working class and always—has always—been a champion for the working class.”

Progressive politicians, advocacy groups, and labor organizations cheered Jackson’s nomination, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) saying that “he’s ready to fight for working people and flip this seat.”

International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) president Brian Bryant said Saturday that “Troy Jackson knows firsthand what it means to work hard for a living and fight for a better future for working families.”

“Throughout his career, he has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with union members and working people, never backing down from a challenge when workers’ rights were on the line,” he added. “He represents the strength of a people-powered movement focused on fairness, opportunity, and economic justice. Troy has our full support as he heads to the general election.”

The Israeli government this week stripped Nile crocodiles of their protected status in order to advance a proposal that National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said was inspired by the Trump administration’s now-shuttered Alligator Alcatraz to build a prison for Palestinians surrounded by a moat full of the ravenous reptiles.

“You read that right,” the liberal US Jewish group J Street said in response to the news. “When cruelty becomes a governing principle instead of an aberration within the Israeli government, something has gone deeply wrong.”

Israeli Environmental Minister Idit Silman signed a directive Wednesday reclassifying Nile crocodiles as “specially managed wild animals,” a novel legal category enabling the government to keep them for security purposes.

Ben-Gvir, who heads the Israel Prison Service (IPS), said he was inspired by the Trump administration’s recently closed Alligator Alcatraz immigrant detention center in Florida. He is seeking to first introduce crocodiles into a moat around Ketziot Prison in southern Israel.

While it is not certain that the plan will come to fruition, Ben-Gvir celebrated Silman’s decree in a social media post showing him petting a crocodile, with the caption: “Cursed terrorist, thinking of trying to escape? Think again.”

Palestinians have occasionally escaped from Israeli lockups, such as in September 2021, when six men used improvised tools, including spoons, to tunnel out of the high-security Gilboa Prison. All six escapees were caught within weeks.

The move by Silman—who gained international notoriety by calling for the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip—came despite objections from her own ministry’s legal adviser and the Nature and Parks Authority.

IPS, which sent a fact-finding mission to the Hamat Gader crocodile farm in January, argued that its employees could handle the animals, citing the agency’s experience working with the attack dogs that Palestinian prisoners and human rights groups have claimed were used to maul and even sexually abuse detainees.

Silman’s approval is contingent upon IPS meeting animal welfare requirements and appropriate holding conditions.

Meanwhile, Ben-Gvir has openly boasted about the dramatic deterioration in conditions endured by Palestinian prisoners since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023 and Israel’s retaliatory obliteration of Gaza, which United Nations and other experts describe as a genocide.

“We go into the prisons, and they wet themselves,” Ben-Gvir said of Palestinian prisoners during a speech on Friday. “I’m not joking. They’re afraid. Fear rules them, and that’s how it should be.”

Ben-Gvir and other Israeli officials have worn noose lapel pins to celebrate a recently passed bill legalizing the execution by hanging of so-called “terrorists.”

Former Palestinian detainees and Israeli personnel have described beatings, rape and sexual torture by male and female soldiers, routine amputations due to constant shackling, burnings, electrocutions, attacks by dogs, ice-water dousings, denial of food and water, sleep deprivation, constant loud music, and other abuse.

The Israeli military is investigating the deaths of dozens of detainees at the Sde Teiman prison in the Negev Desert, including one who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton.

Ben-Gvir has defended Israeli reservists accused of torturing Palestinian prisoners, and called the reservists who allegedly gang-raped a man at Sde Teiman prison “heroes.”

The minister is banned from entering a number of Western countries for his incitement to violence against Palestinians.

Several Israeli environmental groups issued a joint statement opposing the use of crocodiles in prisons.

“Crocodiles are sentient beings, with complex needs for space, water, temperature, and natural behavior,” the groups said. “It is also highly doubtful that the crocodiles intended for this purpose have aggressive temperaments, and in any event, during the winter they slow their metabolism dramatically, become very sluggish, and stop eating.”

“Security should be achieved through real security measures, not through animals,” they added. “We are considering filing a petition with the High Court of Justice over the matter.”

Last year, the Israeli military massacred 262 crocodiles that were being kept on a farm in the occupied West Bank near the illegal Israeli settler colony of Petzael, claiming the reptiles posed a risk to the public.

“They just slaughtered them,” farm owner Danny Bitan told reporters at the time, describing the scene as “some kind of killing valley.”

Ben-Gvir’s plan comes amid ongoing slaughter in Gaza—where Israeli forces have killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, over 21,500 of them children, since October 2023—and accelerating colonization and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

News of Silman’s approval sparked disbelief around the world and on social media, where Reddit users called the plan “cartoonish idiocy” and “Bond villain-level lunacy.”

“The fact that Israel is trying to surround a prison with [crocodiles] tells you all you need to know about these camps, which are designed to torture, rape, and murder Palestinians, often held as hostages without charges,” Israeli researcher and political commentator Shaiel Ben-Ephraim said Thursday on X.

The Trump administration’s rollback of clean energy policies will cost American consumers $650 billion in additional energy bills by 2040, according to an analysis published Wednesday by a nonpartisan think tank.

Energy Innovation, a San Francisco-based energy and climate policy think tank, said in its report that “federal policy changes since January 2025 will increase energy prices, slow economic growth and job creation, increase air pollution and healthcare costs, and worsen grid reliability.”

The analysis examines seven major policy shifts during the second term of President Donald Trump, who—for the third time—ran on an aggressively pro-fossil fuel and anti-clean energy platform:

• Passage of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA);
• The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) reconsideration and repeal of Clean Air Act Greenhouse Gas Standards, Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, and Clean Water Act Effluent Limitations Guidelines for electric power plants;
• EPA’s repeal of the endangerment finding and federal tailpipe emissions standards;
• Passage of Congressional Review Act resolutions overturning approvals for state-level tailpipe emissions standards;
• Actions to limit renewable energy development—especially onshore and offshore wind plants—including limitations on issuance of new permits;
• Department of Energy cancellations of hydrogen hub funding and easing of 45V tax credit qualification for natural gas-based hydrogen; and
• EPA’s cancellation of the $7 billion Solar for All grant program.

According to the analysis, “Households will pay an additional $650 billion for energy—an average of $460 per household in 2035 and $490 in 2040.”

Additionally, the report states that “cutting policies that drive innovation and efficiency in the transportation sector will inflate gasoline prices 14% in 2035 and 26% in 2040, atop near-term upward pressure from the Iran War and other market forces.”

“OBBBA and reduced federal support for domestic manufacturing and innovation will cost the US economy 820,000 jobs per year on average over the next decade, in addition to the 144,000 clean energy jobs lost within the past 18 months,” the publication forecasts.

“Slowing down electrification and domestic energy manufacturing will lower [gross domestic product] in all years, totaling $2.3 trillion cumulative lost GDP, with effects flowing into other economic sectors,” the study warns. “The US economy will lose $150 billion in GDP in 2030, peaking at a $250 billion net loss in 2032, then reverting to losses of $200 billion in 2035 and $120 billion in 2040.”

Furthermore, “worsening local air pollution will raise healthcare costs by $43 billion, with annual increases of $4 billion in 2035 and $4.5 billion in 2040, contributing to rising household costs alongside rising energy prices and goods inflation.”

Energy Innovation stressed that states must act to mitigate the costs and harms of federal inaction. The report recommends helping wind and solar projects qualify for expiring tax credits under safe harbor rules, removing barriers to additional clean energy development, boosting electric vehicles, supporting energy efficient electrification, and stimulating investment in new clean industries.

The new analysis—whose findings are disputed by the Trump administration—comes amid an unabated affordability crisis that Trump vowed to tackle, and as electricity prices soar in much of the nation as a heat dome, fueled by human burning of fossil fuels, broils large swaths of the country in what many experts warn is the new normal in a worsening climate emergency.

Responding to the analysis, Candice Fortin, US campaigns manager at the climate action group 350.org, said: “This report puts numbers on something households are already feeling in their bills and their blackouts. We were told cutting clean energy would lower costs. Instead, we’re seeing the opposite: rates spiking, grids failing under record heat, and households paying more while data centers’ electricity use explodes.”

“You can’t fix an affordability crisis by blocking the cheapest, fastest power we have to build,” Fortin added. “The fossil fuel industry and this administration’s policies are adding fuel to the fire, and ordinary ratepayers are the ones getting burned.”

A leading government accountability watchdog group on Monday ripped the Trump administration’s move to rescind Biden-era rules enacted to protect ranchers and farmers from abuse by meatpacking corporations and boost competition in the key industry.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced the reversal of three Biden administration rules under the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921. One of the rules prohibits meatpackers, swine contractors, and poultry companies from retaliating against producers for actions like joining associations, speaking with regulators, or seeking other buyers.

Another rule mandated improved transparency in poultry grower contracts. The third rule‚ which was set to take effect this month, would have limited how poultry companies use the tournament payment system.

USDA said it plans to start the revocation process with proposed rulemakings scheduled for later this month and October.

Farm groups and antitrust advocates argue the move removes protections against monopolistic, deceptive, and retaliatory practices by dominant meatpacking and poultry companies.

“For years, meat corporations have abused hardworking farmers and ranchers. Now, the Trump administration is proposing to undo long-overdue progress made to level the playing field,” Emily Miller, staff attorney at Food & Water Watch, said Monday in a statement. “This move is a slap in the face to all those who have long fought for fair treatment in livestock and poultry markets.”

The USDA’s move comes amid increased meat sector consolidation, which studies by Food & Water Watch, More Perfect Union, and others have found results in higher consumer prices and lower farmer profits.

Over the course of his two terms in office, Trump has boosted the meatpacking industry at the expense of worker rights, competition, and public health. His administration refused to issue binding rules requiring businesses to institute safety measures amid the Covid-19 pandemic, and he invoked the Defense Production Act to classify meatpacking plants as critical infrastructure and force them to stay open even as the coronavirus ravaged industry workers.

Trump has also supported corporate monopolization in meatpacking, and his administration has shut down a Department of Justice antitrust probe of alleged industry collusion. Just four meatpackers control approximately 80% of the market. Meanwhile, cattle producers who in 1980 received 63 cents for every dollar paid by consumers for beef were receiving just 37 cents four decades later.

“We need robust enforcement of antitrust and fair trade practice laws to finally protect producers from meatpackers’ fundamentally unfair and illegal practices,” Miller said on Monday. “These rollbacks will do the opposite. We won’t rest until USDA does its job by putting producers above corporations.”

Resistance is mounting across the United States against the increasing use of surveillance tech company Flock Safety’s cameras, with a growing number of cities canceling contracts as the artificial intelligence-powered license plate readers are quietly being installed in thousands of locations nationwide.

State and local police departments first used the Atlanta-based company’s automated license plate reader (ALPR) systems for standard law enforcement purposes, but they are now being employed for a much broader range of uses, including immigration-related searches and other actions supporting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the Trump administration’s deadly anti-immigrant crackdown.

“We have cameras that are used for everything from illegal dumping to drug houses to hotels that are just big problems,” Flock Safety engineer Kevin Cox told prospective customers during a demonstration of the company’s Condor Camera, according to a Thursday report in The Washington Times.

“There are endless, endless uses for what we can do with these things,” Cox added.

Those uses include spying on constitutionally protected protest activity and enforcing abortion bans by tracking pregnant people’s travel across states—even ones in which the medical procedure is legal.

The ACLU—which recently launched a “Get the Flock Out” campaign to “fight creepy ALPR cameras”—says there are currently between 80,000 and 100,000 Flock devices installed nationwide that conduct more than 20 billion scans per month. More than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use the cameras, and some of them keep their locations a secret.

“Flock’s ALPR cameras aren’t like your normal traffic cameras,” the ACLU explained. “This surveillance technology records and tracks every car that comes into view, and then an AI algorithm catalogs the make, model, color, license plate number, bumper stickers, and even scratches. This personal information is then uploaded into a nationwide database that any law enforcement agency with a Flock contract can search—with few regulations or oversight on how they use what they find.”

The backlash against creeping state surveillance has even transcended the partisan divide.

“I think our country is in a kind of uniquely anti-surveillance environment right now, which is to say that, in a time where it seems there is nothing that is not partisan, opposition to government surveillance is nonpartisan,” ACLU privacy and surveillance attorney Chad Marlow told The Washington Times on Thursday.

There is growing action—both legal and otherwise—to end the use of ALPRs across the country.

According to the public information project Ban Flock Cameras, 82 Flock contracts were terminated across 28 states between August 2021 and May 2026, with 39 of those cancellations occurring in the first five months of 2026 alone.

Even Amazon-owned Ring announced earlier this year that it would stop doing business with Flock Safety.

Susie O’Hara, a member of Santa Cruz, California’s nominally nonpartisan City Council, told WBUR earlier this year that she grew increasingly concerned about local use of eight Flock cameras last year after learning that police were sharing data gleaned from the cameras with the company’s national network without city officials’ knowledge, a violation of state laws banning the practice.

O’Hara became increasingly convinced that Santa Cruz should cancel its Flock contract after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good, a US citizen, in Minneapolis in January.

“I have goose bumps on my arms thinking about the absolute chaos that was happening in Minneapolis,” she said. “And just the absolute insanity of what we were seeing... It was totally clear to me that we should in no way consciously be in this system at all—just no way.”

Less than a week after Good’s killing, the Santa Cruz City Council voted to terminate the city’s Flock contract, becoming the first municipality in California to do so.

“For us, the threat to our civil liberties was greater than any benefit we could get from the flawed product,” Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley told KQED at the time.

Chad Kemp, who represents District 32 on the nonpartisan Dane County Board of Supervisors in Wisconsin—which in April voted to stop funding two dozen cameras leased from Flock—told The Washington Times that “there’s a public safety issue here, but there is also a privacy issue.”

“There are serious concerns about individuals who can be monitored without their knowledge, or if it is even constitutional or ethical to track people without a warrant,” he added.

At the national level, US Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) last year launched an investigation into the use of Flock cameras to track pregnant people across state lines for abortion care and to conduct unauthorized immigration enforcement operations.

Krishnamoorthi and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have also urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Flock Safety “for failing to implement cybersecurity protections, allowing Americans’ personal data to be exposed to hackers, criminals, and spies to steal.”

Their demand came after the cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock revealed that hackers stole passwords and data from at least 35 Flock customer accounts.

In May, US Reps. Jesús “Chuy” Garcia (D-Ill.) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) introduced a bipartisan amendment to a bill that would prohibit state and local governments receiving federal highway funds from using ALPRs for purposes other than electronic toll collection.

It’s not just Flock. Axon, Vigilant Solutions—a subsidiary of Motorola Solutions—Genetec, PlateSmart, Innova Systems, Rekor, ELSAG, Perceptics, Jenoptik, and other firms market ALPRs to law enforcement agencies, private companies, and others.

“It doesn’t matter which company has its creepy cameras in your neighborhood,” the ACLU said, “they all have the same problems: a lack of transparency, oversight, and regulation into how they collect, store, and use our data, and how to hold public and private actors accountable if they abuse it.”

In a reversal of his past position and what critics are calling yet another betrayal of his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign pledge, US President Donald Trump announced Thursday that his administration is loosening limits on so-called “super pollutant” hydrofluorocarbons used in air conditioners and refrigerators at the expense of the environment and climate.

Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin spun the move as a measure that will “save American families and businesses more than $2.4 billion” by revising “costly overreaching restrictions” imposed during the Biden administration “limiting the type of refrigerants American businesses and families can use.”

Today, the Trump EPA is fulfilling President Trump’s promise to lower costs and is fixing every problem we can under the authority Congress gave us,” Zeldin said. “Our actions allow businesses to choose the refrigeration systems that work best for them, saving them billions of dollars. This will be felt directly by American families in lower grocery prices.”

Grocery prices have continued to rise during Trump’s second term, driven by the administration’s erratic trade wars and actual war on Iran. Critics of Thursday’s move argue that it will do little to reduce consumer costs, while increasing pollution and health risks for American families.

“It’s nice that they are paying attention to affordability, but if they want to make a difference, it’s tariffs and the Iran War,” Ryan Young, a senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank, told NOTUS, estimating that the move would save consumers about $2 per year.

Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are called “super pollutants” because they trap far more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, even though they are emitted in much smaller quantities. They were originally introduced to replace ozone-depleting chemicals like chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that ravaged the ozone layer.

However, scientists soon realized that HFCs are extremely powerful greenhouse gases in their own right. As air conditioning use and demand grows worldwide, so has HFC use.

As the EPA’s own website acknowledges on its “Operation: Disrupt HFCs” webpage:

HFCs are potent greenhouse gases... with high global warming potential. HFCs are commonly utilized as refrigerants, aerosol propellants, foam blowing agents, solvents, and fire retardants across residential, commercial, and industrial applications. The major source of HFC emissions is their use as refrigerants—for example, in air conditioning systems in both vehicles and buildings. Emissions occur during manufacturing, as well as through leaks, servicing, and disposal of equipment containing HFCs.

Former EPA Assistant Administrator Joseph Goffman said in a statement Thursday that “families are already stretched thin by high grocery bills and everyday expenses, and weakening safeguards on these super-polluting refrigerant chemicals isn’t going to change that.”

“Even manufacturers are saying this delay likely won’t lower prices for consumers because supplies of these chemicals are already being phased down in favor of cleaner, innovative replacements,” he added.

Stephen Yurek, president and CEO of the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI)—an industry lobby—warned that the “reckless” new policy could actually cause refrigerant prices to increase.

“This rule works against basic supply and demand,” Yurek said. “By extending the compliance deadline, the EPA is maintaining and even increasing demand in the market for existing refrigerants while supply continues to fall under the AIM Act.”

The American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act of 2020, bipartisan legislation signed by Trump during his first term, directed the EPA to “phase down the production and consumption of listed HFCs in the United States by 85% by 2036” and “facilitate the transition to next-generation technologies that do not rely on HFCs.”

As of this year, more than 170 countries—including the United States—plus the European Union have ratified the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, the main global agreement to phase down HFCs.

Yurek explained that “instead of falling, refrigerant prices are likely to rise, resulting in higher service costs, and higher costs for consumers.”

Addressing the EPA’s reversal on HFCs, Goffman said, “All this action does is slow the shift to cleaner technologies while risking continued releases of climate super pollutants and leaving families to face the much greater costs and health threats of dangerous climate change.”

“EPA owes it to Americans to put people’s health first—not give hidebound corporations more time to keep using outdated chemicals,” he added. “Americans deserve affordable groceries that don’t come at the expense of the strong safeguards they count on to keep our families safer, not sicker.”

The EPA move comes amid mounting calls by over 160 civil rights, environmental, faith, health, and labor groups to fire Zeldin over his agency’s deregulation spree.

The US Supreme Court’s right-wing majority Monday opened the door for Alabama to eliminate a majority-Black congressional district before this year’s midterm elections in a decision that came as Tennessee voters sued to stop their state’s racially rigged redistricting.

The nation’s high court issued a 6-3 order with no explanation allowing Alabama officials to revert to a congressional map which, despite the state population being roughly 26% African American, has just one majority-Black district out of seven. The order came just a week before Alabama’s primary election and less than three years after the same court ordered the state to create a second majority-Black district.

In that case, Allen v. Milligan, two right-wing members—Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh—joined their liberal colleagues who sided with Black voters in defense of the Voting Rights Act.

Monday’s ruling follows last month’s Louisiana v. Callais decision, in which the justices ruled 6-3, also along ideological lines, that Louisiana’s congressional map is “an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”

The decision ironically voided the last remaining provision of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which allows voters of color to challenge racially discriminatory electoral maps in court.

Dissenting in Monday’s decision, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that the high court previously found that “Alabama violated the 14th Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of Black voters.”

“That constitutional finding of intentional discrimination is independent of, and unaffected by, any of the legal issues discussed in Callais,” she added.

Earlier on Monday, the ACLU and ACLU of Tennessee filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of three Black voters, the Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis, the Memphis A. Philip Randolph Institute, and the Equity Alliance seeking to block the state’s racially rigged congressional map approved last week by the state Legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Bill Lee despite tremendous opposition from African American Tennesseans and their allies.

The lawsuit argues that the new map violates the Constitution by intentionally discriminating against Black voters in Memphis and retaliates against them for exercising their First Amendment right to political expression and association.

As the ACLU of Tennessee explained:

Tennessee has had a Memphis-based congressional district for the better part of a century. The challenged map dismantles that district, which is the state’s only majority-Black congressional district. It divides Black voters in Memphis and Shelby County across three majority-white districts that stretch from Memphis hundreds of miles into central Tennessee, diluting Black Memphians’ votes and stripping those communities of any meaningful voice in Congress...

A white-controlled supermajority of the Tennessee General Assembly enacted the new map targeting Black Memphians over mere days in a special legislative session that had been called after the candidate-qualifying deadline had already run.

“Black voters in Memphis did exactly what the Constitution empowers every American to do, which is to choose their representative,” ACLU of Tennessee executive director Miriar Nemeth said in a statement. “The Legislature’s response was an effort to ensure that those votes never carry the same weight again. The law has a name for this, and it’s not redistricting, it is textbook First Amendment retaliation. And it is, at its heart, racism.”

The Tennessee branch of the NAACP, state Democratic Party, Democratic candidates, and voters have also sued to challenge the redistricting.

The current partisan redistricting war began when President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, who fear losing control of Congress after November’s midterms, pushed Texas to enact a mid-decade redistricting. California retaliated with its own voter-approved redraw, and numerous red and blue states have followed suit or announced plans to at least consider doing so.

On Monday, Virginia’s Democratic attorney general and party legislative leaders asked the US Supreme Court to block a state high court ruling against a voter-approved redistricting that favors Democrats.

Last week, Roberts dismissed the increasingly prevalent public perception that Supreme Court justices are “political actors.”

Following Monday’s ruling, Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt said sardonically on Bluesky, “Boy, it’s a complete mystery why the public thinks the court is making partisan political decisions.”

A study published Monday warns that New Orleans must immediately begin planning and gradually implementing its permanent evacuation to avert a dangerously rushed exodus later, because it has passed a “point of no return” as climate-driven sea-level rise slowly swallows the storied city.

“With global temperatures poised to exceed the 1.5°C Paris Agreement threshold—a level that triggered substantial ice sheet collapse during the Last Interglacial—low-elevation coastal zones face sea-level commitments far beyond current planning horizons,” says the study, which was published by the journal Nature Sustainability.

“With this geological frame of reference, we examine the impact of sea-level rise on what may be the most physically vulnerable coastal zone in the world using prehistoric and contemporary patterns of human mobility,” the publication continues. “We highlight the positive aspects of the recently commenced out-migration in this region and argue that the fate of communities landwards of this coastal zone will be decided in the next few decades.”

“While climate mitigation should remain the first step to prevent the worst outcomes, coastal Louisiana has evidently already crossed the point of no return,” the paper adds.

That’s because rising waters are slowly eroding Louisiana’s coast, including New Orleans, which “may well be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico before the end of this century,” according to the study’s authors.

“Louisiana is a canary in the coal mine. It is one of the rare places where we’re already clearly seeing climate-motivated depopulation combined with other social and economic factors,” said Yale School of the Environment professor and study co-author Brianna Castro.

The authors argued that by acknowledging the inevitability of New Orleans’ underwater future, government and residents can avert a fraught rushed retreat by planning and executing a managed multigenerational relocation and set an example for other threatened coastal communities.

According to one widely cited study published a decade ago, around 13 million Americans living in coastal areas could be forced to relocate to higher ground by the end of the century due climate-driven sea-level rise, with the Gulf Coast and Florida expected lose the most livable land. Globally, hundreds of millions of people are expected to be displaced by 2100 due to rising seas.

After Hurricane Katrina—which inundated the city and killed nearly 1,000 people in the New Orleans metro area—billions of dollars were spent fortifying the city’s levee system, which failed catastrophically during the 2005 storm. However, experts warn that in the long term, levees won’t be able to stop the rising waters any longer.

That’s why the study’s authors said officials must begin the city’s orderly depopulation as soon as possible.

“What kind of retreat do you want?” asked Castro. “Do you want to incentivize it and then people go naturally for jobs, housing, and lifestyle amenities—or do you want people to wait and then have to leave abruptly in crisis?”

The US Senate on Tuesday defeated a Democrat-led bid to stop President Donald Trump from following through on his threat to wage war on Cuba, whose long-suffering people are reeling from the American administration’s tightened economic stranglehold.

Upper chamber lawmakers voted 51-47 on a procedural motion to block further debate Sen. Tim Kaine’s (D-Va.) SJ Res. 124, “a joint resolution to direct the removal of United States armed forces from hostilities within or against the republic of Cuba that have not been authorized by Congress.”

Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted to advance the resolution, while John Fetterman of Pennsylvania joined his GOP colleagues in voting to sink the measure.

The vote effectively sidelines the measure, one of many failed attempts to curb Trump’s ability to wage war on countries including Iran and Venezuela, as well as rein in his high seas boat bombing spree.

“The American people are not asking for another war,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.)—one of SJ Res. 124’s dozen co-sponsors—said following Tuesday’s vote. “They want us focused on building housing in Arizona, not bombing housing in Havana. They want us to lower the cost of healthcare not condemn a generation of veterans to a lifetime of hospital visits. They want us to make their lives more affordable, not spend their tax dollars on unnecessary wars.”

Kaine called the GOP move “purely a regime change effort.”

“Why do they want it? You’ll have to ask them,” he added. “What we’re doing with respect to Cuba, if somebody was doing it to us, we would consider it an act of war. But because they don’t pose a security threat to the United States, it’s clearly an effort to change the regime.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who also co-sponsored the resolution, said, “The last thing working Americans need right now is another war—let alone one that’s 90 miles south of the US.”

Resolution co-sponsor Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) said on Bluesky after the vote, “A conflict with Cuba would cost hardworking Americans billions of dollars, deepen the humanitarian crisis in Cuba, and put American service members in harm’s way.”

“The Constitution is clear: Only Congress has the authority to declare war,” Alsobrooks added.

Trump has attacked seven countries since returning to office and 10 since the start of his first term—more than any other president.

The situation in Cuba is dire, as a result of both the 65-year US economic chokehold on the island and mismanaged central planning by its socialist rulers.

Trump has been ramping up military threats and economic pressure on Cuba, whose people were already suffering from generations of US sanctions. His administration’s tightened embargo has severely restricted fuel imports, worsening an energy emergency in which blackouts have become the norm, threatening the lives of vulnerable Cubans—especially sick people and children.

The US president said that “we may stop by Cuba after we’re finished” with the illegal US-Israeli war of choice on Iran that’s killed thousands of people, including hundreds of children. Trump has also said that he believes he’ll “be having the honor of taking Cuba.”

The United States already took Cuba once, during an 1898 war waged against Spain under highly dubious pretenses that ended with the US also acquiring Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam—with Hawaii also annexed that year under the guise of security.

American presidents have been trying to force out Cuba’s socialist government since shortly after the revolution that overthrew a US-backed dictatorship in 1959. US efforts have included carrying out or backing an armed invasion, terrorist attacks, assassination attempts, and other acts of aggression.

Cuba commits no such acts against the United States or anyone else, yet Trump added the country to the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list.

Following Tuesday’s vote, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said that “Trump should learn the law of holes: If you find yourself in one, stop digging.”

“Instead of threatening that ‘Cuba is next,’ President Trump should remove his blockade against Cuba, which has devastated Havana’s economy and healthcare system, and has created a deepening humanitarian crisis,” Markey added.

The United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly condemned the blockade 33 times since 1992.

“With its catastrophic Iran war of choice, the Trump administration has lost all credibility on issues of war and peace,” Markey asserted. “The American people do not want yet another endless war that will only costs more lives and more taxpayer dollars, and undermine US security.”

Progressive International co-general coordinator David Adler warned Tuesday that “Trump is preparing military action against Cuba,” calling the Senate vote possibly “the last chance for US Congress to stop it.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday warned that the United States is being “humiliated” by Iran and risks getting trapped in a quagmire there like it did in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“The Iranians are clearly stronger than expected and the Americans clearly have no truly convincing strategy in the negotiations either,” Merz told students at the Carolus-Magnus-Gymnasium in Marsberg, North Rhine-Westphalia. “The problem with conflicts like this is always: You don’t just have to get in, you have to get out again. We saw that very painfully in Afghanistan for 20 years. We saw it in Iraq.”

“At the moment, I do not see what strategic exit the Americans will choose, especially since the Iranians are clearly negotiating very skillfully—or very skillfully not negotiating,” the Christian Democratic Union leader continued. “An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, particularly by the so-called Revolutionary Guards.”

US President Donald Trump on Saturday abruptly canceled a planned trip by special envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to Islamabad, Pakistan to negotiate a ceasefire with Iranian officials after prior talks ended without an agreement.

Nearly two months of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran have killed more than 3,400 people, at least 2,100 of them civilians—including 503 women, 413 children, 91 health workers, and 9 journalists, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency.

The Lebanese Health Ministry said Monday that the death toll from Israeli bombing of its northern neighbor has topped 2,500, including hundreds of women and children. At least 14 people were killed on Sunday by Israeli strikes, despite a US-brokered ceasefire.

The head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society said Saturday that the organization has submitted evidence of US and Israeli war crimes to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which in 2024 issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes—including murder and forced starvation—in Gaza, where more than 250,000 people have been killed or injured since October 2023.

Merz said Monday that the US-Israeli war on Iran is harming his country.

“It is at the moment a pretty tangled situation,” he said. “And it is costing us a great deal of money. This conflict, this war against Iran, has a direct impact on our economic output.”

Merz said that Germany was still open to deploying minesweeping warships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has blocked almost all international shipping. However, the chancellor said such a move would only come after fighting stops.

The German leader also told students at the school that their country must assume a greater leadership role within the European Union.

“If we were to unite more effectively and do more together,” he said, “we could be at least as strong as the United States of America.”

Some observers asserted that the US isn’t the only country being humiliated, pointing to Germany’s support for Israel, which is rooted in deep-seated guilt over the country’s systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews during the Nazi-era Holocaust.

In addition to brutally cracking down on pro-Palestine protests and suppressing speech critical of Israel’s obliteration of Gaza, Germany initially planned to intervene in the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also in The Hague.

However, Berlin said last month that it will not intervene in the ICJ case in support of Israel so that it can better focus on its own defense in a separate case before the tribunal filed by Nicaragua accusing Germany of enabling Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza via arms sales.

As he has done numerous times before, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Thursday rejected the notion that democratic socialism has limited appeal outside of progressive urban centers by asserting that his worker-centered policies are aimed at uplifting the nation’s biggest demographic cohort—working people and their families.

Mamdani appeared on “CBS Mornings” and was asked what grade he’d give himself after 100 days leading the world’s most important city.

“You know, I’ll always leave it to New Yorkers to give me the grade but I will say that I’m proud of what the team has accomplished over the 100 days,” Mamdani told “CBS Mornings” hosts Gayle King and Vladimir Duthiers. “I mean, we saw $1.2 billion secured in a partnership with Gov. [Kathy] Hochul to deliver universal childcare in our city.”

“We held bad landlords accountable for $32 millon, fixed 6,070 apartments,” he added. “We filled 102,000 potholes and we did all of this while also returning $9.3 million back to workers and small businesses that have been ripped off by megacorporations.”

Duthiers asked whether “a democratic socialist platform can translate into something that’s electorally viable in a statewide election or a national election given that, according to Gallup, many older and rural voters still have issues with the term, with the label, socialist.”

Mamdani replied: “You know, what I find is that New Yorkers ask me less about how I describe my politics and more about whether my politics includes them, and I think what we can see is that a democratic socialist politics is one that should be judged on its delivery, like any ideology. And what we’re showing in this city is we can we can pursue the big things like universal childcare and do the pothole politics at the same time.”

“I think that this is a politics that can flourish anywhere,” he added, “because frankly there is only one majority in this country that’s the working class and it’s time we have a politics that puts them at the heart of what it is that we’re pursuing and not as part of the appendix.”

Turning to the illegal US-Israeli war of choice against Iran, Mamdani lamented that “we’re talking about spending close to $30 billion to kill thousands of people an ocean away while we’re told that we don’t have even an ounce of that money to help working-class Americans across this country.”

According to a Marist poll published earlier this month, 48% of New Yorkers approved of Mamdani’s overall performance, while 30% disapproved and 23% are unsure. A majority of respondents—55%—“have either a very favorable or somewhat favorable view of the mayor, and 33% have either a somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable opinion.”

A majority of respondents also said the city is heading in the right direction under Mamdani, while nearly three-quarters believe the mayor is “working hard,” and 58% “have a great deal or a good amount of trust in Mayor Mamdani to make decisions that are in the best interest of New York City.”

Previous polling has also shown that Mamdani’s economic policies are popular across the country.

Responding to Mamdani’s “CBS Mornings” appearance, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) shared its newly published “Majority Agenda,” a “roadmap” to passing policies that most Americans see as major priorities to improve their lives.

“The Majority Agenda is a collection of policy briefs on important issues where Americans generally have broad agreement across the political landscape,” CEPR explained. “The project organizes these reports into three main areas: good jobs, strong infrastructure, and fair play.”

“We’re not as divided as some media and politicians want us to believe,” CEPR contended.

The International Monetary Fund warned Tuesday that the US-Israeli war on Iran could slow global economic growth, stoke inflation, and increase the possibility of a worldwide recession and energy crisis.

The illegal war of choice on Iran being waged by US President Donald Trump and the government of fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already had wide-ranging negative impacts on the global economy, from soaring fuel prices caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to supply chain disruptions and financial market volatility.

However, a major global economic crisis has thus far been averted. That could soon change.

“Despite major trade disruptions and policy uncertainty, last year ended on an upbeat note,” International Monetary Fund director of research Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas wrote in an analysis of the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook report. “The private sector adapted to a changing business environment, while powerful offsets came from lower US tariffs than originally announced, some fiscal support, and favorable financial conditions coupled with strong productivity gains and a tech boom.”

“Despite some downside risks, the momentum was expected to carry over into 2026, lifting the pre-conflict global growth forecast to 3.4%,” Gourinchas continued. “War in the Middle East has halted this momentum. The closing of the Strait of Hormuz and serious damage to critical facilities in a region central to global hydrocarbon supply raise the prospect of a major energy crisis should hostilities continue.”

The IMF said that even if the war ends quickly, lasting damage to the world’s economy will still happen.

According to the IMF report:

Under the assumption of a limited conflict, global growth is projected at 3.1% in 2026 and 3.2% in 2027, below recent outcomes and well under pre-pandemic averages. Global inflation is expected to tick up in 2026 and resume its decline in 2027. Pressures are concentrated in emerging market and developing economies, especially commodity importers with preexisting vulnerabilities. Risks are decisively on the downside. A prolonged conflict, deeper geopolitical fragmentation, disappointment over [artificial intelligence]-driven productivity, or renewed trade tensions could weaken growth and unsettle markets. High public debt and eroded policy buffers add vulnerability. Policies should foster adaptability, enhance credibility, and reinforce international cooperation.

The IMF said that “the shock’s ultimate magnitude will depend on the conflict’s duration and scale—and how quickly energy production and shipment normalize once hostilities end,” and that effects will vary by location.

“Countries will feel the impact differently,” Gourinchas wrote. “As in past commodity-price surges, importers are highly exposed. Low-income and developing economies—especially those with vulnerabilities and limited buffers—are likely to be hit hardest. Gulf energy exporters will face economic fallout from damaged infrastructure, production disruptions, export constraints, and weaker tourism and business activity. Remittances will fall in countries that supply migrant workers to the region.”

Eric LeCompte, executive director of the religious development group Jubilee USA Network and a United Nations finance expert, called the new IMF forecast “extremely concerning for the global economy,” lamenting that “the most dire impacts of our economic situation will be felt by the poor and the vulnerable.”

The new report comes as the IMF’s annual Spring Meetings are underway in Washington, DC.

“World leaders coming to Washington are receiving a very dark picture of the global economy,” said LeCompte. “The war is causing greater poverty and increases in our fuel and food costs.”

Other groups have also warned of the adverse economic effects of the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Ben May, Bridget Payne, and Paul Moroz of Oxford Economics recently published a report warning that a longer war in Iran “could tip the global economy into recession.”

In such a situation, “the Gulf states suffer most acutely—GDP down over 8% in 2026—before rebounding sharply as production recovers,” they wrote. “Advanced Asian economies, which are especially reliant on Gulf oil, take a heavy blow from energy import cost surges and supply chain disruption.”

“Europe faces a painful squeeze on gas and electricity,” the trio added. “The US fares somewhat better given its domestic energy production, but an equity market decline of nearly 20% weighs heavily on consumer spending.”

Some US-based organizations have focused on the war’s domestic economic impacts.

Dean Baker, a senior fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research, published an analysis earlier this month asserting that “making enemies makes us poorer.”

“Secretary of Defense (or War) Pete Hegseth seems to be having a really great time killing people in Iran, but his live action video games come at a big cost—not just in lives, but in budget dollars,” Baker wrote. “To be clear, the main reason to oppose this pointless war is its impact on the people of Iran and elsewhere in the region. But it also has a huge economic cost that is seriously underappreciated.”

“In addition to reducing our security and jeopardizing the well-being of people around the world, Donald Trump’s belligerence will cost us a huge amount of money,” he said. Focusing on US military spending, Baker noted that “Trump wants the country to spend 5% of GDP, or $1.5 trillion a year, on the military. This comes to $12,000 per household.”

Trump and his Republican Party are seeking to offset some of their record military spending with devastating cuts to social programs upon which tens of millions of Americans rely. Already reeling from the biggest cuts to Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program spending in those programs’ histories, Trump’s budget request for fiscal year 2027 contains $73 billion in total reductions in nondefense spending.

“It is striking to see that Congress might be willing to quickly cough up this money,” said Baker, referring to military funding, “when it has refused far smaller sums that could have made a huge difference in the lives of tens of millions of people.”

An ocean conservation ship operated by anti-whaling campaigner Paul Watson collided Tuesday with a commercial krill trawler off Antarctica in what the fishing vessel’s owner described as a “deliberate attack,” but activists called “a David-and-Goliath battle against an industrial giant.”

The Captain Paul Watson Foundation (CPWF) said on Facebook that, as part of its Operation Krill Wars campaign, the Bandero is currently targeting “two of the largest Norwegian trawlers operating in Antarctic waters, the Antarctic Endurance and the Antarctic Sea,”—both of which are owned by Aker QRILL Company of Lysaker, Norway.

“Earlier today, both trawlers released lines into the water to move the Bandero, a dangerous maneuver that could have disabled our ship,” the foundation alleged. “In response, the Bandero delivered a gentle but deliberate nudge to the stern of the Antarctic Sea, accompanied by a message: Stop despoiling the ecological integrity of the Southern Ocean.”

Aker QRILL is owned by New York City-based American Industrial Partners and Norwegian billionaire Kjell Inge Røkke, and calls itself “the world’s leading krill company.”

Company CEO Webjørn Barstad responded to the incident by claiming in an interview with Reuters that “our crew were put at risk in some of the most remote waters on Earth, and only luck avoided potential environmental damage.”

“If the steel plates... had ruptured, it could have caused a spill,” Barstad added. “It was probably just luck that it didn’t cause more damage.”

CPWF scoffed at the company’s claims of danger, saying on Facebook that “I understand your need to play the victim while you scoop life from the sea.”

As the Operation Krill Wars campaign explains:

Krill is the keystone species of the ecosystem in Antarctica. The majority of Antarctic species are reliant on krill as their primary food source or krilI is the the food source of their prey. From the great whales down to the penguins, seals, and seabirds, all rely on an abundance of krill to survive.

Currently the quota set by the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources is 620,000 tons which is said to represent 1% of the total biomass of krill. However the fishing of krill is in concentrated areas, meaning that the likelihood of ecological collapse in those areas is far more likely.

After the near extinction of several large whale species in the 19th and 20th centuries, conservation efforts in the later half of the 20th century and 21st century have seen whale populations recovering. Though not back to their pre-commercial whaling numbers, this increase in whale populations obviously requires a greater amount of krill for food. Yet what we are seeing is a greater extraction of krill by human commercial enterprises.

“If the ocean dies, we die,” Paul Watson said in a statement. “Krill are the blood of the sea. Without them, the whales, penguins, fish, and birds will starve, and the ocean will fall silent.”

Watson is best known as the co-founder of Greenpeace and, later, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. He has dedicated his life to defending marine wildlife—especially mammals like whales—from harm. A controversial figure, Watson was arrested and jailed in Greenland in 2024 on an international warrant issued by Japan over his anti-whaling activism. However, he was freed after Denmark—which controls Greenland’s foreign affairs—refused Japan’s extradition request.

CPWF said that the issue of ocean exploitation must be “confronted legally and brought to global attention.”

“We are here in the Southern Ocean to oppose a crime against nature and humanity—aggressively, but nonviolently,” the group said Wednesday. “We welcome the opportunity to defend our actions in court and expose the true cost of krill fishing to the world.”

The Bob Brown Foundation, an Australian green group, defended CPWF in a statement Wednesday calling “for the complete end to krill fishing in Antarctica.”

“The krill fishing industry is fully aware of the damage they cause, such as killing whales in their nets, yet they do all they can to greenwash krill products,” said Bob Brown Foundation Antarctic and marine campaigner Alistair Allan. “We applaud the brave actions of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, who are ensuring that the plunder of krill does not go unchallenged.”

“Krill is violently sucked out of Antarctica’s fragile wilderness all for products we don’t need, such as fish farm feed, pet food, and supposed health products,” Allan added. “It’s time for the world to boycott all products with krill in them.”