Julia Conley, Common Dreams

With methane more than 28 times as potent as carbon at trapping heat in the atmosphere in a 100-year period, climate experts agree that reducing methane leaks from oil and gas fields would be one of the fastest and most effective ways of making a measurable impact on planetary heating—but President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday flatly refused to do so, instead announcing a delay on a requirement for fossil fuel companies to limit methane emissions.

The Biden administration had introduced the requirement for oil and gas firms to begin reducing their emissions this year, but the EPA said companies will now have until January 2027 to comply with the rule. The administration is also considering repealing the requirement entirely.

Lauren Pagel, policy director for Earthworks, called the delay “indefensible and illegal.”

“The Trump administration has once again chosen polluters over people, sacrificing the health of communities and climate to serve the fossil fuel industry,” said Pagel. “Every day national methane rules are delayed means more methane in the air, more toxic pollution in our lungs, and more irreversible climate damage.”

The EPA claimed it was providing companies with a “more realistic timeline” for complying with the requirement, and said the action would “save an estimated $750 million over 11 years in compliance costs.”

Methane can leak from oil and gas wells, pipelines, and other fossil fuel infrastructure, and companies often intentionally release methane through flaring. The fossil fuel industry is the largest industrial source of methane emissions in the US, where emissions of methane have risen sharply in recent years as the Biden administration oversaw record production of oil and gas, even as it sought to reduce emissions through the methane requirement and other regulations.

While saving money for fossil fuel companies, the delay on the rule could lead to 3.8 million more tons of methane entering the atmosphere, according to the Trump administration’s own estimates.

“After years of scientific work and public engagement, this administration’s decision to delay methane pollution standards implementation yet again is a blatant act of climate denial and disregard for public health. The EPA’s job is to protect people, not pad the pockets of oil and gas executives,” said Pagel.

In addition to contributing to global heating and the extreme flooding, hurricanes, heatwaves, and other destructive weather events that come with it, methane emissions are linked to higher ground-level ozone pollution made up of tiny particles that can cause respiratory and cardiac problems, cancer, and strokes.

Grace Smith, senior attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), noted that the methane standards have already been working “to reduce pollution, protect people’s health, and prevent the needless waste of American energy”—progress that will now be reversed by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and Trump.

“The rule released today means millions of Americans will be exposed to dangerous pollution for another year and a half, for no good reason,” said Smith. “Delaying the methane standards threatens people’s health and undermines progress by industry leaders.”

“What’s more, the Trump administration rushed to push through this harmful rule without meaningful transparency or a chance for the public to weigh in,” added Smith. “EDF is already in court challenging EPA’s first attempt to delay these vital protections. We will continue to oppose the rule released today, so that people can breathe cleaner air.”

EDF and the grassroots group Moms Clean Air Force expressed particular concern over nearly 18 million people in the US who live near active oil and gas wells.

“Children in my community and across the nation need a strong and comprehensive oil and gas methane rule as soon as possible,” said Patrice Tomcik, senior national field director for Moms Clean Air Force.

EDF noted that “proven, cost-effective solutions are available to help oil and gas operators meet the standards while reducing waste and monetary losses,” and both large and small producers have expressed support for the federal methane regulation as fossil fuel-producing states have begun implementing the standards.

The rule announced Wednesday, said EDF, “ignores the strong opposition to the rule from members of impacted communities and wide variety of other Americans.”

Surrounded by cardboard “tombstones” that displayed likely causes of death of thousands of people in the United States under Republican policies, Bishop William J. Barber II on Monday gave a eulogy in Raleigh, North Carolina, honoring those who are being directly targeted by the Trump administration’s cuts to healthcare, public health funding, and other essential government programs.

The word “eulogy,” he said, comes from the Greek word “eulogia,” and means “good words.”

“But the question is, what is the ‘good word’ when people shouldn’t be dead?” asked the president of the grassroots group Repairers of the Breach and the co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, adding that the people he was speaking about are projected to die in the coming year solely due to “policy violence.”

“We will not let them die ignored,” said Barber. “We will not let their deaths go unregistered on the conscience of this nation and this state, and among the people.”

Barber spoke at the flagship event of Repairers of the Breach’s regular Moral Mondays prayer protest, while supporters in more than 15 states including Alabama, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, and Texas also delivered eulogies for those who are expected to die as a result of the $186 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, and funding slashed by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) that was passed in July.

Roughly 51,000 people are expected to die annually as they lose access to SNAP and Medicaid, as well as those whose healthcare costs will skyrocket if Affordable Care Act subsidies are allowed to expire at the end of the year. People with disabilities and low-income senior citizens are also expected to be impacted by OBBBA provisions that will make it harder for them to access Medicare Savings Programs.

"Because we are fighting for the life of those who yet remain,“ said Barber. ”When they passed the Big Ugly Deadly Destructive Bill—don’t ever call it the Beautiful Bill—when they passed it, it represented a death sentence.“

Barber noted that Republicans were able to pass the law after lying about “waste and fraud and abuse” in the federal programs that rely on them for healthcare and food assistance.

“They had to tell a lie to keep their promise to the wealthiest people in America,” said the bishop, referring to thousands of dollars in annual tax cuts for the richest households that are included in the OBBBA.

Sloan Meek, who has cerebral palsy and relies on Medicaid, also gave a statement.

“I feel a lot of fear and worry right now that every cut and rate reduction to Medicaid will change my whole life,” said Meek. “Having disabilities does not mean I am sick, but it does mean I need consistent treatment and care to stay healthy. I do not want to become sick. I do not want to lose my community. I do not want to lose my voice. I do not want to be forced out of my home to live and receive care from a bunch of strangers. I do not want to die because of a political issue. These are the fears I share with every disabled person using Medicaid in North Carolina right now. I would like to ask every legislator to please see us as having valuable and important lives that are worth supporting.”

The event also aimed at the Trump administration’s actions weakening the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—with the federal government denying and delaying states’ disaster assistance requests—and President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, which most recently unleashed federal agents on North Carolina communities from Charlotte to Raleigh.

The tombstones that flanked Barber read, “I lost Medicare,” “I was disappeared,” “I lost medical research,” “FEMA did not respond.”

“The big, bad, deadly budget bill proved that Washington lawmakers are more than willing to kill tens of thousands of people to line the pockets of the wealthy—but now even that level of destruction and death wasn’t enough,” said Barber in a statement ahead of the event. “Lawmakers are now allowing healthcare subsidies to expire, forcing millions of people to come up with more money for health plans—or die trying. And the Trump administration just unleashed its masked army of ICE agents to terrify and abduct immigrants in Charlotte and Raleigh.”

“One of the grandest, cruelest ironies is that many of the leaders greenlighting these deadly policies profess to be Christian. I’m not sure what Bible they’re reading, but my Bible tells me to protect all people—including poor people and foreigners—without condition or judgment,” Barber continued. “We cannot stay silent in this moment.”

Barber said the event was being held two days before Repairers of the Breach was preparing to send an open letter to every member of the North Carolina General Assembly, calling for the body to hold an “emergency session and vote to tell Congress and the president to take hands off the people of North Carolina, to reverse policies that will hurt 307,000 North Carolinians that will lose Medicaid, that will cause 375,000 to lose food stamps.”

On Monday evening, the organization was planning another event to call on Congress and the White House “to immediately cease and desist” their attacks on Latino and immigrant communities across the country, deploying “Liberty Vans”: mobile rapid-response command centers staffed by volunteer lawyers and campaigners to provide support to communities targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.

A series of nuclear power-related executive orders issued by President Donald Trump seek to legitimize people’s “suffering as the price of nuclear expansion,” said one expert at Beyond Nuclear on Friday, as the nongovernmental organization spearheaded a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and top Trump administration officials warning of the public health risks of the orders.

More than 40 civil society groups—including Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), Sierra Club, Nuclear Watch South, and the Appalachian Peace Education Center—signed the letter to the commission, calling on officials not to revise the NRC’s Standards for Protection Against Radiation, as they were directed to earlier this year by Trump.

“NRC has not made a revision yet, and has been hearing that the Part 20 exposure (external only) should be taken from the existing 100 mr [milliroentgen] a year, per license, to 500 mr a year, and in view of some, even to 10 Rems [Roentgen Equivalent Man], which would be 100 times the current level,” reads the letter.

In 2021, noted PSR, the NRC “roundly rejected” a petition “to raise allowable radiation exposures for all Americans, including children and pregnant women, to 10 Rems a year.”

The revision to radiation limit standards would result in anywhere from 5-100 times less protection for Americans, said the groups, with 4 out of 5 adult males exposed over a 70-year lifetime developing cancer that they otherwise would not have.

“Radiation is dangerous for everyone,” said Amanda M. Nichols, lead author of the 2024 study Gender and Ionizing Radiation. “[Trump’s] executive order will allow the industry to relax the current standards for radiological protection, which are already far from adequate. This will have detrimental health consequences for humans and for our shared environments and puts us all at higher risk for negative health consequences. ”

The change in standards would be even more consequential for women, including pregnant women, and children—all of whom are disproportionately susceptible to health impacts of ionizing radiation, compared to adult males.

“Radiation causes infertility, loss of pregnancy, birth complications and defects, as well as solid tumor cancer, leukemia, non-cancer outcomes including cardiovascular disease, increased incidence of autoimmune disease, and ongoing new findings.”

In Gender and Ionizing Radiation, Nichols and biologist Mary Olson examined atomic bomb survivor data and found that young girls “face twice the risk as boys of the same age, and have four to five times the risk of developing cancer later in life than a woman exposed in adulthood.”

Despite the risks to some of the country’s most vulnerable people, Trump has also called for a revision of “the basis of the NRC regulation,” reads Friday’s letter: the Linear No Threshold (LNT) model, the principle that there is no safe level of radiation and that cancer risk to proportional to dose.

The LNT model is supported by decades of peer-reviewed research, the letter states, but one of Trump’s executive orders calls for “an additional weakening of protection by setting a threshold, or level, below which radiation exposure would not ‘count’ or be considered as to have not occurred.”

The Standards for Protection Against Radiation are “based on the well-documented findings that even exposures so small that they cannot be measured may, sometimes, result in fatal cancer,” reads the letter. “The only way to reduce risk to zero requires zero radiation exposure.”

Trump’s orders “would undermine public trust by falsely claiming that the NRC’s radiation risk models lack scientific basis, despite decades of peer-reviewed evidence and international consensus supporting the LNT model,” it adds.

The signatories noted that the US government could and should strengthen radiation regulations by ending its reliance on “Reference Man”—a model that the NRC uses to create its risk assessments, which is based on a young adult male and fails to reflect the greater impact on infants, young children, and women.

“Newer research has shown that external radiation harms children more than adults and female bodies more than male bodies,” reads the letter. “Existing standards should therefore be strengthened to account for these life-stage and gender disparities… not weakened. Radiation causes infertility, loss of pregnancy, birth complications and defects, as well as solid tumor cancer, leukemia, non-cancer outcomes including cardiovascular disease, increased incidence of autoimmune disease, and ongoing new findings.”

Olson, who is the CEO of the Generational Radiation Impact Project, which also helped organize the letter, warned that “radiation causes cancer in women at twice the rate of adult men, while the same exposure in early childhood, will, across their lifetimes, produce seven times more cancer in young females, and four times more in young males.”

The groups emphasized that “executive orders do not have the power to require federal agencies to take actions that violate their governing statutes, nor to grant them powers and authorities that contradict those governing statutes. The NRC needs to stand up to the executive order’s marching orders to ‘promote’ nuclear power—a mission outside its legal regulatory mandate under the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 and the concurrent amendments to the Atomic Energy Act.”

Federal agencies including the NRC, they added, “should not favor industry propaganda asserting that some radiation is safe over science-based protection of the public. This is a deliberate subversion of science and public health in favor of corporate interests.”

President Donald Trump has appointed 27 judges to federal courts so far in his second term, and in addition to their right-wing interpretation of the law, an analysis of the judges’ comments to senators during the confirmation process reveals a key commonality between the president’s appointees: All were willing to evade direct questions about whether Trump lost the 2020 election and whether the US Capitol was attacked by a violent pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021.

Demand Justice examined the Questions for the Record (QFRs) that were submitted by the Senate to the 27 judicial nominees regarding the election and Jan. 6, and found that their answers to those two specific questions were nearly uniform in many cases—repeating certain phrases verbatim and “overall, using unusual and evasive language that’s almost entirely outside the normal, historical, and common lexicon used to describe such events.”

None of the 27 nominees affirmatively answered that former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, as proven by numerous courts that rejected lawsuits claiming otherwise and by both Republican and Democratic election officials. Instead, the nominees said Biden was “certified” as the winner, and 16 of them said he “served” as president.

Some of the nominees, including Emil Bove of the US Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, Whitney Hermandorfer of the Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, and Kyle Dudek of the Middle District of Florida, expanded on their answers, saying they would avoid “opining on the broader political or policy debate regarding the conduct of the 2020 presidential election.”

Demand Justice said those comments “strongly, and falsely,” suggested the 2020 election results are still a matter of legal dispute.

Josh Orton, president of the group, told MSNBC‘s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday that the nominees’ answers preserved “their ability to say, ‘I did not contradict Donald Trump’ on what we know are the two most third-rail issues to Donald Trump.”

“If nominees don’t answer these two questions, I think it amounts to, essentially, a political loyalty test,” said Orton.

Regarding questions about whether the US Capitol was attacked on Jan. 6 and whether the attack was an insurrection, said Demand Justice, “not one nominee was willing to speak to the events that occurred on that day.”

Twenty-one of them, including Bove, Hermandorfer, and Joshua Divine of District Courts for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri, characterized the attack—in which Trump supporters tried to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election results—as a matter of debate.

None of the nominees mentioned the law enforcement officers who died as a result of the attack, even though some mentioned violence against law enforcement broadly in their other QFR answers; the fact that the House and Senate chambers were broken into; or the death threats rioters directed at then-Vice President Mike Pence.

“It is unprecedented for lifetime nominees to the federal bench to provide dishonest and misleading answers about historical facts—and it is deeply concerning that Trump’s nominees are parroting such strikingly similar language, the president’s own language, to avoid telling the truth,” said Orton.

Orton added that “the kicker” of the report is that 15 members of the Democratic Caucus have voted for Trump’s judicial nominees despite their evasive and dishonest answers about Jan. 6 and Trump’s 2020 loss.

“Excuse me? People died,” said Orton. “If you’re willing to appease Trump’s big lies, you have no business anywhere near a court, period.”

Democrats who have voted in favor of confirming Trump’s nominees include Sens. Chris Coons (Del.), Tim Kaine (Va.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.).

A man whose wife was arrested by federal immigration authorities on Thursday morning in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, said Friday that his toddler daughter had been “traumatized” by the chaotic altercation during which he appeared to have a seizure and the agents threatened to take both parents away and turn the child over to the state.

Carlos Sebastian Zapata told the Boston Globe that he became unconscious while trying to stop the agents from pulling his wife, Juliana Milena Zapata, away during a traffic stop at about 7 a.m. while Zapata and the couple’s 1 1/2-year-old daughter, Alaia, were taking her to work at Burger King.

Their car was suddenly surrounded by several vehicles and federal agents began banging on their windows.

When Zapata tried to stop the agents from taking his wife away, one officer “pressed on his neck,” according to the Globe, and he lost consciousness while Alaia was in his arms.

As a video taken by an eyewitness showed, Zapata said he “had convulsions or something. I don’t know what they did to me, but they were pressing on my neck.”

The video appeared to show the 24-year-old father having a seizure as Alaia cried, and horrified onlookers yelled at the immigration agents. Local police ordered the bystanders to stay back.

“I wasn’t letting go of my wife because they wanted to take her away,” Zapata told the Globe. When he began having convulsions, he said, “That’s when I let go of my wife.”

He said the agents told the couple that they would either arrest Milena Zapata and allow Alaia to stay with her father, or they would arrest both parents and turn the child over to a state agency.

US Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) called the incident “harrowing” and condemned the masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who had “brutalized” the family, and the Trump administration for its nationwide mass deportation campaign.

“If this video left you feeling scared, I want you to know, so am I,” said Markey. “If you’re feeling angry, so am I... What we saw in this video is just another example of the violence and terror being perpetrated all across our country. This is not normal. This is what dictators do.”

Zapata told the Globe that he and his wife were from Ecuador and entered the country several years ago. They have a pending asylum case and had authorization to work.

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said on social media that Milena Zapata was a “violent criminal illegal alien.”

The Globe reported that “according to court records, Milena Zapata was accused of stabbing a woman with scissors in the hand and throwing a trash can at her during a dispute over a relationship she believed the woman had with her husband. She was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.”

Zapata told the Globe that his wife had been attending all her court dates as ordered and that the situation had been “blown out of proportion.”

“We came here to work, not to cause harm or anything like that,” Zapata said.

DHS accused Zapata of “faking a seizure,” saying he refused medical attention after his wife was arrested.

He told the Globe that Alaia has been distraught since her mother was detained; Milena Zapata is reportedly being held at Cumberland County Jail in Maine.

“She misses her mom a lot, she stays very close to her mom,” Zapata said. “She asks about her mom, she says, ‘Mami, mami, mami’ all the time. I don’t know what to tell her... Sincerely, she is traumatized.”

Community members are planning to hold a vigil in Fitchburg on Saturday, and the mayor’s office has offered assistance to the family. The city has received more than 5,000 calls about ICE’s treatment of the family.

“The violence and cruelty is hard to watch, but impossible for families to endure,” said Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) of the video that circulated on social media Friday. “This is a sickening example of Trump and ICE’s blatant disregard for humanity as they terrorize our families and communities. It is shameful, cruel, and it must end.”

The testimony of a 16-year-old from Hillsboro, Oregon, at a city council meeting this week gave a clear picture of what it’s like to be a young person in a community that’s been targeted by President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, with the boy describing his fear of being detained by masked federal agents at school or of his parents being taken away while they are at work.

“I just want to tell you guys that I’m scared for my parents to walk out the house because I might not be able to say goodbye to them if they go to work,” the teenager, who was identified as Manny, told Hillsboro City Council on Tuesday at a meeting where residents of the Portland suburb gave more than three hours of public testimony on the impact of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in the town.

The Portland Immigration Rights Coalition told Oregon Public Broadcasting this week that at least 135 people have been arrested by ICE and other federal agencies in Washington County, where Hillsboro is located, since Trump deployed them to the Portland area.

The county, which is the most diverse in Oregon, declared a state of emergency this week over immigration enforcement, allowing officials to use $200,000 in contingency funds for community organizations that help residents impacted by the surge in arrests.

Manny was one of many residents who spoke at the meeting, calling on city councilors to do more to oppose the federal operations and demand that city police work to protect the community from ICE.

“I might not ever be able to say bye or see [my parents] again if you guys don’t side with us,” he said in the statement, which went viral on social media after the meeting. “And I’m scared because of it, because they fought so hard to come here and choose a life for their kids.”

He drew applause when he said Trump “acts like a child,” and went on to describe the anxiety he lives with daily as federal agents make arrests in the area.

“I’m scared that I’m never going to be able to see all my friends again, I’m scared that their parents are gonna be gone one day, I’m scared that all of us are gonna have to fend for ourselves, and I’m scared that one day at school, that I’m gonna get held by people... that I can’t identify because they wear masks,” he said.

“As a 16-year-old, I shouldn’t be scared,” he added. “I should be focusing on school.”

Other residents described being afraid to send their children to school, and Juan Pedro Moreno Olmeda, a soccer coach at Hillsboro High School, was joined by several students as he described the toll ICE arrests are taking on children in the community.

“We recently had one of our teammates lose a father and two uncles, and another lose their older brother; they were taken by ICE,” Moreno Olmeda said. “I want you to look at these kids and think about all the sacrifices that they would have to go through to become that financial pillar for their household. They would maybe have to stop going to school. They would have to give up on soccer for sure. They would have to find jobs in order to become that pillar for their household.”

Hillsboro resident Sandra Nuñez-Smith added that her brother had been arrested by ICE in front of his stepson.

“He had just gotten into his car, and his stepson was barely getting into the back seat when he was pushed out of the way by an ICE agent—or bounty hunter—so they could get to my brother,” she told council members. “He was wrongfully taken due to a paperwork error at the county clerk’s office. He was not given his rights or due process, and no effort was made to investigate the current status of his case.”

Hillsboro is a sanctuary city and its police do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, but Mayor Beach Pace and Police Chief Jim Coleman said last month that city authorities also “cannot intervene in ICE operations and cannot assist or protect individuals from federal arrest or legal consequences if they interfere with ICE operations.”

Manny was among the residents who called on the City Council to pass ordinances to protect residents, hold masked and unidentified agents accountable for assaulting and detaining people, and provide guidance to local businesses on prohibiting ICE from their premises.

Police, said Hillsboro resident and former Washington County sheriff’s deputy Red Wortham, “can set a standard. They can document what happens, respond to emergency calls, and make it clear that follow-up will occur later.”

“It is a significant failure of law enforcement to ignore calls,” said Wortham, “about terrifying, dangerous, armed takeovers of cars, businesses, and people by seemingly private armed thugs in masks.”

More than two dozen Democratic state attorneys general on Tuesday sued the Trump administration for withholding emergency food assistance that could help prevent 42 million people from going hungry next month, arguing that the US Department of Agriculture is legally obligated to ensure federal nutrition aid gets to people who rely on it.

With the US government shut down since Oct. 1, the USDA said weeks ago that it could reprogram an emergency reserve held by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to ensure people don’t lose their benefits on Nov. 1. But last Friday a memo from the department said the emergency funds were to be used during disasters such as hurricanes and floods, and were “not legally available” for families set to lose their benefits due to the shutdown.

Officials from New York, Nevada, Minnesota, and other Democratic-led states are asking the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts to rule by Oct. 31, on a motion to force the Trump administration to use the contingency fund to send at least partial payments to SNAP beneficiaries.

About $5 billion-$6 billion is estimated to be in the fund; before the shutdown, about $8 billion in benefits went out to families per month.

In the lawsuit, the attorneys general also argued that the USDA could use Section 32 funds, as it did to provide funding for the Women, Infants, and Children program, to continue funding SNAP in November.

The shutdown began when Democrats in Congress refused to vote with the Republican Party on a continuing resolution that would have allowed Affordable Care Act subsidies to expire at the end of the year, significantly raising health insurance premiums for millions of people. Democrats also want to undo some recent GOP cuts to Medicaid.

The Trump administration has continued to place blame for the shutdown on the Democrats, whom President Donald Trump refused to negotiate with over healthcare before government funding was cut off at the end of September.

The USDA website on Tuesday amplified misinformation Republicans have spread, accusing Democrats of “hold[ing] out healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures” and claiming that “the well has run dry” for SNAP despite the emergency fund.

North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson accused the USDA of “playing an illegal game of shutdown politics” that could result in suffering for nearly 600,000 children in his state.

“They have emergency money to help feed children during this shutdown, and they’re refusing to spend it,” said Jackson. “I warned them last week that I would take them to court if they tried to hurt our kids, and today that’s what we’re doing.”

Also on Tuesday, US House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the Republican Party will not bring a standalone bill to fund expiring SNAP benefits to the floor for a vote, saying, “The pain register is about to hit 10,” and again blaming Democrats for the impending food assistance cliff.

Economist Paul Krugman noted that “the Republican majority in the Senate could maintain aid by waiving the filibuster on this issue.”

“They have done this on other issues—for example, to roll back California’s electric vehicle standard,” he wrote. “But for today’s Republican Party, blocking green energy is more important than keeping 40 million Americans from going hungry.”

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford accused the Trump administration of making a “deliberate, cruel, and extraordinarily harmful decision” to allow tens of thousands of people to go hungry.

“Contingency funds exist for this exact scenario, yet the USDA has abdicated its responsibility to Nevadans and refused to fund SNAP benefits,” said Ford. “I understand the stress of not knowing where you’re next meal is coming from, because I’ve lived it. I don’t wish that stress on any Nevadan, and I’ll fight to be sure nobody in our state goes hungry.”

Retired US Col. Steve Gabavics went public Monday with an account he had previously only spoken about anonymously—the story of his investigation into an Israeli soldier’s killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022 and the unsuccessful attempts he made to ensure the US State Department would accurately report his findings: that Abu Akleh was intentionally shot.

Gabavics previously discussed his experience investigating Abu Akleh’s killing just days after it happened in a documentary produced by Zeteo News, but he wasn’t named in the film. On Monday, he came forward publicly for the first time in an interview with the New York Times to discuss the case he said has “bothered [him] the most” of any he investigated during his 30-year military career.

In the days after Abu Akleh was fatally shot in the head while reporting on an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) raid on a refugee camp in Jenin in the West Bank in May 2022, Gabavics was assigned to lead an investigation into the killing by the Office of the United States Security Coordinator, where he was chief of staff. The State Department office coordinates with Palestinian and Israeli security officials and was ordered by the Biden administration to review Abu Akleh’s killing.

He traveled to Jenin with three other people from the office to investigate the shooting and concluded “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the Israeli soldier who shot Abu Akleh must have known she was a journalist—and therefore required under international law to be protected from military attacks while reporting on a conflict.

They did not conclude that the soldier was specifically or deliberately targeting Abu Akleh, but they determined that:

• Soldiers were aware of journalists in the area due to records of Israeli military radio traffic on the morning before the shooting;
• There had been no gunfire coming from the journalists’ direction that might provoke the Israeli soldiers to shoot in self-defense;
• There was an Israeli military vehicle stationed down the road from Abu Akleh, from which a sniper would have been able to see the journalists clearly; and
• When Gabavics visited the scene of the shooting hours after it occurred, his colleagues wore blue vests similar to Abu Akleh’s navy-blue "Press" vest and stood where she was when she was killed while Gabavics stood where the shooter's vehicle had been; they were easily visible to Gabavics.

Gabavics told the Times that the claim that the shooting was unintentional, ultimately included in the State Department’s report, was “absurd.”

The State Department’s account of an accidental killing would mean that the “individual popped out of the truck, just was randomly shooting, and happened to have really well-aimed shots and never looked down the scope,” said Gabavics. “Which wouldn’t have happened.”

Gabavics explained the circumstances that led to the State Department announcing in July 2022 that Abu Akleh had been unintentionally killed: His superior, Lt. Gen. Michael R. Fenzel, who led the Office of the Security Coordinator at the time, disagreed with his assessment and repeatedly refused to publish a report that explained Gabavics’ findings accurately.

As Gabavics told Mehdi Hasan at Zeteo News on Monday, Fenzel told Gabavics that he had spoken to an Israeli commander, who called the shooting an accident “that was a matter of tragic circumstances.”

“So the US general takes the word of a foreign general over the word of his own officer, who he sent to investigate,” said Hasan.

Gabavics also told the Times that Fenzel threatened to fire him as the two disagreed about what the State Department report should say. He included language saying the shooting was intentional in a draft report several times, but Fenzel repeatedly deleted his additions.

He said he and the other three investigators were “flabbergasted that this is what they put out.”

Fenzel told the Times in a statement that he stands by “the integrity of our work and [remains] confident that we reached the right conclusions.”

Officials who spoke to the Times on condition of anonymity said Fenzel’s office likely aimed to “preserve its working relationship with the Israeli military.”

But Gabavics told the Times that the outcome of his investigation “continued to be on my conscience nonstop,” and said he continued to clash with Fenzel over the US government’s report on Abu Akleh’s death until he retired in January.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) applauded Gabavics for “bravely coming forward and confirming what was obvious to everyone: An Israeli sniper deliberately murdered an American journalist and the Biden administration covered it up.”

“We call on President [Donald] Trump to investigate Lt. Gen. Michael R. Fenzel and any other officials who were allegedly involved in the cover-up of Shireen Abu Akleh’s assassination,” the group said.

CAIR urged the State Department and FBI to “pursue a real investigation” into Abu Akleh’s killing. The group condemned President Joe Biden and his top foreign affairs officials, including former National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and former National Security Council Coordinator for the Middle East Brett McGurk for “enabling the Israeli government’s abuses.”

“These individuals must never again serve our government,” said CAIR, “and should be fired from the prestigious roles they have secured in academia since leaving office.”

A former Cook County prosecutor said he had collected a tear gas canister from his own front lawn in a residential Chicago neighborhood and submitted it to a law firm that is preparing a lawsuit over immigration officers’ persistent use of tear gas against residents who object to their raids across the city—including in Old Irving Park this past weekend, where parents and children were getting ready for a Halloween parade when agents wreaked havoc on the neighborhood.

The Chicago Tribune reported that former prosecutor Brian Kolp had been watching news coverage Saturday morning of a temporary restraining order handed down by US District Court Judge Sara Ellis earlier this month barring federal agents from using riot control weapons like tear gas against protesters who do not pose an immediate harm to officers’ safety, when he realized federal agents were on his street in Old Irving Park.

“I could see two fully uniformed agents in military fatigues literally tackling a guy right here in my front lawn,” Kolp told CBS News.

The man the agents detained, Luis Villegas, had been working at a house in the neighborhood, and his brother told reporters he was an undocumented immigrant who came to the US with his family at the age of four.

Neighbors ran out of their houses and filmed and heckled the agents, Block Club Chicago reported, with some shouting, “Get off of him!” Another appeared to call one of the officers a “f---ing Nazi.”

The outlet reported that agents got out of their vehicles moments later, “put on their gas masks, and attacked at least two different people.”

A person on a rapid response team that warns locals when Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents are in the area told Block Club Chicago that a 67-year-old woman was “knocked to the ground” by masked officers. She and a 70-year-old man were detained, and Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin claimed they were “arrested for assaulting and impeding a federal officer.”

McLaughlin also claimed Villegas was arrested for a previous assault charge, but provided no evidence of his criminal background.

In nearby Avondale, Chicago Tribune reporter Laura N. Rodríguez Presa said another woman was pushed to the ground by an ICE or Customs and Border Protection agent when she approached their vehicle during another anti-immigration operation.

“This appears to be the new normal in Chicago,” said Rodríguez Presa.

In Old Irving Park, the “new normal” for residents on Saturday included federal agents deploying tear gas as parents and costumed children were leaving their homes on their way to a neighborhood Halloween parade.

Resident James Hotchkiss told Block Club Chicago that he was leaving his house with his wife and children at 9:45 a.m. for the parade when he heard whistles ringing out in the neighborhood—a sound Chicagoans have come to recognize as a warning that ICE is nearby.

“At that point, I saw a man running towards me followed by two to three officers chasing after him. They tackled him onto a neighbor’s front yard,” he said.

About 10 minutes later, Hotchkiss saw smoke in the air.

“I took my glasses off because my eyes were burning,” he said. “I saw someone pour water on a gas canister that appeared to be on fire.”

Heather Cherone, a senior reporter at WTTW, said the attack on Old Irving Park marked the “third straight day that federal agents have deployed tear gas against Chicagoans and the seventh time in 22 days,” despite the court order.

Kolp told Fox 32 that he “didn’t see anybody with a weapon” that would have justified the agents’ use of force.

“So you had folks who were literally out on the street taking their kids to this Halloween parade when this happened,” he said. “I didn’t see anybody make physical contact with these agents. I didn’t see anybody do anything that justified, for instance, taking my 70-year-old neighbor to the ground.”

The agents left the neighborhood after about 30 minutes, and the Halloween parade proceeded—but with many families opting to stay home.

Kolp told CBS News he retrieved a tear gas canister from his yard.

“I knew that piece of evidence would be critical for the judge to understand what the facts are,” he said.

Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino is due in court on Tuesday, Fox 32 reported, to answer questions about agents’ continued use of tear gas against residentsin violation of Ellis’ order.

“I was pretty upset to be honest with you,” Kolp told the outlet. “I am an attorney. I used to work with and in law enforcement, and watching this happen in my front yard was just not something that I ever thought was gonna come to my front door. But you know, here we are.”

Ten former leaders of Caribbean nations on Friday called on the current governments across the region to unite in a diplomatic effort to counter President Donald Trump’s unprovoked escalation, in which the US has struck at least 10 vessels in less than two months, claiming without evidence that the Trump administration is fighting “narco-terrorists” from Venezuela.

Former prime ministers of Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, and St. Lucia signed a joint statement titled “Caribbean Space: A Zone of Peace on Land, Sea and Airspace Where the Rule of Law Prevails,” and called on current leaders to recall the 1972 regional meeting at Chaguaramas, Trinidad and Tobago.

At the summit, noted the St. Vincent Times, “peace was enshrined as the guiding principle of Caribbean development.”

The former leaders wrote that “from this platform our region has always maintained that international law and conventions not war and military might must prevail in finding solutions to global challenges.”

“We are impelled to urge a pullback from military buildup to avoid any diminution of peace, stability, and development within our regional space,” the statement reads. “Our region must never become a pawn in the rivalries of others.”

They called on Caribbean leaders to avoid hosting foreign military assets.

“Our cooperation with international partners must never override our collective sovereignty or the principles of international law.”

“The gravity of the present signals demands that we use all existing channels for dialogue to perpetuate a Zone of Peace,” the leaders said. “We fully support our current heads of government in assisting the peaceful resolution of all conflicts and disputes.”

“We must not endanger our citizens in any crossfire, nor risk economic and human loss from wars that are not ours,” they added.

They noted that Caribbean nations have Shiprider Agreements with the US to “ensure that illicit drug traffickers could be tracked, pursued, searched, and lawfully apprehended without extrajudicial killing and the destruction of that which could provide conclusive evidence of criminal operation.”

“Our cooperation with international partners must never override our collective sovereignty or the principles of international law,” they wrote.

Since early September, the Trump administration has killed at least 43 people by striking vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific. Officials have claimed the boats have been operated by drug traffickers with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and other groups, but have provided no evidence for the claims. Fentanyl, which kills thousands of people per year in the US from overdoses, is not trafficked out of Venezuela, according to US and international drug and crime agencies.

“Although the United States Coast Guard interdicts staggering quantities of illegal drugs in the Caribbean each year, it does not encounter fentanyl on the high seas,” wrote Nick Miroff at The Atlantic. “South American cocaine and marijuana account for the overwhelming majority of maritime seizures, according to Coast Guard data, and there isn’t a single instance of a fentanyl seizure—let alone ‘bags’ of the drug—in the agency’s press releases.”

On Friday, the Pentagon revealed that it had deployed the USS Gerald Ford, an aircraft carrier, to the southern Caribbean Sea to “disrupt narcotics trafficking.”

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has accused Trump of seeking regime change in his country, and the former officials urged regional leaders to reject any such efforts.

“We have remained steadfast in our repudiation of external intervention to effect regime change,” they wrote. “Military action in our maritime waters must always be governed by international law—not might.”

Calling the North Carolina Republican Party’s new congressional district map “surgical racism with surgical precision,” Bishop William J. Barber II of Repairers of the Breach was in Raleigh Thursday, announcing a lawsuit challenging the redistricting effort—pledging that the state’s voters will “challenge gerrymandering in the courts, in the streets, and at the ballot box.”

“This is a direct attack on the state’s Black Belt district and marginalized communities,” said Barber at a news conference announcing the legal challenge, a day after the state House of Representatives approved the new map in a party-line vote.

The new map, which was passed by the state Senate earlier this week and cannot be vetoed by Democratic Gov. Josh Stein under state law, will likely give the GOP an additional seat in the US House after the 2026 midterm elections.

President Donald Trump has called for mid-decade redistricting efforts by the GOP in states including Missouri and Texas, as well as North Carolina, with state Republicans heeding his demands.

North Carolina’s new map will likely give Republicans 11 of the state’s 14 districts by moving some Black voters out of the 1st District and into the 3rd District. Had the new map been in place in 2024, Trump would likely have won 55% of the vote in the new 1st District in 2024, up from the 51% he won.

Barber denounced the redistricting efforts across the country as “political robbery” by a party that wants “to rob people of their rights through this racially based gerrymandering... so that they can give power or keep power in the US Congress to engage in political violence,” including by cutting healthcare and blocking the passage of living wages.

“We’ve seen this pattern before—the use of redistricting and voting laws to divide, diminish, and deny,” said Barber. “But the truth is simple: When you steal people’s representation, you steal their healthcare, their wages, and their future. That’s why we will fight back... to make clear that in North Carolina, and across America, the people’s will cannot be gerrymandered out of existence.”

Barber said Republicans in the state Legislature are “gambling” to win another seat, instead of trying to win over voters.

“They’re saying, ‘Let’s move this county over here, let’s move this county over here,’ he said at the press conference. ”Black voters in Congressional District 1 make up approximately 40% of the population, and there’s a growing Latino population that makes up 7%... Black communities, Latino communities, and rural, working-class, poor white voters, if the districts are fair, have the power to build a fusion electorate that can overcome the greedy oligarchs’ will to control elections in our state.“

Along with filing a legal action against state lawmakers to challenge the legality of the map, Barber said Repairers of the Breach will hold a ”Mass Moral Fusion Meeting“ and public hearing on November 2.

”If they won’t hold public hearings, we will,“ said Barber. ”This is our Edmund Pettus Bridge moment... Black, white, and brown together—because our democracy is not for sale.“

The $170 billion in new funding for immigration enforcement operations that the Republican Party included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act earlier this year led some to warn that the Trump administration was ramping up spending at anti-immigration agencies not just to fund its attacks on migrants, but to deploy federal forces against anyone it wanted to across U.S. communities.

New reporting on Monday detailed just how much U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has spent on weaponry since President Donald Trump took office—weapons that have been purchased as the administration has turned federal agents on US cities such as Chicago and Portland, illustrating how the president is treating increasingly armed ICE officers as his “private military,” as one progressive critic said.

As images spread online of immigration agents deploying pepper spray and tear gas at nonviolent protesters, Judd Legum at Popular Information recently delved into government contracting records from the Federal Procurement Data System and found that ICE has increased its spending on “small arms, ordnance, and ordnance accessories manufacturing” by 700% this year compared to 2024 numbers.

The agency spent $71,515,762 on small arms from January 20—the day Trump began his second term—through October 18.

The number dwarfs ICE’s spending during the first Trump term, during which the agency spent about $8.4 billion annually on small arms, and during President Joe Biden’s administration.

The type of weaponry purchased by ICE also raised alarm Monday, with Legum reporting that while most of the agency’s spending was on guns and armor, “there have also been significant purchases of chemical weapons and ‘guided missile warheads and explosive components.’”

“If the immigration enforcement apparatus of the United States were its own national military, it would be the 13th most heavily funded in the world. This puts it higher than the national militaries of Poland, Italy, Australia, Canada, Turkey, and Spain—and just below Israel.”

The reporting comes as ICE and other immigration agencies continue to deploy armed, masked agents in major Democratic-leaning US cities, where officers have been filmed and photographed pointing a weapon at a protester; firing a pepper ball at a pastor, and pointing a firearm at bystanders who saw one agent arresting a man.

A CBS reporter in Chicago also accused an ICE officer of firing a pepper ball at her vehicle, causing the chemical to “engulf the inside of her truck.”

Sally Duval, a Texas state House candidate in last year’s election, said she was “curious to know why ICE needs ‘guided missile warheads.’”

The report came days after the Trump administration used the US military for what Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom called “a profoundly absurd show of force that could put Californians directly in harm’s way,” when the Marines fired 155-millimeter artillery shells over a section of the busy Interstate 5 freeway to celebrate the military branch’s 250th anniversary.

Newsom accused Trump of “using our military to intimidate people [he disagrees] with” and called the exercise “reckless.”

Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, said Legum’s reporting on Monday showed that “ICE was always going to be Trump’s private military to deploy domestically against Americans.”

Legum’s analysis—which likely understated total spending on weapons by Trump’s deportation forces, as it did not include spending by other anti-immigration agencies—followed a report on ICE’s recent funding increase by In These Times.

With the $170 billion included in the OBBBA, reported the outlet, “if the immigration enforcement apparatus of the United States were its own national military, it would be the 13th most heavily funded in the world. This puts it higher than the national militaries of Poland, Italy, Australia, Canada, Turkey, and Spain—and just below Israel.”

The budget, Brandon Lee of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights told In These Times, “shows the misplaced priorities of this administration, where they are cutting healthcare and cutting vital programs for people across the country, and putting all of this money into a domestic terrible force.”

“And it shows the cruelty,” said Lee, “that the Trump administration intends to enact on all people in the United States.”

With President Donald Trump floating potential military action within Venezuela and authorizing operations by the Central Intelligence Agency after launching several deadly strikes on boats near the South American country, three lawmakers from both sides of the aisle on Friday said they would force a new vote on blocking the White House from carrying out an attack there.

Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) last week introduced a measure to rein in Trump’s bombing of boats in the Caribbean, which the White House has claimed are being used to traffic drugs into the US and present an imminent threat.

The measure failed, with one Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman (Pa.) joining most of the GOP in opposing it and two Republicans, Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), supporting it.

Kaine and Schiff on Friday were reportedly hoping that a new bipartisan measure, introduced with Paul, would garner more support from the Republicans.

They said they would force a vote on a war powers resolution to block the use of force by US troops “within or against” Venezuela unless it was “explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force.”

The 1973 War Powers Act requires Congress to consider and vote on resolutions regarding a president’s power to enter an armed conflict without congressional authorization.

“Congress has not authorized military force against Venezuela. And we must assert our authority to stop the United States from being dragged—intentionally or accidentally—into full-fledged war in South America,” said Schiff.

“Americans don’t want to send their sons and daughters into more wars—especially wars that carry a serious risk of significant destabilization and massive new waves of migration in our hemisphere.”

The lawmakers announced the resolution as it was reported that two survivors of the military’s most recent drone strike on a boat have been detained by US forces, with legal experts questioning whether they are prisoners or war or criminal suspects.

The White House has insisted it is acting within its rights to defend US security by striking boats it believes are carrying drugs—even as details have emerged calling into doubt the allegations that the vessels pose a threat.

Venezuela is not a significant source of drugs that are trafficked into the US—a fact that Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed when a reporter brought it up soon after the military began bombing boats, at least six of which have been struck so far. At least 27 people have been killed, and the grieving family of one victim spoke out Thursday and said they had not been involved in drug trafficking.

Even if the vessels were carrying illegal substances, legal experts and critics in Congress have stressed in recent weeks that they should be dealt with, as in the past, by federal law enforcement agencies, as Congress has not authorized military action against Venezuela or drug cartels.

“The American people do not want to be dragged into endless war with Venezuela without public debate or a vote,” said Paul. “We ought to defend what the Constitution demands: deliberation before war.”

Kaine told reporters on Thursday that Congress’s knowledge of the legal rationale for the boat strikes amounts to “a complete black hole.”

Meanwhile, Trump has suggested this week he could further escalate attacks on Venezuela, saying the Caribbean Sea is “very well under control”—even though Vice President JD Vance has joked that the US could accidentally strike fishing boats in its operations there.

“We are certainly looking at land now,” Trump said Wednesday.

Kaine said he was “extremely troubled that the Trump administration is considering launching illegal military strikes inside Venezuela without a specific authorization by Congress.”

“Americans don’t want to send their sons and daughters into more wars—especially wars that carry a serious risk of significant destabilization and massive new waves of migration in our hemisphere,” said Kaine. “If my colleagues disagree and think a war with Venezuela is a good idea, they need to meet their constitutional obligations by making their case to the American people and passing an authorization for use of military force.”

“I urge every senator to join us in stopping this administration from dragging our country into an unauthorized and escalating military conflict,” said the senator.

The New York Times reported that Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) could potentially join the effort to pass the war powers resolution after voting against last week’s measure, which he said was too broad.

“I am highly concerned,” Young said after the vote last week, “about the legality of recent strikes in the Caribbean and the trajectory of military operations without congressional approval or debate and the support of the American people.”

After weeks of speculation and reports that Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was privately calling on Maine Gov. Janet Mills to enter the race to unseat longtime Republican lawmaker Susan Collins—despite considerable energy surrounding the candidacy of progressive veteran and oyster farmer Graham Platner—Mills announced her primary run Tuesday.

Mills highlighted her public sparring with President Donald Trump earlier this year and positioned her run as one that would focus on standing up to “bullies” like Trump, who threatened to cut off Maine’s federal funding if it allowed transgender youths to play on team sports that correspond with their identities.

She also pledged to “fight back” against efforts by Trump and Republicans in Congress—including Collins, who has represented Maine since 1997—to slash healthcare for millions of Americans while handing out tax cuts to corporations and the richest Americans.

“This election is going to be a simple choice: Is Maine going to bow down, or stand up?” said Mills.

But before Mainers decide whether to stick with Collins or unseat her in favor of a Democratic senator, they are set to choose the Democratic nominee next June—and despite being a political novice, Platner has generated excitement across the state since announcing his candidacy in August.

Platner has centered his campaign on naming “the enemy” shared by Mainers and Americans from all walks of life: not immigrants, transgender people, or other frequent targets of the Trump administration, but the oligarchy. He’s also been unapologetically outspoken in his condemnation of the US-backed Israeli assault on Gaza and over the weekend said that should he win a Senate seat, “there will be consequences” for those who have led federal immigration agents’ violent incursion in US cities.

Platner has garnered endorsements and enthusiasm from lawmakers, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—who recently criticized reports that Schumer was pushing for a Mills run—and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who called his campaign “pretty impressive” and “killer” recently.

He’s also proven to be a formidable fundraiser, pulling in more than $4 million since launching his campaign in August, and has spoken to overflow crowds in cities and towns across Maine.

Recent polling has shown Platner outperforming Mills by 21 points among Trump voters, 13 points among voters aged 18-44, and 10 points in rural parts of northern and western Maine.

On Tuesday, Platner released a statement welcoming Mills “into this race” and focusing on the fight to unseat Collins.

“I have held over 20 town halls in every corner of Maine, from Rumford to Madawaska to Portland,” he said. “Everywhere I hear the same thing: People are ready for change. They know the system is broken and they know that politicians who have been working in the system for years, like Susan Collins, are not going to fix it.”

But he also released his own ad, pledging to keep up the momentum to “retake our party and turn it back into the party of the working class.”

“We either organize and build power and fight, or we lose,” Platner told a crowd in the video.

Ryan Grim of Drop Site News posited that the entrance of Mills into the race could be “to Platner’s advantage” and may underscore his independent streak.

“By beating her (and Schumer) Platner can solidify the impression that he is independent of the party, whose brand is fatally toxic,” said Grim.