November, 18 2015, 11:30am EDT
New Report: Water Quality Trading Schemes Quietly Upending Clean Water Act in More Than 20 U.S. States
One scheme in Ohio allowed for a 600 percent increase in wastewater discharge beyond Clean Water Act limits
WASHINGTON
oday Food & Water Watch released a report outlining how overly complex programs of water pollution trading (also known as water quality trading, or nutrient trading) are being quietly implemented across the country with the active endorsement and funding of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The report, which looks closely at the implementation of water pollution trading in Pennsylvania and Ohio, is based on over 1,000 documents obtained by Food & Water Watch through the states' Right to Know Law and Freedom of Information Act, respectively. The analysis reveals a broken system of inherently unaccountable and highly questionable practices, through which agricultural operations such as confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs, or factory farms) will only continue to pollute our waterways, while power plants and other pollution sources that purchase credits will get to discharge more.
"Water pollution trading proponents trumpet successes, but scrutiny of these programs tells a different story," said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. "Pollution trading destroys accountability and the rights of citizens to protect their waterways -- cornerstones of the Clean Water Act -- yet some, astonishingly, continue to hold up the practice as the future of pollution control."
Some of the findings of the report, Water Quality Trading: Polluting Public Waterways for Private Gain, include:
- In Pennsylvania, all of the authority, verification and trading of water pollution credits has been placed in the hands of for-profit companies like Red Barn. A significant number of pollution credits in the state is being generated through what can only be described as a shell game, whereby piles of manure move from place to place to pollute local waterways while middlemen brokers skim profits from sales of highly questionable credits.
- Water pollution trading has put an end to accountable Clean Water Act permitting at Brunner Island, the 59th most polluting power plant in the United States. Brunner Island now operates under a fictitious "net zero" nutrient discharge permit, whereby the facility is free to discharge as much nutrient pollution as it can purchase credits for. It was the third largest buyer of nitrogen credits in Pennsylvania in both 2013 and 2014, purchasing 87,000 credits in 2013 and 78,000 in 2014 -- amounting to almost 10 percent of all credits purchased statewide in those years.
- Under its expansion and subsequent participation in the Ohio River Basin trading program, Alpine Cheese Company was permitted to increase its phosphorous discharge levels to 36.4 million gallons per year -- a 600 percent increase in wastewater discharge over what should have been allowed to protect local water quality. Between 1999 and 2014, the company had 1,251 permit violations -- the bulk of them occurring between 2005 and 2011, while the nutrient trading pilot program was being developed and later implemented.
According to the report, with the use of water pollution trading, our transparent, accountable Clean Water Act system of point source regulation is being replaced with one that makes it virtually impossible for anyone to ever properly track point source compliance. The credits that these facilities rely on are not the product of any measured decrease in pollutant loads from credit-generating agricultural sources like factory farms, but from complex models filled with variables and from questionable manure transport programs that simply move pollutants from one impaired waterway to another.
"I've spent many years confronting factory farms and their irresponsible waste disposal practices that are poisoning waterways and communities, including Toledo, Ohio, where 500,000 people lost their drinking water in the summer of 2014 because of unchecked agricultural pollution," said Lynn Henning, regional associate for the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project and recipient of the 2010 Goldman Environmental Prize. "To clean up these facilities, we need mandatory reductions, not another voluntary scheme like pollution trading where factory farms can profit from the sale of unverified pollution credits."
Regional water pollution trading programs are taking off in the watersheds of the Chesapeake Bay and the Ohio River Basin, currently covering nine states: Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. Trading programs are also active in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Oregon and Wisconsin, and are under consideration in several other states.
"I work every day with communities across the Bay states, including Pennsylvania, who struggle to get access to clean water," said Maria Payan, regional consultant for the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project. "Now, with pollution trading, one of our most important tools in that struggle -- the Clean Water Act -- is being taken away. We can no longer hold polluters accountable, when they simply buy their way out of permit compliance."
The report includes the following recommendations:
- Congress needs to reaffirm that the Clean Water Act does not allow for point source pollution trading.
- Federal agencies, particularly the U.S. Department of Agriculture, need to stop spending taxpayers' dollars to promote these pay-to-pollute schemes across the country.
- State and federal governments need to replace voluntary pollution control approaches with mandatory measures in the nonpoint source sector.
- Federal agencies must fund agricultural Best Management Practices without compromising current point source controls.
- The environmental community needs to wake up to the dangers of water pollution trading.
- Advocacy groups need to legally challenge water pollution trading programs.
"We cannot leave the fate of our waterways to the vagaries of the market," said Hauter. "Handing over pollution management to the same industry that brought us the mortgage crisis will spell the end of environmental protections that have helped keep our drinking water safe."
The report will is available at https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/insight/water-quality-trading-polluting-public-waterways-private-gain.
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
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House Dems Press Trump USDA Over Aid Cuts as Seniors 'Struggle to Put Food on the Table'
"No senior should have to choose between putting food on the table, paying rent, or affording lifesaving medication."
Oct 27, 2026
A group of almost 20 Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday pressed US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to explain the adverse effects of President Donald Trump's so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act on older Americans, including the administration's plan to eliminate a program serving nearly 700,000 low-income seniors and expanded food stamp work requirements.
"At a time when Americans continue to face elevated grocery costs, Washington Republicans enacted the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates will reduce federal [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] spending by approximately $187 billion through 2034," 18 House Democrats led by Rep. Analilia Mejia (D-NJ) wrote in a letter to Rollins.
"The law expanded SNAP’s three-month time limit and associated work requirements to certain adults ages 55 through 64, restricted states’ ability to obtain geographic waivers from those requirements, and made additional changes to state cost-sharing requirements expected to reduce SNAP participation and benefits," the letter continues.
"These cuts come as the same law provides substantial tax benefits that will help disproportionately benefit the rich, with CBO finding that the law will decrease resources available to households towards the bottom of the income distribution while increasing resources for households toward the top," the lawmakers noted.
The letter decries Trump's stated goal of eliminating the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), which the lawmakers described as "the most extensive hunger-relief federal program for seniors and services to nearly 700,000 low-income seniors across the nation."
"The administration justified the elimination of this crucial program by focusing 'on supporting seniors through the SNAP program' as they passed a law to make SNAP more inaccessible for seniors," the letter laments. "Congress has been responsible for keeping the CSFP fully funded and maintained while the administration continues to threaten this critical federal food assistance program."
"Even so, as Americans—particularly seniors—struggle to put food on the table, you have failed to meet the urgency of this affordability crisis, even as the department you lead reports that food prices have climbed another 3% in the past year," the Democrats added.
The letter requests state-by-state figures showing how many adults ages 55 to 64 have lost or suffered reductions in SNAP benefits because of expanded work requirements, as well as how many have received exemptions. The lawmakers are also seeking data regarding the health and financial consequences of eliminating the CSFP and how the administration would ensure seniors retain access to nutritious food. The legislators requested a written response from Rollins' office by November 6.
"You have failed to meet the urgency of this affordability crisis."
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), approximately 5.5 million people, including roughly 2 million children, have lost SNAP assistance since Trump signed the OBBBA in July 2025. This, despite more than 47 million Americans—including 1 in 5 children—living in food-insecure households.
Seniors are experiencing their own unique set of hardships, given that many of them have limited resources.
"Many seniors rely heavily on fixed or limited incomes from Social Security, retirement savings, and pensions, leaving them particularly vulnerable as the cost of living continues to rise," the letter states, adding that "rather than protect older and low-income Americans from rising costs, you and the Trump administration continue to pursue policies that threaten to make it harder for them to afford basic necessities."
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Sanders: Billionaires Fighting Prop 40 Would 'Rather Poor Kids With Cancer Die Than Pay a Little More in Taxes'
The senator noted that "billionaires in California are spending $333 million to wage a war" on the proposed one-time tax.
Oct 27, 2026
As one Golden State tech billionaire suggested he wouldn't move away even if voters passed the California Billionaire Tax Act that he opposes, progressive US Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday took aim at the wealthy taxpayers working to defeat Proposition 40.
"Billionaires in California are spending $333 million to wage a war," Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote on social media. "Against what? Homelessness? No. Cancer? No. Child poverty? No. They're waging war against a 5% billionaire wealth tax. They'd rather poor kids with cancer die than pay a little more in taxes. That is obscene."
Sanders, a former Democratic presidential candidate who has campaigned in California for the ballot measure that would impose a one-time 5% tax on the state's billionaires to offset healthcare funding cuts, was citing contributions to Building a Better California, a group created in January.
"Eighty or so donors have provided more than $333 million to Building a Better California, state records show, making it among the best-funded political efforts in California history," The New York Times reported Tuesday. "The donor list is a who's who of tech celebrities: the Google co-founder Sergey Brin; the former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt; the Stripe chief executive Patrick Collison; the legendary investor John Doerr."
Abby Lunardini, a spokesperson for the group, told the Times that "our supporters have created companies, entirely new industries, and hundreds of thousands of jobs here in California, and they want our state to remain the place where the future is built and where people can still afford to live, dream big, and succeed."
Lunardini claimed the wealth tax would "permanently damage the state's budget, tax base, and economy," though dozens of multimillionaire Californians have signed an open letter supporting the one-time wealth tax, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—one of the richest men in the world—is preparing to potentially pay it, and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey said Monday that he won't leave the state.
TechCrunch reported on his latest comments, in which Luckey—whose defense company won key US military contracts after he was announced as one of the leaders of a new Pentagon project on the "future of warfare"—made clear that he opposes Prop 40:
"I think that this tax act, if you can call it a tax, is going to cause a lot of problems. It’s causing a lot of people to run who I don’t want to be running. It’s going to cause companies that I work with to leave the state, which is a problem for me. As of right now, though, I’m not running. I am staying. I think California is something special. I want to fight for California," Luckey said during an invite-only press conference on Monday.
He added that he's felt pressure from other billionaires to declare his intention to leave.
"This has been a point of friction between me and some of my other billionaire friends," he said. "They've said things like: 'Palmer, you have to have solidarity for us. You can't enable these really bad policies. If you stay and if you don't leave, it's going to show them that there's no consequences.' I empathize with that argument, but it's not one that I'm going to participate in right now because I still believe that we can fix things."
Luckey has publicly sparred with US Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.)—who, like Sanders, supports Prop 40. Leading political opponents in the state include term-limited Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who's expected to run for president in 2028, and former US Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Democrat running to replace the governor.
Estimates vary on how much the tax—which would apply to any billionaire residing in the state as of January 1, 2026—could cost the richest Californians, if approved by voters in next week's midterm elections.
Forbes pointed to one of them on Tuesday: "$104 billion. That's how much economists Jasper Boll, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman estimate California's billionaires would owe if Proposition 40 is enacted, according to an analysis by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Saez and Zucman helped draft the tax proposal."
Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review editor and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, noted in a Tuesday column at The Washington Post—owned by Jeff Bezos, another one of the world's richest men—that "a new study by Benjamin Jaros and Joshua Rauh, two economists affiliated with the Hoover Institution, challenges that projection."
After trying to "account for the uncertainty over whether taxes can be collected from other billionaires, such as the ones who have left since the beginning of the year and may thus have a legal case for escaping the tax," Ponnuru summarized, those economists estimated Prop 40 would generate around $30 billion. The columnist also acknowledged that Zucman "has issued a barrage of attacks on that paper."
Specifically, Zucman called it "spectacularly misleading" and explained "its crucial flaw," which is that "they assume that billionaires will leave permanently, frightened by the prospects of an annual wealth tax."
"Let's be clear: This is a highly inappropriate way to model the effect of Prop 40 on taxpayer behavior. For one, it's a basic violation of rational expectations, a cornerstone of modern economics," Zucman said.
In Jaros and Rauh's world, "the billionaires act irrationally: They respond to a policy that does not exist and will never exist," he added. "Economics students around the world are taught this is not an appropriate way to model behavior—but apparently in this context (fighting Prop 40) it's OK."
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Netanyahu Accused of 'Incitement' as Arab Israelis Face Intimidation and Surveillance at Polls
The prime minister's coalition has sent around 2,000 activists, some of them armed, to surveil voters in what they called “Arab population centers.”
Oct 27, 2026
The leader of one of Israel's main Arab parties accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of "incitement" against Arab voters, whom civil rights groups warn are facing deliberate obstruction and intimidation at the polls on Tuesday.
“Benjamin Netanyahu is lying and inciting against Ra’am, using it as a scare tactic to mobilize right-wing voters and drive them to the polls,” the party’s leader, Mansour Abbas, said in a video message Tuesday.
Abbas was responding to a video posted by Netanyahu warning supporters of his Likud party that Arab voters in the south were “racing to the ballots.” He also accused Ra’am of “trying to steal the election from us,” citing the arrest the previous night of three people on suspicion of attempting to bribe voters to cast ballots for the party. Though Netanyahu has claimed that the three were “senior Ra’am” figures, he has not provided evidence of this.
Gadi Eisenkot, the leader of the Jewish-led Change coalition seeking to oust Netanyahu, has sworn off an alliance with Arab parties. However, Ra’am is hoping for an opposition victory narrow enough that the inclusion of Arab parties will be essential to form a governing coalition in the Knesset.
Tuesday’s election is the first since Netanyahu launched Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza and comes amid unprecedented state-backed terrorism by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Accusing the other side of being too soft on Palestinians has been a central campaign tactic for both Netanyahu and his opponents.
Reuters reported on Tuesday that cars flying Likud banners were seen driving through Jerusalem playing the Islamic call to prayer and warning that "Arabs are voting" and that the prime minister had shared videos of long lines at Arab polling places to frighten his supporters.
"If you want this country to be Jewish and Zionist, you must go out and vote," National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, told voters for the Likud coalition. "Don’t let them win.”
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) warned Tuesday of potential deliberate efforts by Israeli authorities to slow down Arab voters. In a letter demanding urgent action from the chairman of the Central Elections Committee, Judge Noam Sohlberg, the group said that in Arab communities, “the voting process is proceeding slowly, without explanation, and voters are being forced to wait for extended periods.”
ACRI reported that police and National Guard troops kept about 200 voters waiting outside a high school in the Bedouin town of Segev Shalom in southern Israel, citing overcrowding, even though relatively few voters were actually inside. Voters there had waited up to five hours before casting ballots.
The group said it received reports of long queues in other Arab communities, including Rahat, Tel Sheva, Laqiya, Umm Batin, Tira, and Tamra.
"There are numerous reports of severe slowdowns at many polling stations," Yeela Raanan, a member of a team monitoring election integrity in Bedouin communities, told Haaretz.
In many Bedouin communities, Raanan said, "people report waiting for hours, and polling station staff are taking a very long time to verify each voter's identity."
Police have been dispatched to many Arab polling places, where they've reportedly been checking voters' identification, a duty that, under the law, belongs to election officials, Haaretz reported.
Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, said that at some locations, Palestinian voters were slowed down by election officials who asked them irrelevant questions, blocked doors, and suspended voting.
The group reported that at one polling station in Kafr Qara in central Israel, only one person had voted during the first three hours after polls opened.
At several other polling places in ethnically diverse and Arab cities—including in Haifa, Nazareth, I’billin, Eilabun, Shefa-Amr, and Nof HaGalil—Arab voters arrived to find that ballots printed in Arabic were not available. Adalah sent a letter to the head of Israel’s Central Elections Committee demanding that these polling centers immediately be supplied with Arabic-language ballots.
There are also reports of direct intimidation. Likud and its coalition partner, the far-right Religious Zionism party, led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, announced plans to send about 2,000 activists to what they called “Arab population centers” to observe elections, claiming without evidence that Arabs were committing fraud on a massive scale.
Israel's Supreme Court on Sunday night rejected a petition to ban firearms at polling places on Election Day. Adalah warned that the decision "allows those taking part in Netanyahu and Smotrich's provocation to show up at polling stations in Arab communities like armed militias."
The Mossawa Center, which advocates for Arab citizens’ rights in Israel, urged election officials to intervene Tuesday, saying Israeli settlers had arrived at polling stations to obstruct voting and that it had documented confrontations in Tayibe, Majd al-Krum, Shefa-Amr, Haifa, and I’billin, according to The New Arab.
The outlet separately reported that residents in Majd al-Krum stopped a right-wing activist from forcing his way into a polling station after provoking voters.
"Settlers at polling stations in Arab communities are deliberately obstructing and slowing down the voting process," said Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian member of the Knesset. "A sick woman fainted while waiting. I'll put it this way: It won't help you. People will stay there until they cast their votes."
Haaretz reported Tuesday that Likud also paid unofficial teams “millions of shekels” to record Arab voters to help push the conspiracy theory that the election was rigged if Netanyahu’s coalition falls short.
Despite the obstacles, Arab turnout is reportedly significantly higher than during Israel's last elections in 2022, according to estimates by the coalition of Arab parties, known as the Joint List.
Joint List Chairman Yousef Jabareen predicted ahead of Tuesday’s vote that intimidation would be widespread. He said it would be answered with turnout from voters eager to oust Netanyahu.
"They will get our answer at the ballot box," he said, "when we, with our own hands, send them home.”
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Rogers Cashes Checks From Anti-Abortion Extremists in Final Days of Senate Campaign
"Michigan voters fought hard to protect reproductive freedom, and these extremist groups want a senator who will help them undermine it in Washington."
Oct 27, 2026
Michigan voters were clear in 2022 when they voted by a 13-point margin to codify the right to abortion care in the state constitution, and the state's Republican US Senate candidate, former Rep. Mike Rogers, claimed two years ago that he had no interest in "going back to Washington, DC to undo what the people of Michigan decided to do.”
But a recent campaign contribution from the National Pro-Life Alliance political action committee (PAC) left reproductive rights advocates warning that Rogers has shown throughout his political career that he will fight to stop Michiganders from accessing abortion care—and that extremist groups are counting on him to win the Senate race to ensure abortion is banned nationwide.
Recent filings from the Federal Election Commission show that on October 23, just before Michigan residents began voting early ahead of the November 3 midterms, the National Pro-Life Alliance PAC donated $5,000 to the Rogers for Senate campaign.
The group has lobbied for the passage of the Life at Conception Act, which would ban all abortions with no exceptions for rape, incest, or health risks for the pregnant patient, and previously donated $1,700 to Rogers between 2000-10.
In 2010, when the then-congressman received $1,000 from the group, the National Pro-Life Alliance stipulated that candidates they supported must support the Life at Conception Act.
Shanay Watson-Whittaker, director of Michigan campaigns at Reproductive Freedom for All, told Common Dreams on Tuesday that the "last-minute donation shows how desperate anti-abortion groups are to buy this election—and they’re counting on Mike Rogers to deliver for them."
"His record gives them every reason to believe he will," she added.
"We need someone who will fight for our rights, and Rogers has spent his entire career showing us he won’t.”
Despite Rogers' earlier claims that should he win the Senate seat, he would respect Michiganders' support for the right to abortion care, he spent his 14 years in office backing a constitutional amendment to enshrine "personhood" in the US Constitution, aiming to ban all abortions from the moment of conception, and supporting a national 20-week ban—"still very much a national ban that could carry disparate harm for people experiencing medical emergencies and fetal conditions," wrote Kylie Cheung at Jezebel in 2024.
"I oppose abortion at any time except to save the live [sic] of the mother," Rogers wrote in a candidate questionnaire distributed by the Michigan Catholic Conference, affirming that he supported the Human Life Amendment. He added that he opposed the use of "taxpayer funds for any abortions.”
Rogers was also a sponsor of four fetal "personhood" bills that aimed to ban nearly all abortions nationwide.
Watson-Whittaker urged Michigan voters to keep Rogers' donation from the National Pro-Life Alliance and his record in mind as they go to the polls in the coming week.
"Michigan voters fought hard to protect reproductive freedom, and these extremist groups want a senator who will help them undermine it in Washington," said Watson-Whittaker. "We need someone who will fight for our rights, and Rogers has spent his entire career showing us he won’t.”
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Senators Investigate Insurance Giants for 'Quietly Colluding' With Trump to Kick People Off Healthcare
"Insurance companies chose to participate in a collaborative effort with the Trump administration to inject yet more chaos and damage into the ACA marketplace."
Oct 27, 2026
US Sen. Bernie Sanders and a dozen of his Democratic colleagues are investigating the roles that Cigna, UnitedHealthcare, and other leading private insurance companies are playing in the Trump administration's ongoing efforts to strip health coverage from millions of Americans.
On Monday, the lawmakers sent letters to the chief executives of 10 top insurance companies demanding answers on the firms' cooperation with the Trump administration in its recent removal of around 760,000 Affordable Care Act (ACA) enrollees, citing alleged fraud.
"Aligning with Republicans and their so-called ‘war on fraud,’ insurance companies chose to participate in a collaborative effort with the Trump administration to inject yet more chaos and damage into the ACA marketplace,” the senators wrote. “This year, nearly 3 million people have lost coverage while millions more are paying sky-high premiums and higher deductibles for insurance that covers less."
The lawmakers noted that the 760,000 coverage terminations "would not have been possible without the cooperation of insurance companies that have been quietly colluding with the Trump administration" for months. The senators disclosed in their letters that the ten largest insurance companies in the ACA marketplaces "received, and voluntarily complied with, a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) data request designed to terminate coverage for hundreds of thousands of enrollees."
The letters characterize the CMS requests as "potentially unlawful" and take insurers to task for readily obeying the administration. The insurance companies that received letters from the senators are Cigna, UnitedHealthcare, AmeriHealth Caritas, Centene, Elevance, Florida Blue, Health Care Service Corporation, Imperial Insurance Companies, Oscar Health, and Molina Healthcare.
"Issuers, including Cigna, took specific steps to assist CMS in their efforts, including sending unsolicited communications to enrollees asking them to verify their Social Security numbers," the senators observed. "Issuers provided CMS with lists of enrollees who did not receive or respond to this unsolicited outreach asking for personally identifiable information. Those enrollees were deemed presumptively fraudulent, so-called 'phantom enrollees' and their coverage was terminated retrospectively, effective August 31, 2026."
The lawmakers added that "enrollees were identified as being subject to coverage termination based on metrics such as whether their projected income made them eligible for tax credits that cover the full premium of their plan, and whether they sought care during the 2026 plan year."
"As you know, there is no credible research or evidence in support of the longstanding Republican conspiracy theory that zero-dollar premium plans and zero-claims enrollment are reliable proxies for fraud," the senators wrote.
Analysts said in response to the administration's September announcement of mass coverage terminations that while fraud certainly exists in the ACA marketplaces, many of the people who lost coverage as part of the purge were likely enrolled legitimately. KFF Health News reported earlier this month that CMS has already "reinstated a small number of people whose coverage should not have been canceled."
"More could follow in the coming weeks if enrollees discover they are uninsured when they go to use their coverage," the outlet noted. "Overall, however, the administration is providing few details about the cancellations, such as how robust the outreach was to those it targeted, how long it takes for people to get reinstated after discovering their coverage was wrongly canceled, and how many such cancellations have been reversed."
The senators demanded answers from the 10 insurance company executives to a series of questions, including when the Trump administration first contacted them about its purported anti-fraud effort in the ACA marketplaces and what steps the firms took to ensure that eligible enrollees were not impacted.
The lawmakers contrasted the companies' voluntary cooperation with the Trump administration with their refusal to act on requests from Democrats last year to increase outreach to ACA enrollees amid relentless Republican attacks on the program.
"Insurance companies almost universally declined to perform any additional direct enrollee outreach, citing the cost and complexity associated with doing so outside the issuer renewal notice process," the senators wrote. "Issuers also expressed concern about being put at a competitive disadvantage should their enrollees choose to shop for more affordable coverage in light of rising premiums."
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After Silencing by NFL Owner, Macklemore Opens 'Free Palestine' Tour With Sold-Out Dublin Show
The concert garnered rave reviews, with The Guardian calling it a five-star "triumph," and The Irish Times praising the “courage of Macklemore's convictions.”
Oct 27, 2026
In a metaphorical middle finger to billionaire NFL owner Robert Kraft's effort to get Macklemore booted from Ed Sheeran’s US stadium tour over his outspoken support for Palestinian liberation, the rapper opened his "Free Palestine" benefit tour Monday with a critically acclaimed sold-out show in Dublin.
More than 13,000 fans packed Dublin's 3Arena, waving Palestinian flags and wearing keffiyehs as the crowd repeatedly chanted “Free Palestine" throughout the show.
“I am proud to stand here on stage in solidarity with the Palestinian people,” Macklemore told the audience. “We will continue to fight for collective liberation until our last breath."
"Six weeks ago, it was two words. Two words is all that it took. Two words that are rooted in love and liberation. Not against anybody, not divisive, not a call for hatred, but a call to recognize our shared humanity. 'Free Palestine.' I said 'Free Palestine,'" the Seattle native said.
He was referring to his removal from Sheeran's Loop Tour amid pressure from Kraft—who owns the New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts—after the rapper condemned Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza and illegal occupation and apartheid in the West Bank during a September performance at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
"While the world debates those words, we see the videos, we see the footage, we see parents pulling their children out of the rubble, families erased, devastation beyond our imagination," Macklemore, whose real name is Benjamin Hammond Haggerty, continued.
"And somehow," he added, "those words have become more controversial than the suffering that made them necessary."
Kraft's pressure backfired spectacularly as every other opening artist on Sheeran's tour withdrew in solidarity with Macklemore, while the rapper launched his own benefit shows in larger European venues than he had played on his previous tour.
In addition to Macklemore—who rose to prominence in 2012 with his multiplatinum hit "Thrift Shop"—the concert featured performances by Irish artist Hozier, trio Kneecap, and folk band Beoga; Palestinian singer Lina Makoul; Palestinian American DJ Habibeats; and US political hip-hop duo Dead Prez.d
Actors Mark Ruffalo and Cynthia Nixon and Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas also appeared via video messages.
Macklemore has paid more than just lip service to the Palestinian cause, pledging $1 million to aid groups. Children's educator and YouTube star Ms. Rachel subsequently vowed to match the donation, declaring, “We have a moral obligation to use our privilege and platforms to protect children and human rights.”
The proceeds of the "Free Palestine" tour—which also has scheduled shows in London and Paris—will support organizations providing Palestinians with medical care, humanitarian assistance, education, and community services.
The tour's opening show garnered rave reviews, with The Guardian calling it a five-star "triumph," and The Irish Times giving the concert four stars and praising the “courage of Macklemore's convictions.”
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'Another Year, Another New Record': UN Highlights Rising Greenhouse Gas Levels Ahead of COP31
"We are supercharging the ocean and the atmosphere," said one WMO leader. "That means that heatwaves, tropical cyclones, and rainstorms are intensifying faster than our historical baselines prepared us for."
Oct 27, 2026
With the next United Nations Climate Change Conference less than two weeks away, a UN agency confirmed Tuesday that levels of three key greenhouse gases in the atmosphere "reached unprecedented highs in 2025, locking in more long-term temperature increase for the planet."
“Another year, another new record," World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett said in a statement. "The past 11 years have been the warmest on record, and this trend is set to continue."
"The big three are carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Since the 1960s, growth rates of CO2 have tripled," Barrett told journalists during a press briefing about the "Greenhouse Gas Bulletin of 2025," which is published annually.
Global greenhouse gas concentrations reach record highs in 2025. The unprecedented atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and methane lock in severe climate impacts and temperature increases for centuries ahead of the upcoming United Nations climate summit in Turkey.www.france24.com/en/live-news...
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— Flingjore (@flingjore.com) October 27, 2026 at 11:12 AM
"When the bulletin was first published in 2004, the annual level of carbon dioxide was 377.5 parts per million. In 2025, it was 426.8 parts per million," Barrett noted. Methane, or CH4, hit 1,948 parts per billion, while nitrous oxide, or N2O, was 339.1 ppb.
"Every additional part per million matters because it traps additional heat," she stressed. "In effect, we are supercharging the ocean and the atmosphere. That means that heatwaves, tropical cyclones, and rainstorms are intensifying faster than our historical baselines prepared us for."
While carbon dioxide is "the most abundant long-lived gas," Barrett also addressed "gases which are present in much lower concentrations but are of potential concern," such as sulfur hexafluoride, or SF6—which "is closely related to electricity production and distribution, and has been rising over the past three decades because of the switch to global electrification."
"Sulfur hexafluoride concentration in 2025 have increased by 249% relative to 1995 levels. They are measured in parts per trillion—not million. So why should we be concerned?" she said. "Because SF6 has an atmospheric lifetime of up to 3,200 years. Its global warming potential is more than 24,000 times that of CO2."
"The energy transition is essential and welcome," Barrett added. "But as with every transition, it has to be done in a smart way and informed by environmental observations."
The WMO bulletin follows a series of recent UN reports showing the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global temperature rise this century to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels is no longer possible without an overshoot, but getting back to that level is, with ambitious action to phase out fossil fuels.
Additionally, before the ongoing biodiversity summit in Yerevan, Armenia, the UN warned that the world is not on track to meet any of the targets from the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, or the "Paris Agreement for Nature."
While that event on the global biodiversity crisis—which is linked to the worsening climate emergency—is set to conclude in a few days, world leaders are scheduled to convene again on November 9 in Antalya, Türkiye for the next climate conference, or COP31.
Although the United States is the world's biggest historical climate polluter, and one of the recently released UN reports repeatedly calls out US emissions, Big Oil-backed President Donald Trump has ditched the Paris Agreement, again, and is not expected to send a delegation to Antalya.
"The rest of the world is exhausted when it comes to counting the damage that the US is willingly doing to allies, multilateral structures, economic cooperation, disaster relief," Australian climate scientist Malte Meinshausen told The Associated Press earlier this month. "The rest of the world should probably continue to focus even less on the US."
There is hope in the elections taking place around the world and how they may usher in new leadership in many countries. Even with those changes, we all are in for a warm ride filled with climate shocks until we stabilize the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
— Dana R. Fisher (aka the Apocalyptic Optimist) (@fisherdanar.bsky.social) October 27, 2026 at 6:37 AM
In the United States, University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Mann said Tuesday that "there is a lot of support among the public for a clean energy transition. The problem is that the fossil fuel industry currently owns our government. But there are reasons for optimism that we might begin to turn the corner, with the midterm elections" on November 3.
"If they return one or both houses of Congress to the Democrats, there will be the possibility of Congress acting as a check on the destructive policies of the Trump administration and in a couple of years, with new leadership at the presidential level, the US could once again reassert leadership on climate," the climatologist told writer Brian McHugh.
"We have to transition rapidly away from fossil fuel burning," Mann emphasized. "There's simply no other way. Without regulating them and imposing an incentive structure that leads them to move toward clean energy, nothing else is really going to matter."
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RFK Jr. Condemned Over Baseless and 'Nakedly Racist' Anti-Arab Rant at Rogers Event in Michigan
"Every day, a prominent Republican... says something insanely racist about Muslims or Arabs," said one journalist, while many Democrats are silent about "out-of-control Islamophobia from the GOP."
Oct 27, 2026
Visiting the state with the highest percentage of Arab Americans to campaign for the Republican US Senate candidate, a week before the midterm elections during a campaign in which people from across the political spectrum have recoiled at the GOP's racist, misogynist rhetoric, the Trump administration's top health official opted to share a fact-free non sequitur about hundreds of millions of Arabs across the globe.
Apparently trying to sell voters in Michigan on Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers, who was behind Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed by two points in a recent Marist poll—and by six points among independents—Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. opined on "500 million Arabs in the world," a vast population that he suggested contributes little to the global community.
"They don’t produce science, they don’t win the Nobel Prize, they don’t win the Fields prize, they don’t win the Wolf Prize, they don’t produce literature," declared Kennedy at a campaign event in Grand Rapids.
RFK: "There's five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don't produce science. They don't win the Novel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature." https://t.co/ikZHqklQjE
— Bulwark Clips (@BulwarkClips) October 26, 2026
The comments provoked horror among numerous Democratic lawmakers, advocacy groups, scientists, and journalists, many of whom were quick to point out that Kennedy's racist rant had no basis in reality.
"Besides being nakedly racist and bigoted, this is just hilariously wrong on all levels," said Justin Baragona of Zeteo News.
Baragona was among the observers who did not have reach far back in history to prove Kennedy, who has been widely condemned for his rejection of scientific evidence as he has questioned the safety of vaccines, entirely wrong about Arab people's contributions to the field.
Just last year, Omar Yaghi won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for the development of metal-organic frameworks. Yaghi was born in Jordan to Palestinian refugee parents. He also won the Wolf Prize, an international award for achievements in sciences and the arts, in 2018, for his contributions to the field of reticular chemistry.
Vaccine scientist Peter Hotez expressed relief that his late colleague and "brilliant co-US Science Envoy," the Egyptian-American chemist Ahmed Zewail, "didn’t have to endure" listening to Kennedy's comments. Zewail won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1999.
Entrepreneur Saad Mohseni listed a number of other "Arab science giants" who came to mind.
Baragona also pointed to two winners of the National Book Award just last year—the Lebanese writer and painter Rabih Alameddine and Egyptian-American journalist Omar El Akkad.
But US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) suggested that beyond debunking Kennedy's wholly inaccurate claim, "everyone needs to pay attention" to what his comments were part of: a "coordinated campaign to delegitimize Muslim Americans—not just as citizens but as humans."
"These increasingly hysterical attacks are a prelude to Republicans bringing us to a very, very dark place after the election," said Murphy.
The Council on American Islamic Relations demanded that Kennedy be removed from his Cabinet position in light of the remarks, which they called "a textbook display of unvarnished racism and bigotry."
"To stand on a public stage as a sitting US Cabinet official and dehumanize half a billion people—and millions of Muslim and Christian Arab Americans—with fabricated, white supremacist talking points is utterly disqualifying for public office," said the group. "His sweeping erasure of Arab contributions to humanity is not only maliciously false, but it also fans the flames of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate at a time when communities are already vulnerable to bigoted attacks from other public officials nationwide. Anyone who holds such blatant contempt for an entire ethnicity has no business leading a federal agency meant to serve all Americans."
Journalist Mehdi Hasan, the founder of Zeteo News, suggested that the Democratic Party and liberal commentators deserve a large share of the blame for a political environment in which a top US official felt comfortable openly degrading hundreds of millions of people of Arab descent, including an estimated 3.7 million Arab Americans, as non-contributing members of society.
"Every day, a prominent Republican—the president, a Cabinet official, a primetime Fox host, the Michigan Senate candidate—says something insanely racist about Muslims or Arabs. Meanwhile, my timeline is full of prominent Democrats and liberals getting mad about a random ad attacking Israel and screaming about antisemitism," he said, referring to an ad recently released by Rebellion political action committee, which criticized US aid to Israel and tied it to Americans' struggles with the rising cost of living.
From many liberal commentators, said Hasan, he has heard "crickets... on the out-of-control Islamophobia from the GOP."
Kennedy's anti-Arab comments were hardly an outlier in the Michigan Senate campaign. Rogers and President Donald Trump have both accused El-Sayed of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, despite the fact that in 2012, as a congressman, Rogers himself said he was willing to work with the movement. The president has openly called the Michigan-born El-Sayed a "jihadist," and a speaker at one Rogers rally over the weekend said the candidate's birth certificate did not make him an American.
But prominent Democrats have also had a hand in pushing the narrative that El-Sayed is a risky choice for Michiganders. Former state Democratic Party chair Lon Johnson accused El-Sayed of “extremism” last week and said his criticism of Israel threatens Jewish communities, calling on Democrats in the state to “leave the Senate race blank." During the primary, the centrist think tank Third Way spent months attacking El-Sayed for campaigning with popular streamer Hasan Piker, who once said that the US "deserved" the September 11 attacks—a comment he later clarified and apologized for.
At Protect Our Care, an advocacy group that typically focuses on Kennedy's attacks on public health, president Brad Woodhouse said Tuesday that with his remarks in Grand Rapids, the health secretary had "laid bare how small and ignorant he really is."
“Fear and racism are the crutch of pathetic political hacks with absolutely nothing to offer or progress to point to," said Woodhouse. "This is his closing argument for why Republicans need more power, smearing an entire people with gross and instantly disprovable lies? Really?"
"Secretary Kennedy thinks spewing hate will distract people from his multiple corruption scandals and starring role in the historic measles and food-borne illness crises Americans have suffered through this year," he added. "This wasn’t the first time RFK Jr has trafficked in racism, but it may be his ugliest episode yet. It’s an indictment of both Mike Rogers and [Republican US Rep.] John James that they haven’t condemned the remarks. They’d rather clap like seals and hope RFK’s racist ‘hail mary’ pays off for them politically. That makes them just as weak, pathetic, and un-American.”
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‘Doomsday’ Was No Joke: DOJ Considering Scenarios In Which It Would Intervene in Midterms
"Nobody knows what the president might do if the midterms don’t go his way."
Oct 27, 2026
When US Attorney General Todd Blanche said last week that the Department of Justice may seek to block states from certifying elections if a "doomsday" scenario occurred, he wasn't simply speaking hypothetically.
Three administration officials have told investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein that the DOJ has several "contingency plans" that may result in unprecedented efforts at federal interference, many of which President Donald Trump and other administration officials have hinted at in the press.
The plans include extreme scenarios like a foreign cyberattack, according to a report from Klippenstein on Monday. They also include scenarios that the administration has claimed are already underway, such as “questions about qualified voters” and “voter confusion.”
The DOJ has already acted on such claims in three states.
At Trump's direction, the DOJ has demanded that Alaska suspend the certification of its Senate election if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses, arguing that the presence of another person with the same name on the ballot was part of a ploy to “confuse” voters.
Earlier this month, the department sued California to keep officials from tallying ballots cast by people it flagged as potentially ineligible using an error-prone federal database. Its list contained around 20,000 names.
Two judges expressed concerns that the list could disenfranchise lawful voters. When Los Angeles County officials reviewed a sample of 200 records, they found that the list included US-born people, people with inactive or canceled registrations, and people with no voting history.
On Monday, the DOJ demanded that Washington state set aside ballots from over 400 people on similar grounds.
Officials told Klippenstein that other potential "doomsday" scenarios are being discussed as possible catalysts for federal intervention, including "disruptions at the polls" and "irregularities with the count."
After suggesting the midterms should be outright "canceled," Trump has suggested that Republicans should "nationalize" elections despite the plain language of the US Constitution, which makes them the domain of states, subject to congressional regulation.
During a TV interview in February, he suggested that plans were in the works to "put in federal controls as opposed to state controls" if states could not conduct elections "honestly."
Following that interview, officials said that then-Attorney General Pam Bondi met with Trump and several governors in the White House State Dining Room to discuss potential election doomsday scenarios. Bondi then reportedly spoke with senior department officials about what situations might justify action.
While the president and DOJ cannot unilaterally block states from certifying elections, the department can bring lawsuits and seek emergency court orders under the Voting Rights Act if the attorney general has “reasonable grounds” to conclude that there has been intimidation, threats, or coercion against voters or that someone has knowingly provided false registration information or conspired to encourage false registration.
Trump has still not accepted his 2020 presidential election defeat and continues to sow doubts about it six years later. In 2020, he attempted to overturn the outcome by spreading claims that the election was marred by systemic “irregularities” and fraud, which his own advisers informed him were baseless.
Unlike previous attorneys general who declined to lend legitimacy to Trump’s claims, Blanche has repeatedly said he agrees with Trump’s sentiment that the 2020 election was “rigged.” When asked to provide specific evidence last month that mail-in voting produces large amounts of fraud, he said it was simply “common sense.”
Trump has voted by mail numerous times, and mail-in ballots have been used for elections in several states for years, including the conservative state of Utah.
Asked by CNN anchor Dana Bash on Sunday whether Trump was "laying the groundwork" to try to overturn the election again, as he did in 2020, Blanche was defiant.
"Oh stop it!" he scoffed. "You've got to stop it with that! You're not being a real person... We're not laying any groundwork for the president to do that. So the premise of your question is not true."
Breaking with previous norms of DOJ independence from the White House, Blanche declared last week, “I work for President Trump,” suggesting that he will dutifully assist any attempts by the president to undermine the results.
The question is how far he may be willing to go: “Nobody knows what the president might do if the midterms don’t go his way, what Trump might say or what he might provoke,” one senior intelligence official who served in the first Trump White House told Klippenstein.
One government lawyer told Klippenstein that while there is no law allowing the federal government to suspend elections simply by alleging fraud, that doesn’t mean the administration won’t seek to find a legal justification:
“Could Trump sign a classified emergency order raising the specter of national security to justify intervention?” the intelligence official asks. “Could Doomsday involve some continuity of government argument? You just never know with Donald Trump.”
"If all else fails,” he says, the president could put “pressure on officials, undertake unsupported litigation, or even issue unlawful executive orders." This, he says, could cause enough disruption to provoke a January 6-style riot.
Meanwhile, the government lawyer says the lack of clear legal authority hasn’t stopped the planning.
“Justice Department and White House lawyers are grappling with these very scenarios… [including] what it can do if the law is no guide,” he says.
With the midterms just a week away and Republicans projected to do poorly, Trump has a veritable army of influencers online prepared to sow doubt about the election result.
A Washington Post analysis on Tuesday found nearly 600 high-profile right-wing social media accounts, podcasts, and other media sources that have published content questioning the integrity of the election and telling Trump supporters to expect cheating. Many of their claims echo those made by the administration about the prevalence of noncitizen voting, which is exceedingly rare.
Democrats on the congressional intelligence committees have said they are prepared for Trump to claim that classified intelligence shows that foreign powers tampered with vote totals or otherwise intervened to help his rivals.
"This administration has a record of using weaponized intelligence to make the case for election interference, and now its officials are grasping at straws to satisfy the president's desire to interfere with the elections," Alexandra Chandler, the director of impact programs at Free and Fair Elections, told Common Dreams. "None of this is new."
If Trump makes such a claim, Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that Trump’s CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton have agreed to review any of the underlying intelligence with him and Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Himes told reporters, "We’re making the presumption that the president will not accept the results,” adding that they expect him to "pull out all the stops."
Voting rights groups have also said they are ready for whatever Trump throws their way.
"States and local election officials run our elections, not the federal government," Tianna Mays, legal director at the Democracy Defenders Fund, told Common Dreams. "Trump administration officials cannot claim powers they do not have under the Constitution, and we will fight them in court if they try."
“The pro-democracy coalition is prepared for whatever scenario comes,” Chandler said. “We will defend the integrity of this election.”
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Election-Denying Trump Judges Preside Over Nearly Every Battleground Midterm Race: Analysis
"We must vote in numbers so overwhelming that no Trump judge could deny the truth."
Oct 27, 2026
If the Trump administration decides to challenge the outcome of any of the dozens of battleground contests in next week's midterms, there's a significant chance that one of the president's handpicked, election-denying judges will oversee the case.
That's according to a report published Tuesday by the advocacy group Demand Justice, which found that 53 of 60 battleground races for US House and Senate that will be held on November 3 "are in districts or states presided over by at least one Trump-appointed federal judge who, under oath, refused to admit that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election."
“If these judges couldn’t tell the truth about 2020, we can’t count on them to do so in 2026," said Josh Orton, president of Demand Justice. "We must vote in numbers so overwhelming that no Trump judge could deny the truth."
The report defines battleground races as Senate and House contests that analysts currently rate as either a toss up, lean Republican, or lean Democratic.
Demand Justice emphasizes that federal courts "look very different" today than they did in 2020, when the judiciary "halted Trump’s attempt to challenge the 2020 election results."
"Since then, Trump appointed Emil Bove and Jennifer Mascott to the Third Circuit, Rebecca Taibleson to the Seventh, Michael Martin to the Eastern District of Michigan, and Eric Tung to the Ninth Circuit, which hears appeals from Arizona," the report notes, pointing to courts that previously weighed 2020-related cases.
During their confirmation hearings, each of those Trump-picked judges—along with dozens of others—refused to explicitly say that Trump lost the 2020 election. As Demand Justice observed in an earlier report, Trump's judicial picks used virtually identical phrasing to evade senators' questions about the 2020 election results, saying that former President Joe Biden "was certified as the winner."
The report comes amid mounting concerns that the Trump administration could try to intervene in the midterms if the outcome is unfavorable to Trump and his Republican Party, which is seeking to maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
Demand Justice cited as an alarming example the Justice Department's lawsuit aiming at blocking certification of Alaska's US Senate election if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses. Trump told reporters late last week that he ordered the DOJ to file the lawsuit, which Democratic nominee Mary Peltola is seeking to dismiss before Election Day.
“Trump's attempt to interfere in Alaska’s Senate race is a wake-up call," said Orton. "His administration will not accept election results unless the Republicans win."
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