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For Immediate Release
February, 18 2016, 03:30pm EDT
Contact:
Taylor McKinnon, Center for Biological Diversity, (801) 300-2414, tmckinnon@biologicaldiversity.org
Cyrus Reed, Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter, (512) 740-4086, cyrus.reed@sierraclub.org
Rita Beving, Clean Water Action, (214) 557-2271, rita.beving@gmail.com
Feds Pull 31,000 Texas Acres From April Fossil Fuel Auction Due to Concerns Over Fracking Impacts to Land, Water, Climate
U.S. Forest Service Removes Vast Majority of Parcels From April 20 Lease Sale
DALLAS
The U.S. Forest Service today withdrew 31,169 acres of national forest lands in Texas from a Bureau of Land Management fossil fuel auction slated for April 20 in Santa Fe, N.M. The move responds to concerns raised by environmental groups and local governments about fracking impacts, and comes one day before the Friday public protest deadline on the lease-sale plan.
Environmental groups on Feb. 9 called on the Bureau to halt the sale because of harmful environmental and climate impacts, public-safety concerns and the lack of notice provided to potentially affected residents. The withdrawn parcels constitute the vast majority of the 36,000 acres of public lands in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas that were slated for the April auction.
"We're very pleased that the Forest Service pulled these lands to allow time to notify the public and address our concerns, but the reality is that no public oil and gas leases should be sold," said Wendy Park, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. "Oil and gas drilling results in the clearing of valuable public forests for well pads, roads and pipelines, while fracking threatens watersheds and public water supplies. Public fossil fuels must remain in the ground if we are to avert the worst impacts of climate change."
A nationwide study last year determined that halting new federal fossil fuel auctions on lands and offshore areas controlled by the U.S. government would keep up to 450 billion tons of greenhouse gases from polluting the atmosphere. Hundreds of people have turned out for "Keep It in the Ground" protests of BLM fossil fuel auctions across the country in recent months, with several auctions being canceled and author Terry Tempest Williams purchasing parcels in Utah yesterday in protest.
The parcels removed from the April auction are located in the Davy Crockett, Sam Houston and Sabine national forests. Several of the remaining Texas parcels for sale in the April auction underlie municipal water supplies that serve the heavily populated areas of Dallas-Fort Worth, Denton, Brenham and Corpus Christi. A letter from environmentalists, sent to the BLM and other federal agencies this week, highlighted the potential for fracking beneath Lewisville Lake, Somerville Lake, Lake Conroe and Choke Canyon Reservoir to contaminate drinking water for millions of people.
"As Texas residents and local officials learn about the plans to open up our public lands to oil and gas development they are asking the BLM and other federal agencies for a timeout," said Cyrus Reed, conservation director of the Sierra Club's Lone Star Chapter. "Serious reforms are needed in the BLM auction process so the public has an opportunity to raise concerns and insist on best practices, including not opening up certain lands to development at all."
Separately, the city of Dallas Water Utilities formally requested that 259 acres at Lewisville Lake be removed from the auction, citing concerns over the risk that fracking can cause contamination and exacerbate the dam's "known safety issues." In 2015 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers determined that the dam is at "high risk" of failure in an extreme event.
A number of cities that rely on Lewisville Lake for their drinking water have also filed formal protests against the leasing plan, including Highland Village, Flower Mound, Denton, Irving, Lewisville and The Colony. Dallas Water and municipal officials echoed environmentalists' concerns that the public did not receive proper notice of the auction.
"Our group along with others sounded the alarm to cities whose vital water supplies could be put at risk in this sale," said Rita Beving, North Texas outreach coordinator for Clean Water Action. "These water supply lakes are at risk not only for water contamination, but also for what potential harm could befall their dams through increased seismicity due to drilling."
"As local agencies and the Forest Service have pointed out, affected communities and local governments need to be involved in the BLM's decisions to auction off public lands for oil and gas drilling, but the agency failed to include them. BLM should follow the Forest Service's lead and cancel the auction altogether," Park said.
Download today's withdrawal consent.
Download groups' earlier letter of concern to federal agencies.
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters and climate that species need to survive.
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'We Can Tell': Trump Confesses He Doesn't 'Think About Americans' Financial Situation' When It Comes to Iran War
"And they still want you to believe he's fighting for you," said one Democratic lawmaker.
May 12, 2026
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday confessed he is not concerned about the increasing level of economic hardship tens of millions of Americans are facing due to rising costs related to the war of choice he launched against Iran over two months ago.
Despite inflation hitting a three-year high and the average price of gasoline in the US now averaging over $4.50 per gallon, Trump was asked by a reporter outside the White House about how much “Americans’ financial situations” were on his mind as he tries to negotiate an end to the war he initiated with a preemptive attack by US and Israeli forces on February 28.
“Not even a little bit,” Trump said in response. “The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran—they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing—we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.”
Trump on Iran War:
Reporter: What extent are Americans’ financial situation motivating you to make a deal?
Trump: Not even a little bit. I don't think about Americans’ financial situation pic.twitter.com/TJ94pGpqD8
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 12, 2026
"And they still want you to believe he's fighting for you," said Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) in reaction to the president's comments.
While both the US and Israel do have nuclear weapons, the Iranians contend their nuclear program is not designed for military purposes. In 2017, during his first term, Trump ripped up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), brokered by the Obama administration, which experts agree put in strong safeguards to prevent Iran from furthering any unchecked ambitions toward a nuclear weapon.
With peace talks largely stalled due to Trump's maximalist demands and refusal to admit he started the war without a plan on how to end it, frustration is growing in the United States, where a large majority of the population say they oppose the conflict, disapprove of the president's handling of it, and want it brought to a conclusion as soon as possible.
While Trump's comments were predictable to an extent, they still stirred outrage among those concerned about the economic headwinds Americans are facing due to the war in Iran.
"The sky is blue and water is wet," said the Groundwork Collaborative of the confession. "Nice of him to say it out loud though."
"Prices are up on gas, groceries, rent, utilities, healthcare, and just about everything else," said the AFL-CIO. "Shit’s too expensive and workers’ wages aren’t keeping up. America’s unions worry about this 24/7. Our president of the United States should, too."
"It’s no surprise," said Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), with a look of disappointment. "That should be job one for him."
"Trump says he doesn't think about Americans' financial situation at all," asserted Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.). "We can tell."
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‘How to Sell a Genocide’: Media Critic's Book Details Biased Coverage of Israeli Assault on Gaza
Adam Johnson said his analysis of thousands of articles and TV segments showed that "US media coverage of the war on Gaza was one-sided, racist, dehumanizing, and often veered into outright incitement."
May 12, 2026
A new book is using an exhaustive data analysis to demonstrate that mainstream US media outlets "systematically favor Israel" in their coverage of the Gaza genocide.
For his book, How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza, which became available last month from Pluto Books, journalist Adam Johnson said he "examined over 12,000 articles from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN.com, Politico, Axios, USA Today, and The Associated Press, along with 5,000 TV segments that aired on CNN and MSNBC," which has since rebranded as MS NOW
He said that by analyzing the content of these news outlets, he seeks to "demonstrate, beyond a reasonable doubt, that US media coverage of the war on Gaza was one-sided, racist, dehumanizing, and often veered into outright incitement," frequently using "double standards" that treat Israeli life and safety as inherently more important than those of Palestinians.
Johnson focused especially on center-left outlets that were considered influential within the administration of then-President Joe Biden, who continued to provide almost totally unrestricted aid to Israel despite fierce opposition by many Democratic voters in the lead-up to the 2024 election.
An article written by Johnson published Tuesday in The Intercept previews seven statistical findings proving this anti-Palestinian bias, particularly during the first year of the conflict when Israel's leaders were working hardest to establish a "narrative" in the American press that could justify the total destruction of Gaza and the mass displacement of its people.
He found that the media used the phrase "right to defend itself" almost exclusively to refer to Israel, which used it to justify numerous civilian massacres. Guests, anchors, and reporters on CNN and MSNBC referred to the right of Israelis to defend themselves 755 times during the first 90 days of the conflict, while the same right was invoked for Palestinians only eight times over that period.
Johnson found that print media outlets invoked Israel's right of self-defense 100 times more frequently than for Palestinians.
Although Palestinians lack a sovereign state due to Israel's illegal occupation, meaning their right to self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter is disputed, they are still afforded the right to self-determination and the right to resist occupation under international law.
Media outlets examined by Johnson also used the phrase "human shields" to describe instances where civilians were killed in close proximity to Palestinian militants. Though Johnson noted that this justification is "rejected by human rights groups," he found that CNN and MSNBC described Palestinians killed by Israel that way nearly 800 times, while print outlets did hundreds more.
But media outlets almost never described Israel's use of Palestinians as human shields, even though there have been multiple cases of Israeli troops documented forcing Palestinian detainees to carry out life-threatening tasks on the battlefield in order to protect themselves from injury.
The killing of Israeli civilians was frequently described in much more "emotive" terms than it was for Palestinian civilians, even as the latter were killed in far greater numbers.
Words like "massacre," "slaughter," "savage," and "barbaric" were used hundreds of times by print and TV outlets to refer to the killing of roughly 1,200 Israelis by Hamas militants on October 7, 2023. But Israeli forces' subsequent killings of approximately 24,000 Palestinians during the first 100 days of the conflict hardly ever elicited these words.
This is despite numerous documented attacks on schools, hospitals, aid facilities, and other civilian sites, as well as a near-total blockade of food, water, and medicine entering Gaza, which resulted in mass starvation and illness.
All the while, the horrific statistics coming out of Gaza were downplayed by the persistent use of the phrase "Hamas-run" by news networks to cast a shadow of doubt over the Gaza Health Ministry, which was the main official source for death toll figures in Gaza.
The US State Department, the World Health Organization, and Human Rights Watch had long relied on the ministry figures and investigations into their reporting on past conflicts found them to be accurate. But CNN nevertheless adopted it as an official policy to refer to the health ministry as "Hamas-run," a term which implied its figures were likely being inflated for propaganda purposes, even though independent estimates suggest it actually vastly undercounted the dead.
Facing pressure to cut off support for Israel, Biden and several officials in his administration used similar language to suggest the death tolls could be exaggerated, including National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby, who called the ministry “just a front for Hamas.“
In January 2026, after spending more than two years using the "Hamas-run" pejorative to cast doubt upon the idea that civilians were killed en masse in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) finally acknowledged the accuracy of the Gaza Health Ministry's death count, which by that point had surpassed 71,000.
Johnson further contextualized this anti-Palestinian bias by comparing coverage of the Gaza conflict to the coverage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
He found that CNN and MSNBC discussed child casualties more often in Ukraine, where about 262 children were killed during the first 100 days of the war, than in Gaza, where more than 10,000 children were killed during the same time frame. The killings of journalists was mentioned with roughly the same frequency, even though the number killed in Gaza was 77 compared with just eight in Ukraine.
The words "war crime" and "genocide" were also rarely invoked in the early days of the Gaza war, but were used liberally to describe Russia's attacks on Ukraine, despite the fact that vastly more civilians were killed and displaced in Gaza during the respective periods.
Johnson found that this biased coverage extended to the home front, especially as the war in Gaza fomented ethnic hatred. Incidents of both antisemitism and Islamophobia increased in the months after October 7. But headlines from the first six months of the conflict referred exclusively to antisemitism about 31 times as often as they referred exclusively to Islamophobia.
This emphasis on antisemitism only grew as protests on college campuses became more forceful throughout the conflict's first year. Though the protests often exclusively focused on Israel, they were commonly framed as attacks on Jewish students.
Coverage and discourse surrounding these protests and campus administrators' responses to them often drowned out coverage of the conflict itself.
One example of this that Johnson described as particularly "poignant" was The New York Times' wall-to-wall coverage of Harvard University President Claudine Gay, who resigned following pressure from Congress to crack down on pro-Palestine protests and a plagiarism scandal.
While hundreds of articles and TV spots were dedicated to covering the Gay story, Johnson found that the media almost totally ignored the IDF's killing of the 5-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, who was left to die in a car by soldiers after her entire family was killed around the same time. In fact, there were 95 headlines about Gay in print media between December 5, 2023, and January 5, 2024, while just six focused on the killings of thousands of Palestinian children.
In an interview promoting the book's release, Johnson said that the role of media institutions was not ancillary to the Gaza genocide, but rather they played a central role in prolonging it and maintaining support from the Biden administration.
"You need them as a kind of validator... to justify things like [the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East] is Hamas, aid workers are Hamas, Al-Shifa [Hospital] is actually a secret command and control center, mass rapes were Hamas policy," he said. "These fundamental axioms of genocide were essential to the genocide, and they cannot exist without The New York Times."
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Backed by 80% of Voters Under Age 45, El-Sayed Up by Double Digits in Michigan Poll
"Seems like Third Way jumped into this race and leaned into identity politics in a way that just polarized the electorate further" in El-Sayed’s favor, said one commentator, "given he’s solely focused on healthcare."
May 12, 2026
In the Democratic US Senate primary race in Michigan, a big swing—particularly among voters aged 18-44—toward former public health official and Medicare for All advocate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed was found Tuesday in the latest poll by a research firm that six months ago had seen the progressive candidate in distant third place.
Twenty-eight percent of primary voters said they were supporting El-Sayed in a poll released by Mitchell Research and Communications, while 18% said they were backing US Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), who has the support of Democratic leaders and the powerful pro-Israel lobby group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Seventeen percent of voters said they were supporting state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-8).
The poll showed an inversion of the result found by Mitchell in November, when El-Sayed was trailing his two opponents by eight points and Stevens and McMorrow were separated by just three points.
Mitchell polled 405 likely primary voters between May 1-7, around the time that El-Sayed appeared with US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at a rally as part of the senator's Fighting Oligarchy Tour. He drew loud applause for condemning AIPAC for its persistent conflation of antisemitism with criticism of Israel, and spoke about his strong support for expanding the Medicare system to everyone in the US.
The poll also came after a weekslong controversy that was promoted by centrist think tank Third Way, with the support of both Stevens and McMorrow, targeting El-Sayed for campaigning with Hasan Piker, a Twitch streamer and commentator who's been outspoken in his condemnation of Israel.
With the controversy largely in the rearview mirror despite some lawmakers' continued fixation on Piker, the new poll suggests the criticism of El-Sayed didn't land in Michigan—particularly among voters in younger demographics arguably more likely to have heard of Piker, who gained notoriety by sharing political commentary while playing video games online.
Among voters under the age of 45, El-Sayed had 80% of the support in the poll released Tuesday.
The other two candidates in the race barely registered among voters in the demographic, with 4% supporting Stevens and 3% backing McMorrow. The primary race has been called a "millennial showdown" by local media, with the three candidates ranging in age from 39-42.
The poll comes after numerous surveys have found that Israel—the issue that Third Way attempted to center in the election—has plummeting support among voters, following its yearslong assault on Gaza. Last October, nearly half of Democratic voters in swing districts, including in Michigan, said in a poll that they would vote against a candidate funded by AIPAC.
Meanwhile, Medicare for All—the proposal that's a key focus of El-Sayed's platform—was supported by 78% of Democratic voters, along with 71% of Independents and 49% of Republicans in a survey by Data for Progress late last year.
Rotimi Adeoye, a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times, said the poll suggested that Third Way had "jumped into this race and leaned into identity politics in a way that just polarized the electorate further in El-Sayed’s favor, given he’s solely focused on healthcare."
"If you are spending any time as a candidate not talking about housing, healthcare, the economy, groceries, and dedicating a second or a millisecond talking about Hasan Piker or the identity politics topic of the day on Twitter, you're losing," said Adeoye.
Jon Favreau, co-host of Pod Save America and a former speechwriter under the Obama administration, summed up the poll results succinctly.
The survey, he said, showed a "Third Way bump" for El-Sayed.
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