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Sheesh. The Crazy Train just keeps clattering on. After a week of the mad Blowhard-In-Chief blithering he'll put everyone he doesn't like in jail forever and there will be conquest of the "aliens" and child care is child care plus tariffs and Leon aka Elmo aka Elon will solve it, we've evidently reached the demented part of the campaign where we accuse dark-skinned immigrants of killing and eating our pets. Mary mother of God, save us (and our pets).
It should have been clear how daft things were getting when Dick Darth Cheney, long the greatest threat to our republic, declared Trump the greatest threat to our republic, though Sarah Palin is still voting for him. Still, he seems ever more untethered from reality, with his supporters going right down the rabbit hole with him. See Sen. Ron Johnson rave about a Depression "well-planned" by the fat cats of the world - "It's just in my bones" - and who knows how many coups from Nixon on orchestrated by the feds: "There's a reason you call it the deep state. It's very deep." Trump, having lost what was left of his mind, spent last week threatening to punish Dems who did all that "rampant cheating and skullduggery" in the election with "long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again," also - again! - "at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country."
He also told economists he'd get NATO countries to pay for our child care - "child care is child care" - which isn't really as expensive as everyone who needs it says it is "compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in...Well, I would do that, and we're sitting down. You know, I was somebody - we had Sen. Marco Rubio - and my daughter Ivanka"......And besides don't forget about "illegal allll...iens pouring in from countries that nobody ever heard the name of that country, those countries....numbers (again!) that we've never seen before, and they're giving them chairs." Then he went to a hearing about his $90 million rape of Jean Carroll who he's never met, and spent an hour raging against the over two dozen women who've also accused him of sexual assault, especially the one on the plane he was making out with but c'mon, for Mr. Art of the Deal she definitely "would not have been the chosen one."
Moving on to his beloved "American carnage," the small man who often imagined siccing death squads on his enemies vowed swift vengeance on them all, especially the swarthy ones. Foreseeing "a bloody story," he promised, "As soon as I'm back in the White House, the conquest will and the great liberation of America will begin...We will take back every single square inch of territory that has been invaded by these migrant gangs." Especially in Springfield, Ohio, population 58,000, which has become a "giant cesspool of voodoo and animal carcasses" being devoured by some - good people on both sides - of up to 20,000 Haitian immigrants who've surged there to work, pay taxes and eat people's cats and other pets. Howls Georgia Rep. Mike Collins, too upset to tend to the school shooting in his district, "They're in the park. Grabbing up ducks. By they (sic) neck. And eatin 'em."
To backtrack: The story of Springfield residents "left in terror as migrants overtake the once-quiet city," kill their cats, cook 'em with fava beans, go into parks and kill ducks, "eating them right in front of people" came from....Homer Simpson? And, just as reliably, a Facebook post by someone who claimed "their neighbor's daughter's friend" lost her cat and found it hanging from a tree branch at a Haitian neighbor’s home being prepped to be carved up to be eaten. (Echoes of The Crucible.) In response to this spreading-like-rabid-wildfire tale, the Springfield Police issued a statement that plainly said they have "received no reports related to pets being stolen and eaten." The now-viral post, they added, "did not cite any first-hand knowledge of any incident." Still, who needs facts? Not the dotty bigots inhaling an alternative reality obsessed with guns, commies, dark skin, women's reproductive organs and cats.
And not "racist piece of shit" J.D. Vance. Having unearthed the big scandal of Tim Walz' life - his brothers say as a kid he got car sick - he picked up the tawdry tale and ran with it. He'd already warned about "Haitian illegal immigrants causing chaos," though many are legal, and now here come "these types of crimes where people can't even live a normal life." Citing "pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country, he listed the cat, "dogs, ducks, geese" and urged, "Please keep a close eye on these animals." Four-footed, presumably, but shady bipeds like Elon, Leon to Trump, chimed in. Charlie Kirk mourned a duck pond "picked clean" as another "Biden gift." When Trump was president, blared Gym Jordan, "The border was secure (and) illegal aliens weren't eating your pets." Klan Mom whined there's no "government show of force" against cat-eaters, who are "more dangerous" than J6 rioters.
Then of course the grifter, smelling screamingly racist grift, stepped in. With the value of his media company plummeting almost 75%, an apocalyptic, cat-kabob-themed fundraising letter quickly went out from the narcissistic loser who - wanna bet? - never had a pet in his life. "Kamala Migrants Ravage Ohio City - And It's Coming to Your City Next," it screeched. The influx of 20,000 migrants "dumped in the city unvetted via one of the Harris-Biden administration’s unilateral mass relocation schemes" drained social services and sparked a housing crisis, it said. "Residents have become guests in their own homes. A 45-year resident and her elderly husband have been driven from their home by migrants squatting on their property: “I have men that cannot speak English in my front yard screaming at me, throwing mattresses … I weigh 95 pounds. I couldn’t defend myself if I had to."
"Now, Migrants have reportedly been caught 'decapitating ducks' and hunting geese and other livestock in public parks - and even kidnapping residents’ pets — then eating them," it raved. "It's all coming to your city if Kamala Harris is elected in November." Fear, hate, division, lunatic dreams of carnage - it's so relentlessly, risibly-except-for-the-racism all they've got. And it keeps getting weirder, moving from Hannibal Lecter, sinister cannibal eating white people, to (presumably brown) migrants eating (white?) pets. Savagery on all sides. Ron Filipkowski suggests a sensible way forward these next few fraught weeks, democracy in the balance. "If you had a migrant eat your pet, vote for Trump," he wrote. "Everyone else vote for Harris." Also hide your goldfish.
Bat die-offs in the U.S. led to increased use of insecticides, which in turn led to greater infant mortality, according to a "seminal" study published Thursday that shows the effects of biodiversity loss on human beings.
Eyal Frank, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago, authored the study, which was published by Science, a leading peer-reviewed journal.
Bats can eat thousands of insects per night and act as a natural pest control for farmers, so when a fungal disease began killing off bat populations in the U.S. after being introduced in 2006, farmers in affected counties used more insecticides, Frank found. Those same counties saw more infant deaths, which Frank linked to increased use of insecticide that is harmful to human health, especially for babies and fetuses.
The study was greeted by an outpouring of praise from unaffiliated scientists for its methodology and the important takeaways it offers.
"[Frank] uses simple statistical methods to the most cutting-edge techniques, and the takeaway is the same," Eli Fenichel, an environmental economist at Yale University, toldThe New York Times. "Fungal disease killed bats, bats stopped eating enough insects, farmers applied more pesticide to maximize profit and keep food plentiful and cheap, the extra pesticide use led to more babies dying. It is a sobering result."
Carmen Messerlian, an environmental epidemiologist at Harvard University, told the Times the study "seminal" and "groundbreaking."
The study shows the need for a broader understanding of human health that includes consideration of entire ecosystems, said Roel Vermeulen, an environmental epidemiologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "It emphasizes the need to move from a human-centric health impact analysis, which only considers the direct effects of pollution on human health, to a planetary health impact assessment," he toldNew Scientist.
Reporter Benji Jones echoed that sentiment in Vox, calling Frank's findings "astonishing" and writing that such studies could help us fight chemical pollution by corporations.
"When the link between human and environmental health is overlooked, industries enabled by short-sighted policies can destroy wildlife habitats without a full understanding of what we lose in the process," Jones said. "This is precisely why studies like this are so critical: They reveal, in terms most people can relate to, how the ongoing destruction of biodiversity affects us all."
NEW: This is one of the more stunning (and sobering) studies I've covered in a while:
It found that a decline of bats in the U.S. had come at a deadly cost to human babieshttps://t.co/M82FXxBrtO
— Dino Grandoni (@dino_grandoni) September 5, 2024
Frank, who said he started the work after stumbling on an article about bat population loss while procrastinating, happened upon an excellent natural experiment. The spread of white-nose syndrome, the fungal disease, was well tracked on a county-by-county level, leaving him with high-quality data that is hard to find for researchers who study the intersection of human and animal life.
The benefits of biodiversity on humans, and the drawbacks to its loss, are normally very difficult to quantify.
"That's just quite rare—to get good, empirical, grounded estimates of how much value the species is providing," Charles Taylor, an environmental economist at Harvard Kennedy School, toldThe Guardian. "Putting actual numbers to it in a credible way is tough."
Taylor himself is the author of a somewhat similar study that showed that pesticide use and infant mortality rose during years in which cicadas appeared; the insects do so at 13-17 year intervals.
David Rosner, a historian based at Columbia University, said the new bat study joins a large body of evidence dating back to the 1960s that links pesticide use with negative human health outcomes. "We're dumping these synthetic materials into our environment, not knowing anything about what their impacts are going to be," he said. "It's not surprising—it's just kind of shocking that we discover it every year."
Frank's claim about the cause of increased infant mortality should be taken with some caution, said Vermeulen, the Dutch researcher. He said the loss of agricultural income caused by bat die-offs could be connected to the increased deaths in complex ways.
The exact causal mechanism isn't known, Frank told media outlets, but the data shows the rise of infant mortality didn't come from food contamination by insecticides—rather, it's more likely it came via the water supply or contact with the chemicals.
Frank's other research extends beyond pesticide use. He and another researcher recently estimated that hundreds of thousands of human beings have died in India due to the collapse of the country's vulture population, as rotting meat increased the spread of diseases such as rabies.
Frank is not the first to study the impacts of white-nose syndrome on humans. Other studies have shown a reduction in land rents in counties hit by the bat plague and documented the billions of dollars that farmers have lost as their natural pest control disappeared.
The syndrome attacks bats while they hibernate. It was first identified in New York in 2006 and has since spread to much of North America. It's believed to have been brought over from Europe. It doesn't affect all bat species, but it's killed more than 90% of three key species, and bats also face a myriad of other threats, including habitat loss, climate change, and the dangerous churn of wind turbines.
Frank's bracing study should be a call to arms, experts said.
"This study estimates just a few of the consequences we suffer from the disappearance of bats, and they are just one of the species we're losing," Felicia Keesing, a biologist at Bard College, told The Washington Post. "These results should motivate everyone, not just farmers and parents, to clamor for the protection and restoration of biodiversity."
The latest coronavirus vaccine costs up to $200 for the roughly 25 million uninsured people in the U.S., due to the defunding of a federal program that previously covered the costs, The Washington Postreported Tuesday.
It's the "latest tear in the safety net" as pandemic-era programs wind down, the newspaper reported. Covid-19 vaccines were free for everyone in the U.S. in 2021 and 2022, per federal policy. However, in January, congressional Republicans negotiated a deal that rescinded $6.1 billion in emergency coronavirus relief funding, which killed the Bridge Access Program, launched in April 2023, that covered the cost for the uninsured.
The latest version of the Covid-19 vaccine was approved on August 22 and costs just over $200 for uninsured patients at CVS pharmacies in Nashville and St. Louis—examples cited by the Post.
Raynard Washington, head of the Mecklenburg County health department in North Carolina and chair of the Big Cities Health Coalition, said that vaccine manufacturers Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech should lower their prices to make the shots more affordable for health agencies.
"What's at stake is we are reverting back to a system where a person's financial ability to be able to pay will determine their ability to be healthy," Washington said.
News of the lack of affordable access to the Covid-19 vaccine for uninsured people led to outrage on social media, with one X user asking "Is this the way to keep the rest of us safe?" and another declaring: "This makes me want to scream."
People covered by Medicare—which insures Americans over the age of 65—and Medicaid can still receive Covid-19 vaccines for free. But roughly 25 million people in the U.S. under the age of 65 are uninsured and left to pay the sky-high rates; people of color are disproportionately represented in the ranks of the uninsured.
Moderna, Pfizer, and BioNTech have profited off of the sale of the vaccines even though U.S. and European taxpayers heavily subsidized their development. The companies told the Post that free vaccines would be available through patient assistance programs, but provided no details.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it had identified $62 million to purchase Covid-19 vaccines for distribution to health agencies, but officials say that's a "sliver" of what's needed, the paper reported.
The Biden administration in its budget requests repeatedly tried to establish a Vaccines for Adults program aimed at providing shots, including Covid-19 boosters, to uninsured adults, but the efforts stalled in Congress. The proposal was based on a federal Vaccines for Children program that's been active since the 1990s.
The new Covid-19 vaccine is recommended for everyone 6 months of age or older. It includes a level of protection against the KP.2 variant that accounted for roughly one quarter of U.S. cases this summer.
The public health emergency for Covid-19 ended in May 2023 but the virus has killed tens of thousands of people in the U.S. since then and can cause long-term complications.
A trio of senior congressional Democrats on Tuesday admonished fossil fuel executives to comply with a request for "information regarding quid pro quo solicitations" from former U.S. President Donald Trump, who earlier this year promised to gut climate regulations if they donated $1 billion to his Republican presidential campaign.
In May, Trump reportedly told Big Oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida that he would sign executive orders and take other action to boost the fossil fuel industry if they raised nine figures for his campaign. Executives from ExxonMobil, Chevron, Occidental Petroleum, and other corporations reportedly attended the dinner.
A May analysis by the green group Friends of the Earth Action found that the fossil fuel industry would reap an estimated $110 billion windfall from tax breaks alone under Trump's proposed policies—an 11,000% return on Big Oil's billion-dollar investment.
Following the revelation of Trump's quid pro quo offer, House Oversight and Accountability Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote to the head of the American Petroleum Institute—the leading Big Oil lobby—and the CEOs of eight companies seeking answers about whether they accepted what Raskin called "Trump's explicit corrupt bargain."
Nearly four months later, the lawmakers are still awaiting satisfactory answers.
"Not only was your response to our inquiries insufficient; tellingly, none of the responses we have received to date refute the accuracy of the reporting, renewing our concern that Donald Trump is actively seeking to sell out American energy policy to the highest bidder," the trio wrote on Tuesday.
"In the weeks since our initial letters, the behavior of Donald Trump and the oil and gas industry has added to evidence of possible misconduct," the lawmakers continued. "Campaign finance records show that following Trump's quid pro quo solicitation at least one company made a significant contribution in support of Trump's presidential run."
"Specifically, on April 29, 2024, Continental Resources Inc. contributed $1 million to Make America Great Again, Inc.—a super PAC dedicated to Trump's reelection," they added. "Continental's CEO, Harold Hamm, who is also an informal adviser to Trump, has reportedly given $1.6 million to aid Trump's reelection so far this year, and he has raised millions more from independent oil producers operating in Texas and Alaska."
According to a Washington Postarticle published last month, Hamm's top priorities are "opening up more federal lands to drilling, easing the Endangered Species Act, and curbing numerous regulations at the Environmental Protection Agency."
During his first White House term, Trump rolled back regulations protecting the climate, environment, and biodiversity, resulting in increased pollution and premature deaths and fueling catastrophic planetary heating.
In addition to sounding the alarm over Trump's climate-wrecking policies, campaigners have expressed concerns about the GOP nominee's selection of Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate. Like Trump, Vance is a climate denier. He also has strong ties to the fossil fuel industry, his top donor.
As Saudi Arabia prepares to host a global internet summit in December, 40 human rights groups on Friday urged authorities in the kingdom to release everyone imprisoned for online expression, including an activist serving a 27-year prison sentence for criticizing her country's severe repression of women.
The 40 groups said in a joint statement that "Saudi Arabia must free all individuals arbitrarily detained solely for their online expression ahead of hosting the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Riyadh, which will take place from December 15-19."
"It is counter to the IGF's stated values for Saudi Arabia to host the IGF," the organizations asserted. "In 2024 it adopted a thematic focus on advancing human rights and inclusion in the digital age and Saudi Arabia continues to prosecute, lock up, forcibly disappear, and intimidate people into silence for expressing themselves on social media."
As Amnesty International—which accused Saudi Arabia of "deep hypocrisy"—noted:
Saudi authorities have waged a chilling crackdown against people who demonstrate even the slightest sign of dissenting or critical views online. Among those who have been convicted for their online expression is Salma al-Shehab. She was arrested in January 2021 and, after a grossly unfair trial, sentenced in January 2023 to a shocking 27-year prison term followed by a 27-year travel ban on trumped-up terrorism charges, simply because she tweeted in support of women's rights.
In another deeply disturbing case, in January 2024, Saudi Arabia's terrorism court sentenced Manahel al-Otaibi to 11 years in prison in connection with social media posts promoting women's rights and sharing images of herself online at a mall without wearing an abaya (a traditional loose-fitting long-sleeved robe).
Those targeted also include Abdulrahman al-Sadhan, a Red Crescent worker, who in April 2020, after a grossly unfair trial, was sentenced to 20 years, to be followed by a 20-year travel ban, for his satirical tweets, and Mohammad bin Nasser al-Ghamdi, a retired school teacher, who was sentenced to death in July 2023 for criticizing authorities on X (formerly Twitter) and his online activity on YouTube.
"These cases are emblematic of the Saudi authorities' chilling crackdown on freedom of expression, but they are not isolated examples," the 40 groups said in their statement. "Dozens of people in Saudi Arabia, including visitors to the country, have been detained solely for their online expression."
"Consequently," the signers added, "many civil society organizations and advocates, who would ordinarily attend the IGF, have chosen not to travel to Saudi Arabia, fearing that they cannot safely and freely participate in the conference."
Representatives of some of the 40 groups that signed the statement weighed in on Saudi Arabia hosting the IGF.
"Is this a bad joke?" asked Freedom Forward executive director Sunjeev Bery. "There's a phrase for this: 'rights-washing.' Rights-washing is when a human rights violator tries to hide their crimes by wrapping themselves in human rights language and causes."
"Saudi Arabia's dictatorship is one of the most repressive governments on the planet," Bery added. "Saudi internet users who dare to speak their minds are often arrested, tortured, and jailed for years."
Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard said that "Saudi Arabia's authorities have 100 days before the IGF begins to demonstrate that they will ease their draconian crackdown on freedom of expression, and to show that they will use this event as an opportunity to carry out genuine reforms rather than as part of an image-washing campaign."
"In order to prove that their hosting of the conference about the internet's future is more than just a cynical PR exercise, the Saudi authorities must release all those arbitrarily detained solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression online before the IGF begins," she added.
Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed more than 140 Palestinian children in the illegally occupied West Bank since last October—a rate of one child every two days—according to an analysis released Monday.
The report, published by Defense of Children International-Palestine (DCIP), details how Israeli occupation forces "routinely targeted Palestinian children with live ammunition and aerial attacks, prevented ambulances and paramedics from reaching wounded children, and confiscated children's bodies in violation of international law" in the 10 months after the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas-led militants.
"Israeli forces are killing Palestinian children with calculated brutality and cruelty all throughout the occupied Palestinian territory," DCIP general director Khaled Quzmar said in a statement. "The international community must act urgently to enact an arms embargo and sanctions to protect Palestinian children's lives."
DCIP field researchers conducted interviews and collected evidence documenting 141 children killed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops and settlers in the West Bank between October 7, 2023 and July 31, 2024. As Common Dreams recently reported, that's around a 250% increase from the nine months preceding the October 7 attack.
Among the report's key findings:
"When an Israeli soldier targets a Palestinian child, or an Israeli military official orders the targeting of a child, they are in violation of international human rights, humanitarian, and criminal law," DCIP accountability program director Ayed Abu Eqtaish said Monday. "Not a single person has been held accountable for the killing of these children, emboldening Israeli forces to continue killing with impunity."
The new report comes amid the biggest and deadliest Israeli escalation in the West Bank in decades and as Israel's far-right government pushes forward with plans to build new settler colonies and expand existing ones by stealing more West Bank lands from Palestinians.
On Monday, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk pointed to the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) recent opinion that the Israeli occupation is an illegal form of apartheid that must end immediately as he implored the world to reject Israel's "blatant disregard for international law."
Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the ICJ for its conduct in the war on Gaza. According to the Gaza Health Ministry and U.N. agencies, Israel's 339-day assault on Gaza has left at least 145,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing while forcibly displacing, starving, and sickening millions more. More than 17,000 Palestinian children are believed to have been killed in Gaza.
"People are standing up, risking everything, to protest the sale of weapons that have slaughtered millions," said one activist, who lamented that "instead of being celebrated as the heroes they truly are, they're met with violence."
Police in the southern Australian state of Victoria on Wednesday attacked anti-war protesters with so-called "less lethal" weapons including stun grenades, hard foam projectiles, and pepper spray outside a major international arms convention in Melbourne amid Israel's Australia-backed annihilation of Gaza.
Protesters gathered outside the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center, where the three-day Land Forces International Land Defense Exposition kicked off on Wednesday. Organizers describe the event as "the premier gateway to the land defense markets of Australia and the region, and a platform for interaction with major prime contractors from the United States and Europe."
Protest organizers—who included the groups Students for Palestine and Disrupt Wars—said the demonstration was a stand against the arms trade in general and Australia's and other countries' support for Israel, which is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.
"We're protesting to stand up for all those who have been killed by the type of weapons on display at the convention."
Protesters shouted slogans including "Free Palestine!" and "Shame!" as attendees entered the expo venue.
"We're protesting to stand up for all those who have been killed by the type of weapons on display at the convention," Students for Palestine organizer Jasmine Duff explained. "Many of the weapons inside the convention center are advertised as battle-tested. In the context of Israeli weapons firms, which are present, this means tested through killing civilians in Gaza."
Since the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, Israeli bombs and bullets have killed or maimed more than 145,000 Palestinians in Gaza. The Australian government has approved more than 300 export permits for military and dual-use equipment to Israel since 2016.
Duff said police "used serious weapons on peace activists that should be banned for use on demonstrators, including pepper spray, which is classified as a chemical weapon."
"They hit us with batons, including hitting one man so hard he had to go to hospital, and they shot us with rubber bullets," she added.
Police say they acted after some protesters pelted officers with rocks, bottles, horse manure, and a liquid substance they claimed was acid. They also said that protesters mistook hard foam projectiles for rubberized bullets. Officials said 39 people were arrested for alleged offenses including assault, obstruction, arson, and blocking roads. At least two dozen officers reportedly required medical treatment.
Human rights groups decried the heavy-handed police response to the mostly peaceful protest.
"As reports emerge of police using tear gas, pepper spray, and stun grenades during protests in Melbourne, Australia, Amnesty calls for all allegations of misuse of force to be promptly and impartially investigated," said Amnesty International Australia.
Activists said they will keep up pressure on the Australian government for as long as it supports Israel's slaughter in Gaza. The organizers of Wednesday's protest said they are planning another demonstration outside Hanwha Defence Australia, followed by a vigil in Batman Park.
"Direct action is a bedrock of democracy," Disrupt Land Forces organizer Caroline da Silva toldThe Age. "Directly acting to prevent harm is in the DNA of all people of conscience."
"The anti-militarist movement on this continent has grown and matured very rapidly since Israel's attacks on Gaza began," she added. "We are deeply committed, and we are growing stronger. Change will come."
On Tuesday, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the Labor-led government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese supports the recent decision by Britain's Labour government to suspend some arms export licenses to Israel.
"I welcome the decision of my U.K. counterpart," Wong toldThe Guardian. "It reflects what we have been advocating throughout this conflict. Palestinian civilians cannot be made to pay the price of defeating Hamas."
"This election is going to be incredibly close," said one Sunrise Movement organizer. "To win, Harris needs to show young people she will fight for us."
Up until the very last question of the debate between U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump Tuesday night, American voters heard little about fossil fuels and the climate, other than arguing over which presidential candidate is more committed to continuing fracking and its high rate of planet-heating methane emissions.
"One hour in. Still no climate questions," said journalist Emily Atkin at 10:00 pm.
But campaigners said that the brief coverage of energy and the climate emergency in the debate—which took place days after scientists reported the summer of 2024 was the hottest on record—made clearer than ever that if given a second term in office, Trump would fulfill the promise he made to oil executives earlier this year to slash the Biden-Harris' administration's climate regulations and clean energy development in favor of expanding oil and gas drilling.
Trump attacked the Biden-Harris administration for rescinding a key permit for the Keystone XL pipeline and bragged about getting "the oil business going like nobody has ever done before."
But JL Andrepont, a campaigner and analyst at 350 Action, said Harris' promises to continue fracking and statement boasting that she has helped oversee "the largest increase in domestic oil production in history" left much to be desired for U.S. voters, a majority of whom believe policymakers must do more to address the climate emergency.
"The climate crisis worsens daily, and yet Trump and VP Harris debated for 90 minutes and climate change was only mentioned at the end," said Andrepont. "We'll be upfront—the only way to ensure a safe and affordable future for Americans and beyond is to transition swiftly and justly from all fossil fuels, including fracked gas, and to renewable energy."
But while "Trump is singing 'drill baby drill' and Big Oil is holding up the mic," added Andrepont, Harris "knows that the climate crisis is real and already affecting far too many communities."
They suggested that choosing between Trump and Harris is a matter of choosing which president climate campaigners would rather push and negotiate with in order to expand renewable energy in the U.S., protect people from pollution and its threats to public health, and cut the country's greenhouse gas emissions.
"VP Harris is the only candidate who believes in climate change or even claims to represent the people, and we will hold her accountable to what that means. But we must fight for that chance," they said.
Ilie Rosenbluth, campaign manager at Oil Change U.S., added that Harris must fulfill her promise to debate viewers that as president, she would "chart a course for the future and not go backwards to the past."
"That means taking decisive action to end fossil fuels and ensuring a just transition to renewable energy," said Rosenbluth. "We need a climate president—one who will invest in clean energy, end fossil fuel subsidies, and phase out fossil fuels to protect the communities most exposed to oil and gas pollution and the climate crisis. It's time for Harris to show she can be that president.”
Rosenbluth was among those who noted that Harris' comments on fracking, which she said she would allow to continue in Pennsylvania, where the debate took place, showed her willingness to take a "dangerous [position] that will keep us on the path towards catastrophic climate impacts and continue exposing frontline communities to deadly levels of fossil fuel pollution."
As Harris reminded voters that the Inflation Reduction Act, one of President Joe Biden's signature laws, expanded leases for fracking, the cancer-causing chemicals used in the oil and gas extraction method and its release of planet-heating methane went unmentioned.
Also ignored was the fact that polls in 2020 and 2021 showed majorities of Pennsylvanians opposed fracking.
What Harris could have said, Elizabeth Sawin of the Multisolving Institute wrote, was: "We are going to ban fracking because it is bad for air, water, people, and climate. Then we are going to take care of the people who are employed in that sector, helping them re-skill for jobs in the clean economy with good healthcare, childcare, and pay."
In a move that one climate leader said summed up "the American mainstream media's approach to the issue," co-moderator Linsey Davis of ABC News asked the candidates in the debate's final moments what they would each do to fight climate change.
Trump said nothing about the climate emergency in response to the question—instead accusing Biden of sending manufacturing jobs overseas and alluding to a debunked claim about money the president's son received from the wife of a Russian official.
Harris noted that Trump has previously called the climate crisis "a hoax" and acknowledged people who have faced the destruction of extreme weather in the U.S., and pointed to the investments the Biden administration has made in "a clean energy economy."
While Trump made clear that he would "give oil and gas CEOs exactly what they want," said Stevie O'Hanlon, communications director for the Sunrise Movement, Harris overall "missed a critical opportunity to lay out a stark contrast with Trump and show young voters that she will stand up to Big Oil and stop the climate crisis."
The Sunrise Movement has not endorsed Harris but has launched a voter outreach campaign supporting Harris, with a plan to knock on 1.5 million doors in swing states, and O'Hanlon reported that "we hear people asking every day, 'What are Democrats going to do for us?'"
"Young voters want more from Harris. We want to see a real plan that meets the scale and urgency of this crisis. Seventy-eight percent of young voters in key swing states say climate change is a major issue shaping their vote," said O'Hanlon. "This election is going to be incredibly close... To win, Harris needs to show young people she will fight for us."U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal said that "we cannot simply accept" the Israeli military's claim that its killing of Aysenur Eygi was "an accident."
U.S. President Joe Biden faced furious backlash on Tuesday after regurgitating the Israeli military's claim that its killing of an American citizen in the occupied West Bank last week was accidental, a narrative that eyewitnesses have denied.
Speaking to reporters, Biden said the killing of 26-year-old human rights activist Aysenur Eygi—a recent graduate of the University of Washington—was "apparently an accident," adding that the bullet that struck her in the head "ricocheted off the ground."
U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) denounced Biden's statement as "unacceptable" and "outrageous."
"We cannot simply accept the IDF's version that this was an 'accident,'" said Jayapal. "We do not know that, it's why we need an independent investigation. What accountability will there be when we keep supplying the weapons against our own laws?"
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said in response to Biden's remarks that "if you are an American, your president not only provides Israel with the bullets that Israel uses to kill you."
"Not only does he not object after Israel has killed you," he continued. "Much worse, he even comes up with insulting excuses to exonerate Israel for murdering you."
The U.S. president's comments mirrored a statement issued earlier Tuesday by the IDF, which said its internal inquiry "found that it is highly likely" that Eygi "was hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her" but at another demonstrator whom the Israeli military described as "the key instigator" of a "riot."
"This was no accident and her killers must be held accountable."
Eyewitnesses have disputed the Israeli military's characterization of the moments before the IDF fatally shot Eygi.
Haaretzreported Sunday that it spoke to three eyewitnesses who said that Israeli soldiers shot Eygi "for no reason" and that "there had been no clashes at the time."
"First we heard a shot and it hit a dumpster that two volunteers were sitting behind and then there was a shot that hit Aysenur in the head," one eyewitness, identified as an American told the Israeli newspaper. "I was immediately just so shocked when I saw her laying on the ground, not moving. It was a direct shot to the head, it was not an accident. She was being extra safe out of all of the volunteers, she and her friends were standing the furthest back, in the safest spot that we thought."
Hours after echoing the Israeli military's findings, Biden issued a statement Wednesday saying he was "outraged and deeply saddened by the death of Aysenur Eygi," adding that "the shooting that led to her death is totally unacceptable."
The president went on to once again cite the results of Israel's internal investigation, noting that it indicated Eygi's killing "was the result of a tragic error resulting from an unnecessary escalation."
While pledging to "continue to stay in close contact with Israeli and Palestinian authorities regarding the circumstances that led to Aysenur's death" and calling for "full accountability," Biden did not pledge to launch a U.S. investigation.
Kamala Harris, the vice president and Democratic nominee, released a separate statement Wednesday calling Eygi's killing "a horrific tragedy that never should have happened."
"Israel's preliminary investigation indicated it was the result of a tragic error for which the IDF is responsible," Harris added. "We will continue to press the government of Israel for answers and for continued access to the findings of the investigation so we can have confidence in the results. There must be full accountability."
Eygi's family, which has pushed Biden to order an independent probe of their loved one's killing, said Tuesday that the U.S. president has yet to call to offer his condolences directly.
Hamid Ali, Eygi's partner, said Tuesday that "for four days, we have waited for President Biden to pick up the phone and do the right thing: To call us, offer his condolences, and let us know that he is ordering an independent investigation of the killing of Aysenur."
"This was no accident," Ali added, "and her killers must be held accountable."