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Amnesty International today urged Israel
to completely lift without delay its blockade on Gaza, which imposes a
collective punishment on 1.4 million Palestinians in clear violation of
international law.
On Thursday, the Israel cabinet announced that the blockade would be
eased, allowing more of what it terms "civilian goods" into the
impoverished territory where 4 out of 5 people are dependent on
international aid.
Amnesty International today urged Israel
to completely lift without delay its blockade on Gaza, which imposes a
collective punishment on 1.4 million Palestinians in clear violation of
international law.
On Thursday, the Israel cabinet announced that the blockade would be
eased, allowing more of what it terms "civilian goods" into the
impoverished territory where 4 out of 5 people are dependent on
international aid.
"This announcement makes it clear that Israel is not intending to
end its collective punishment of Gaza's civilian population, but only
ease it. This is not enough," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty
International's director for the Middle East and North Africa.
"Any step that will help reduce the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza
is to be welcomed, but Israel must now comply with its obligations as
the occupying power under international law and immediately lift the
blockade."
"Just as important as allowing goods into Gaza is allowing exports
to leave Gaza, yet there is no mention of this in today's announcement.
Banning the vast majority of exports, raw materials and the movement of
people has destroyed the economy of Gaza, and pushed its population
into unemployment, poverty and dependency on aid agencies for
survival. These problems will not be solved while the blockade
continues."
According to media reports, Israel is to move from allowing only
listed products into Gaza, to using a list of products that will be
specifically prohibited.
It is not yet clear which products will remain prohibited and there
is also no mention of allowing the free movement of people, also a
human right under international law.
The current Israeli restrictions prevent the movement of
Palestinians through the crossing points from Gaza into Israel in all
but a handful of cases, generally in exceptional humanitarian cases.
This closure makes it extremely difficult for Palestinians in Gaza
to exit even to receive necessary medical treatment and virtually
impossible to leave for reasons such as visiting close family members
or taking up university places and jobs.
The Israeli authorities have previously put forward a range of
justifications for the blockade - saying that it is a response to
attacks from Palestinian armed groups, a reaction to the continued
holding of the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and a means to
pressure the Hamas de facto administration.
Amnesty International has strongly condemned the firing of
indiscriminate weapons by Palestinian armed groups into southern Israel
as a violation of international law, but measures limiting civilian
goods, the movement of people and virtually banning export, target the
civilian population as a whole not the armed groups in particular.
"Any restrictions imposed on the movement of people and goods into
or out of Gaza must be proportionate and non-discriminatory", said
Malcolm Smart.
"Israel may need to carry out monitoring of entry points to Gaza for
security purposes, but that monitoring must be targeted at those
suspected of posing a security threat - not to the whole population"
Background
The Gaza Strip, along with East Jerusalem and the rest of the West
Bank, was occupied by Israel in 1967. Israel has imposed increasingly
severe restrictions on Palestinian movement into and out of Gaza since
the early 1990s, including on their movement to other parts of the
Occupied Palestinian Territories. This contradicts the principle,
accepted by international community, that the West Bank, including East
Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip comprise one territorial unit and
violates the occupying power's duty to ensure the welfare of the
occupied population, as stipulated under Articles 27 and 47 of the
Fourth Geneva Convention.
Despite the withdrawal of Israeli settlers living illegally in Gaza
in 2005 (the process referred to by Israel as "disengagement") the
Israeli authorities have retained control of Gaza's airspace, its land
border with Israel and its territorial waters - as shown by its recent
military action against the humanitarian flotilla bound for Gaza in
which nine international activists were killed.
After Hamas took control in Gaza in June 2007, the existing Israeli
policy of closure was tightened to a blockade restricting the entry of
food, fuel, and other basic goods. Movement of medical cases in and out
of the area became restricted and delayed. Gazan families are not
allowed to visit relatives in Israeli jails. This situation was made
worse by the general closure of the Rafah crossing (Gaza's single
crossing point with Egypt) to daily use by the Egyptian authorities.
After 2007 Rafah was opened only intermittently to allow some
occasional movement.
Following Israel's military action on 31 May 2010 against the aid
flotilla in international waters outside Gaza, the Egyptian authorities
announced they were opening the Rafah crossing point 'indefinitely'.
However, Egypt has yet to permit fully free passage of Palestinians
into its territory, allowing entry only to Palestinians with specially
obtained permits.
As the occupying power, Israel bears the foremost responsibility for ensuring the welfare of the inhabitants of Gaza.
Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights for all. Our supporters are outraged by human rights abuses but inspired by hope for a better world - so we work to improve human rights through campaigning and international solidarity. We have more than 2.2 million members and subscribers in more than 150 countries and regions and we coordinate this support to act for justice on a wide range of issues.
"Trump explicitly promised voters he would slash utility bills by half within the first year, yet in the first nine months of his term, they surged," said the author of Public Citizen's new report.
Underscoring expert warnings that exporting liquefied natural gas not only worsens the climate emergency but also drives up energy prices for Americans, Public Citizen revealed Tuesday that as LNG exports surged under the Trump administration, US households paid $12 billion more in utility bills from January through September than they did last year.
In other words, "the costs borne by residential consumers in the first nine months of 2025 are up 22%," or an average of $124 per family, according to an analysis of federal data by Tyson Slocum, director of the consumer advocacy group's Energy Program and author of the new report. "LNG exports are also up 22% over that same time."
His report highlights President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign pledges, pointing to a Newsweek op-ed and various speeches across the country. Slocum said in a statement that "Trump explicitly promised voters he would slash utility bills by half within the first year, yet in the first nine months of his term, they surged, squeezing some of the country's most vulnerable households."
Now, "1 in 6 Americans—21 million households—are behind on their energy bills," which "are rising at twice the rate of inflation," the report states. "Even registered Republican voters are increasingly blaming President Trump for the affordability crisis."
"Limiting or prohibiting LNG exports would provide immediate relief for households across the country, but it would require action from the White House."
It's not just "higher domestic natural gas prices, driven primarily by record LNG exports," affecting US utility prices, the report acknowledges. Other factors include "electric transmission and distribution costs, which include extreme weather and wildfire liabilities. These costs are administered by state or federal regulators and have been exacerbated by climate change."
"Electricity demand load growth, driven by the rise of artificial intelligence data centers, along with transportation electrification," is also having an impact, the document details. Additionally, "Trump's unprecedented cancellation and revocation of billions of dollars of permitted renewable energy projects, combined with his unlawful abuse of emergency authorities to impose punitive tariffs, have injected chaos into domestic supply chains, stifling domestic investment in energy infrastructure."
As the report explains:
Of these four factors, record natural gas exports not only represent the largest impact on natural gas prices, but feature clear statutory solutions to help protect consumers. The Natural Gas Act—passed by Congress during the Great Depression—asserts in Section 1 that "the business of transporting and selling natural gas for ultimate distribution to the public is affected with a public interest," with the US Supreme Court affirming that the "primary aim" of this 87-year-old law is "to protect consumers against exploitation at the hands of natural gas companies." Section 3 of the law forbids exports of natural gas unless the Department of Energy determines the exports to non-Free Trade Agreement countries are "consistent with the public interest."
Rather than living up to those obligations, Slocum said, "Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have acted as global gas salesmen, traveling to Europe to push exports and gut European methane regulations while attacking mainstream climate science. Meanwhile, Trump has done nothing to keep prices down at home."
"Limiting or prohibiting LNG exports would provide immediate relief for households across the country, but it would require action from the White House," he added. "Trump would need to stand up to some of his fossil fuel donors to make our energy more affordable."
It's not just Public Citizen pushing for action by the president. US Sen. Edward Markey (D–Mass.)—the upper chamber's leading champion of the Green New Deal—joined a press event for the group's new report. He stressed that "record-breaking levels of natural gas exports are breaking the bank on your monthly energy bill."
Public Citizen released the report just a day after Bloomberg also noted what the export boom means for US energy prices.
"We have been talking about, in apocalyptic terms, for a decade now when the world would start taking away America's cheap gas," Peter Gardett, CEO of Noreva, an energy trading platform specializing in power, told Bloomberg. "Well, we're here."
"Do you believe that these guys, these multibillionaires, are staying up at night, worrying about what AI and robotics will do to working families?"
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday called for a moratorium on the construction of new artificial intelligence data centers in the US amid growing nationwide backlash.
In a video posted on social media, Sanders (I-Vt.) explained why it's time for the government to hit the brakes AI data center projects, which have drawn protests all over the country for driving up electric bills and draining communities' water supplies.
Sanders began the video by acknowledging that AI has the potential to be a truly transformative technology, before noting that those who are pushing for its rapid development the most were the wealthiest people on the planet, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel.
"So here is a very simple question I'd like you to think about," Sanders continued. "Do you believe that these guys, these multibillionaires, are staying up at night, worrying about what AI and robotics will do to working families of our country and the world? Well, I don't think so."
Sanders then argued that AI's biggest backers are pushing the technology to further enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else by replacing human laborers entirely with computers.
Sanders then quoted Musk, who predicted that AI and robots would "replace all jobs" in the future, and then cited a quote from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who said that "humans won't be needed for most things."
Sanders then questioned how people will survive if AI meets its backers' goals and deprives people of jobs on a mass scale. This problem is being compounded, Sanders continued, because "very few members of Congress are seriously thinking about this."
In addition to discussing AI's potential to vastly undermine working people's economic power, he also touched on its social implications, and said he was concerned that "millions of kids in this country are becoming more and more isolated from real human relationships, and are getting their emotional support from AI."
"Think for a moment about a future where human beings are not interacting with each other," he said. "Is that the kind of future you want? Well, not me."
Sanders concluded by arguing that the push to advance and integrate AI is "moving very, very quickly," and without proper considerations for the economic and social impacts it will have.
The Vermont senator argued for his proposed moratorium on data center construction to give "democracy a chance to catch up with the transformative changes we are witnessing."
Sanders' message on data centers came on the same day that MLive reported that both Republican and Democratic politicians in Michigan have been rallying against the construction of more data centers, which have been championed by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
During a Tuesday anti-data center rally, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel slammed plans to build a 2.2-million-square-foot data center in Saline Township, and pointed to electric service company DTE's efforts to rush through the construction approval process as reason enough to oppose it.
“Do you guys trust DTE?" she asked. "Do you trust OpenAI? Do you trust Oracle to look out for our best interests here in Michigan?"
Republican gubernatorial candidate Anthony Hudson told MLive that he shared Nessel's criticism of the data center plan, and he questioned whether Michigan residents would see any economic benefit from it.
"They don’t support local job growth," he said of the data centers. "They pull millions of gallons of water a day, and they’re going to strain the power grid that’s already crippled. And once they’ve made their money, like Dana Nessel said, they’re going to leave."
Earlier this month, more than 230 environmental advocacy groups, led by Food and Water Watch, demanded a moratorium on building new data centers, which they said consumed unsustainable amounts of water and electricity, while also worsening the global climate emergency.
"This is self-sabotage by a wildly ignorant and malicious administration cutting off their nose to spite their face," said one hurricane researcher.
One US House Democrat pledged Tuesday night that Colorado officials will fight the Trump administration's latest attack on science "with every legal tool that we have" after top White House budget adviser Russell Vought announced a decision to break up a crucial climate research center in Boulder.
Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) called the decision to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) "a deeply dangerous" action.
"NCAR is one of the most renowned scientific facilities in the WORLD—where scientists perform cutting-edge research every day," said Neguse. "We will fight this reckless directive."
Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said the National Science Foundation (NSF), which contracts the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) to run NCAR, "will be breaking up" the center and has begun a "comprehensive review," with "vital activities such as weather research" being moved to another entity.
He added that NCAR is "one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.”
But scientists pointed to the center's 65-year history of making major advances in climate research and developing systems that scientists use regularly.
NCAR developed GPS dropsondes, which are dropped from the center's aircraft into the eye of hurricanes to gather crucial data and improve forecasts, as well as severe weather warnings and analyses of the economic impacts that weather can bring, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, told USA Today, which first reported on the plan to dismantle the facility.
Neguse also called the decision to shutter NCAR "blatantly retaliatory." The breakup of the center was announced days after President Donald Trump announced his plan to pardon Tina Peters, despite uncertainty over his authority to do so. The former county clerk was convicted in Colorado court on felony charges of allowing someone to access secure voting system data—part of an effort to prove the baseless conspiracy theory pushed by Trump that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.
Trump attacked Colorado's Democratic governor, Jared Polis, over the Peters case last week, calling him "incompetent" and "pathetic."
Also on Tuesday, the administration announced it was canceling $109 million in environmental transportation grants for Colorado that were aimed at boosting investment in electric vehicles, rail improvements, and other research.
Writer Benjamin Kunkel said the dismantling of NCAR is evidently "what happens to a state whose leading officials do accept climate science... and don't accept that Trump won the 2020 election."
Polis said Tuesday that his government had not received any communication from the White House about the NCAR review and dismantling, but "if true, public safety is at risk and science is being attacked."
"Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science," he said. "NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”
The White House Tuesday said it objected to UCAR's "woke direction," including its efforts to "make the sciences more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered" via the Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences and wind turbine research that aims to "better understand and predict the impact of weather conditions and changing climate on offshore wind production.”
The administration also said the review of NCAR will eliminate "green new scam research activities"—green energy research completed by many of the center's 830 employees.
Climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe warned that the dismantling of NCAR was an attack on "quite literally our global mothership."
"NCAR supports the scientists who fly into hurricanes, the meteorologists who develop new radar technology, the physicists who envision and code new weather models, and yes—the largest community climate model in the world," said Hayhoe. "Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet."
Hurricane specialist Michael Lowry said the center is "crucial to cutting-edge meteorology and improvements in weather forecasting."
"It's far, far bigger than a 'climate' research lab," he said. "This is self-sabotage by a wildly ignorant and malicious administration cutting off their nose to spite their face."
The president this year has also pushed massive cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where major climate and weather research takes place. The cuts have come as 2024 has been named the hottest year on record and scientists have warned that planetary heating has contributed to recent weather disasters.
“Any plans to dismantle NSF NCAR," UCAR president Antonio Busalacchi told the Washington Post, "would set back our nation’s ability to predict, prepare for, and respond to severe weather and other natural disasters."