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For Immediate Release
February, 25 2013, 11:00pm EDT
Contact:
Eleanor Bravo, Food & Water Watch, ebravo@fwwatch.org, 505-730-8474
Senate Bill Introduced to Stop Fracking in New Mexico
In the wake of a recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report that identified ConocoPhillips' San Juan Basin operations in Northwest New Mexico as the second-most prolific greenhouse-gas polluter in the nation among onshore oil and gas systems, Senator William Soules (D-37 Dona Ana) has introduced a bill to prohibit horizontal hydraulic fracturing in New Mexico. Senate Bill 547 would amend the Oil and Gas Act to prohibit the controversial practice best known as fracking.
Albuquerque, NM
In the wake of a recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report that identified ConocoPhillips' San Juan Basin operations in Northwest New Mexico as the second-most prolific greenhouse-gas polluter in the nation among onshore oil and gas systems, Senator William Soules (D-37 Dona Ana) has introduced a bill to prohibit horizontal hydraulic fracturing in New Mexico. Senate Bill 547 would amend the Oil and Gas Act to prohibit the controversial practice best known as fracking.
"It is critical that this act take effect immediately to protect New Mexico's natural heritage and the health of New Mexicans," said Senator Soules. "We just don't know enough about the impact fracking has on the long term health of our land. Once the health of our land and people is compromised, it is nearly impossible to restore. New Mexico deserves a healthy future, and fracking jeopardizes that future."
Fracking, the horizontal drilling technique in which operators inject millions of gallons of chemically laced fluid at high pressure into rock formations to force the release of oil and gas, is exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act. While the oil and gas industry has been fracking in New Mexico for decades, current techniques are more intensive and dangerous and have prompted a drilling frenzy facilitated by a lack of government oversight.
"Despite thousands of cases of water contamination near drilling sites across New Mexico, documented human health risks, and the litany of 'fraccidents' across the state and country growing every day, it's hard to believe that federal and state regulators continue to turn a blind eye to the problems caused by fracking," said Eleanor Bravo, New Mexico organizer for the consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch. "New Mexico's air, water, soil and public health are not commodities to be squandered for the sole purpose of bolstering oil and gas companies' bottom lines. This is why several New Mexico municipalities are working to pass local ban ordinances and why we need SB 547 to pass."
This week, Food & Water Watch is gathering petitions from New Mexicans across the state in support of SB 547. The bill has been referred to three committees: Senate Conservation, Senate Corporations & Transportation and Senate Finance, and is expected to be heard this week.
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.
(202) 683-2500LATEST NEWS
53 Migrants Dead or Missing After Boat Capsizes Off Coast of Libya: UN Agency
The UN’s International Organization for Migration warned that it “does not consider Libya to be a safe port for migrants.”
Feb 09, 2026
A United Nations agency said on Monday that 53 migrants are dead or missing after their boat capsized off the coast of Libya.
According to the UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM), the boat carrying the migrants capsized in "perishingly cold waters of the central Mediterranean Sea, north of the coastal town of Zuwara" on Friday.
At least two women, originally from Nigeria, survived the shipwreck and were rescued by Libyan authorities.
However, the rescued women offered little hope for finding other survivors, as one said her husband drowned, while the other said she lost both of her children who were aboard the vessel.
IOM noted that at least 375 migrants were reported dead or missing while journeying in the central Mediterranean Sea last month alone, and the agency said there are likely "many more tragedies" that have gone unrecorded.
In 2025, IOM reported 1,342 migrants dead or missing while traveling through the central Mediterranean.
IOM also warned migrants about trying to reach their destinations by traveling through Libya.
"IOM does not consider Libya to be a safe port for migrants," the agency said. "Investigations indicate that the victims had been held in captivity and subjected to torture to coerce ransom payments from their families."
The agency pointed to a recent raid of an underground facility in the region of Kufra, where authorities freed more than 200 migrants who had been detained by traffickers.
"Initial information suggests that the migrants had been held for a prolonged period in grossly inhumane conditions," IOM said of the facility.
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Meet the $165 Billion 'Annoyance Economy' That Drives You Nuts—and Sucks Us Dry—All Year Long
"While seemingly minor, these little annoyances add up."
Feb 09, 2026
Corporate profits in the US have surged in recent decades, with subscription-based businesses reporting some of the biggest revenue growth as more Americans use streaming services and sign up for "subscribe and save" models in a quest for ease and convenience.
While promising consumers that subscribing to a service will save them money and time, subscription-based businesses have made canceling the services increasingly difficult, contributing to Americans spending 60% longer on the phone with customer service lines than they did two decades ago.
And although corporations hardly need the extra money, making cancellations more arduous for customers can boost their revenue by anywhere from 14% to over 200%, according to the think tank Groundwork Collaborative, which released a report Monday on what it calls "the annoyance economy."
The labyrinthine processes that millions of Americans face each year when they try to cancel subscription services is just one part of the annoyance economy, according to Groundwork, which detailed the seemingly endless time, money, and patience people spend "just trying to get basic things done"—as well as efforts by corporations and the Trump administration to make sure it stays that way.
While millions are struggling with the rising costs of groceries, healthcare, housing, childcare, and just about everything else, the report explains how—thanks to corporate greed and a White House intent on enabling it—Americans are also shelling out at least $165 billion per year in fees as well as lost time.
In addition to cancellation processes, the annoyance economy includes the $90 billion people across the US spend every year on junk fees when they buy concert tickets, make hotel reservations, and order food delivery; rental application fees that keep people from even attempting to move to new housing that could put them closer to work or school; and administrative healthcare tasks like obtaining coverage information and resolving questions about premiums and deductibles.
"While seemingly minor, these little annoyances add up," wrote Groundwork policy fellow Chad Maisel and Stanford University economist Neale Mahoney, the authors of the report, who cited a 2019 survey that found 1 in 4 respondents delayed getting healthcare or avoided it altogether specifically because of the administrative tasks they had to complete in order to get an appointment and make sure it was covered.
"All told, American workers collectively spend about $21.6-billion-worth of time each year dealing with healthcare administration, between calls, claims, explanations, and paperwork, according to a recent analysis."
Another new poll from Data for Progress found that nearly 80% of Americans reported "at least a little frustration" when coordinating their healthcare and filling out health insurance paperwork.
"All told, American workers collectively spend about $21.6-billion-worth of time each year dealing with healthcare administration, between calls, claims, explanations, and paperwork," reads the report, citing another recent analysis. "Polling confirms this: More than 1 in 3 Americans report dealing with health insurance headaches more than 20 times per year."
With frustration over health insurance companies' practices increasingly common, reads the report, "policymakers are missing important opportunities to take on a handful of egregious and particularly annoying practices."
Lawmakers could require insurance companies to make it easy for patients to fill out and submit claims online—instead of downloading, printing, and physically mailing claim forms with itemized receipts as Cigna requires patients to do.
Congress could also create a "healthcare sludge unit" to monitor and root out "needless friction throughout the healthcare experience."
Such a project could leverage tools "like 'blind shopper' experiments, public feedback lines, and direct engagement with industry to surface and fix barriers that waste patients’ time and erode trust."
The report also takes on the spam texts and calls that have become all-to-familiar to anyone with a cellphone.
"Text messaging, once reserved for conversation with friends and family, now resembles our email spam folders, dominated by unsolicited offers from companies, politicians, and fraudsters," wrote Maisel and Mahoney, who shared that on the day they wrote about spam in the report, "one of us received five spam calls, a text from 'Victoria' offering a $500-a-day job, and two breathless fundraising messages from political candidates we’ve never supported—or even heard of."
Those spam communications were some of the more than 130 million scam and illegal marketing calls Americans receive each day and the nearly 20 billion texts that were sent each month over the past year—leading "virtually all respondents" to Data for Progress' poll to report that the calls and texts are at least "a little frustrating" and 68% call them "very frustrating."
State and federal lawmakers could and should take action against spam calls and texts, said Maisel and Mahoney. Congress should modernize the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which was passed in 1991—well before companies began inundating Americans' inboxes with the newest robocalling and texting software.
"If a platform automatically dials from a stored list of numbers, it’s now exempt from the TCPA’s rules," reads the report. "The result: far more robocall and spam text operations can legally target people without their consent. Congress should update the definition of autodialer to include any callers and texters who automatically contact stored numbers, unless there’s real human involvement in sending each message."
Former President Joe Biden's Federal Communications Commission tried to close the "lead generator loophole,” which allows third-party marketers to collect people's contact information and sell it to dozens, sometimes hundreds, of businesses, but companies sued over the FCC's action and won in court.
President Donald Trump could issue an executive order directing federal agencies "to leverage all available resources and authorities to end robocalls and spam texts once and for all," said Maisel and Mahoney.
But the authors noted that the Trump administration's mass layoffs across the government would make enforcement more difficult.
"The Department of Justice also needs to prioritize enforcement against bad actors," they wrote. "While the FCC can levy fines for violations, it cannot pursue their collection without the DOJ. Of the eight robocalling forfeiture orders referred by the FCC, the DOJ has pursued only two for collection."
In the case of the hoops consumers are made to jump through in order to cancel subscriptions and services, the report emphasizes that the federal government has made significant inroads before to help the public.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) intervened in 2023 and stopped Toyota Motor Credit from continuing its practice of routing all consumer calls through a hotline "where representatives were instructed to keep promoting products until a consumer asked to cancel three times, at which point they were told cancellation was only possible by submitting a written request."
Under the Biden administration, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was lauded by consumer advocates for its click-to-cancel rule in 2024, requiring sellers to “make it as easy for consumers to cancel their enrollment as it was to sign up."
But Trump's FTC last year delayed implementation of the rule after industry groups said that "it would take a substantial amount of time to come into compliance.” A federal appeals court then effectively killed the rule altogether.
While the fees that gradually trickle out of Americans' bank accounts into the annoyance economy are often small individually, the report emphasizes that they add up—and the consequences of these business practices and the government's failure to stop them "extend beyond wasted time and money."
"When life is reduced to jumping through an endless series of hoops—just to fix a billing error, secure a refund, or cancel a subscription—it breeds cynicism and disengagement," reads the report. "If the government can remove even a few of those obstacles, we can show the American people that someone is paying attention and begin the long process of rebuilding public trust."
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Massie Threatens to Go 'Nuclear' and Reveal Epstein Client Names If Bondi Won't Unredact Them
After getting the opportunity to view the unredacted files, Rep. Thomas Massie threatened to read the names on the House floor to secure justice for survivors.
Feb 09, 2026
With 3 million Jeffrey Epstein files still being withheld from the public and the names of many possible clients and co-conspirators still blacked out, Rep. Thomas Massie is threatening to invoke what he has called a "nuclear option" to force transparency from President Donald Trump's Department of Justice.
Massie (R-Ky.), who has pushed harder than any other Republican for the release of the files pertaining to the late sex criminal and his circle of powerful friends, will join Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to view unredacted versions of the DOJ files on Monday.
Under a law introduced by Massie and Khanna last year, which Congress passed almost unanimously, the DOJ was required to release all files to the public in December without redacting information solely to protect public figures from embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.
But millions still remain under lock and key, while those made public, including a tranche of more than 3 million released late last month, are heavily redacted.
Rep. Thomas Massie and I have requested a meeting with Todd Blanche to ask why the senders of these emails have been redacted. Concealing the reputations of these powerful men is a blatant violation of the Epstein Transparency Act we passed.
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— Ro Khanna (@rokhanna.bsky.social) February 5, 2026 at 4:10 PM
Those files contained many references to Trump as well as other powerful figures, including former President Bill Clinton, tech billionaires Elon Musk and Bill Gates, and former British ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson.
Meanwhile, files containing compromising mentions of Trump were uploaded to the site before being swiftly deleted—including a list of unverified FBI tips that described the president participating in the heinous abuse of children.
In a Sunday appearance on CNN‘s “Inside Politics,” Massie accused the Trump administration of violating the law by failing to meet the deadline for the public release of information and by releasing the names of victims while covering up the names of alleged perpetrators.
He said that of particular interest were the FBI’s 302 files, which contain information from official interviews with witnesses and victims of Epstein’s abuse, which he said the DOJ is still withholding.
He also said the DOJ was “overredacting” documents related to “some really sketchy emails” between Epstein and associates, on which “we can’t see who the sender was.”
Massie said that Attorney General Pam Bondi "will be in front of my committee," referring to the House Judiciary Committee, on Wednesday to answer questions about the release of the files.
He said he plans to ask her why the rest of the documents have not been released, why—even with the delays that purportedly gave officials time to ensure victims' identifying information was redacted—they still published the names of some victims, and what information has been redacted from the files.
Asked by anchor Manu Raju how he would respond if the DOJ continued to flout the law, Massie said he was prepared to begin reading off the names of Epstein's clients on the House floor, provided the victims "believe that the best way to get justice is to force the DOJ to release these names."
Massie also remarked on the revelation in the latest batch of files that Trump's commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, who'd claimed to have cut ties with Epstein back in 2005, had actually continued a business and personal relationship with him years after he'd been convicted of sex crimes in 2008. This included joint business ventures, dinner gatherings, and a planned trip to Epstein's infamous private island in 2012.
Asked whether Lutnick should testify before the Judiciary Committee, Massie instead said, "No, he should just resign."
He said that Mandelson and the former Prince Andrew, another prominent Epstein associate who was stripped of his royal title, have resigned in disgrace from their posts "for less than Lutnick lied about."
On Friday, amid mounting pressure from lawmakers and the public, the DOJ sent a letter to members of Congress—obtained by the Associated Press—informing them that they could inspect the documents.
Legislators were required to give the DOJ 24 hours' notice before arriving and will be required to view the documents in a tightly-controlled "reading room." They are also barred from creating electronic copies of the files for distribution, but they may take notes.
In a post to social media Sunday, Massie called on inquisitive followers to point out which concerning documents they want him to scrutinize, saying those that receive the most "likes" will be his first priority.
Among the documents that have garnered the most outrage and demands for transparency are:
- A 2014 email in which a person, whose name has been redacted, thanked Epstein "for a fun night" and told him "your littlest girl was a little naughty";
- Another 2014 email in which a person, whose name has been redacted, said they were giving Epstein "permission to kill" an unspecified person;
- A 2009 email in which a person, whose name has been redacted, told Epstein they "loved the torture video";
- And a heavily redacted federal prosecution memo, sent after Epstein's death in 2019 to then-US Attorney Geoffrey Berman, which discusses investigative steps and possible liability of Epstein's associates, and several uninvestigated claims relating to complicity and participation in his crimes. That file was deleted shortly after being uploaded to the DOJ website.
On the same day that lawmakers will review the DOJ's files, Epstein's convicted accomplice Ghislane Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for the sex-trafficking of minors, refused to answer questions from the House Oversight Committee about who else was involved in Epstein's abuse, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
As Khanna pointed out, she did not do this in July when she privately answered questions from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Khanna has sent a letter to House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) containing a list of questions for Maxwell about any knowledge she has of other co-conspirators, the extent of Epstein's and Trump's involvement, and whether Trump offered her a pardon in exchange for her silence.
"The American people will see that there's an inconsistency," Khanna told reporters on Monday. "Why didn't she plead the Fifth when Blanche asked her questions, but now she's pleading the Fifth about things that don't implicate her, but may implicate many of the other powerful people in the Epstein class that committed these crimes?"
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