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For Immediate Release
January, 24 2021, 11:00pm EDT
Contact:
Laurie van der Burg, laurie@priceofoil.org (Brussels)
Collin Rees, collin@priceofoil.org (Washington, DC)
Alex Doukas, alex@priceofoil.org (Washington, DC)
EU Foreign Ministers Commit to Push for End to Fossil Fuel Subsidies and Finance; Pressure Builds on United States to Follow Suit
EU foreign ministers commit to push for end to fossil fuel subsidies and finance; pressure builds on United States to follow suit.
Brussels
In a move to put climate change at the center of its foreign policy, today European Union ministers adopted new priorities on climate and energy diplomacy.
Specifically, the EU committed to: " [D]iscourage all further investments into fossil fuel based energyinfrastructure projects in third countries, unless they are fully consistent with an ambitious, clearly defined pathway towards climate neutrality in line with the long-term objectives of the Paris Agreement and best available science."
In addition, the EU called for a phase-out of environmentally harmful fossil fuel subsidies on a clear timeline, committed to scale up the mobilization of international climate finance, and committed to develop and support a just transition away from unabated coal towards climate neutrality. In response to this news, Oil Change International representatives released the following statements.
Laurie van der Burg, Brussels-based Senior Campaigner at Oil Change International:
"Ending government support for fossil fuels is a no-brainer. Globally, governments are still propping up fossil fuels with huge sums of public money, behaviour that is incompatible with keeping global warming below 1.5oC. President Biden has committed to end fossil fuel subsidies and dirty energy finance, and in December, the UK announced an end to their overseas public finance for fossil fuel. This creates a powerful opportunity for the EU, UK, and US to collaborate to finally end government-backed finance for oil, gas, and coal ahead of the UK-hosted UN climate summit in November.
"For effective diplomacy on this issue, the EU must take action at home, and close loopholes for continued EU support for fossil fuels, including for gas. The phase-out of the European Investment Bank's support to oil and gas was an important breakthrough, but EU fossil fuel subsidies continue to run into the hundreds of billions per year. Member States are still pushing for fossil gas to be labelled as a 'transition fuel' in the EU green list for sustainable investments. For the EU to lead this agenda at the international level, it must set the right example and phase out all government support for fossil fuels."
Collin Rees, Washington, DC-based Senior Campaigner at Oil Change International:
"Today's commitment by the European Union to end overseas investment in oil, gas, and coal projects is yet another indication that the fossil fuel era is over. As a new administration takes power in Washington, this is a powerful signal that clean energy is ascendant and that the EU stands willing to work with President Biden and others to end all finance for dirty energy.
"Biden should act boldly on his campaign commitments to end finance for dirty energy projects. By building on past commitments to end coal finance and extending this to oil and gas, Biden can join the EU and UK in transforming international finance to address the challenges of the next century, not prop up the remnants of the last century's infrastructure."
Oil Change International is a research, communications, and advocacy organization focused on exposing the true costs of fossil fuels and facilitating the ongoing transition to clean energy.
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Senate Urged to Ditch ‘Corrupt and Indefensible’ Blanche as Trump Threatens to Pull Nomination
"He has spent his career proving that there is no legal principle he will not bend and no institution he will not compromise in service of Donald Trump."
Jul 30, 2026
President Donald Trump on Thursday said he would consider withdrawing his nomination of Todd Blanche to be US attorney general if two Republican senators refused to vote for his confirmation.
However, Trump indicated in a social media post that this would only be a temporary retreat, as he vowed to renominate Blanch, who had previously served as the president's personal attorney, after Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) are out of office when their terms at the start of next year.
Cornyn and Tillis said they would not vote to support Blanche unless he assured them that the DOJ under his leadership would not reconstitute the widely criticized $1.8 billion slush fund created for allies of the president who were supposedly hurt by the "weaponization" of the department under former President Joe Biden.
The Republican senators also want limits on Internal Revenue Service audit protections for Trump and his family, which were proposed as part of a deal to settle the president’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS.
In a Thursday interview with NOTUS reporter Igor Bobic, Tillis expressed bewilderment at Trump's refusal to rule out restarting the slush fund, which he said was damaging the Republican Party's chances of holding onto Congress in the 2026 midterms.
"It makes no sense to me," Tillis said. "This is not popular. The president's not winning on this issue. It is killing some of our candidates because they can't explain it. And now it looks like they weren't being honest when they said it was inoperative."
Trump critics urged the Senate to permanently bury Blanche's aspirations of becoming attorney general. (Blanche currently serves as acting head of the Justice Department.)
The social media account for Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee called on the US Senate to "reject this dangerous nomination for good and demand an attorney general who serves the Constitution and the American people, not Donald Trump and the Epstein class."
"Todd Blanche sealed his fate by refusing to disavow Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund for cop-beating MAGA foot soldiers," the House Judiciary Democrats noted, "or retract his family-sized super pardon for the Trumps and all their businesses."
Joel Payne, chief communications officer for MoveOn Political Action, said that Blanche's nomination deserved to be killed "because his record is corrupt and indefensible."
"He has spent his career proving that there is no legal principle he will not bend and no institution he will not compromise in service of Donald Trump," Payne said. "His blind loyalty, willingness to use the justice system to protect the president, and role in a sweetheart settlement benefiting Trump make him completely unfit to serve as attorney general."
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, labeled Blanche "unequivocally unfit to serve" as attorney general, as he "has enabled corruption at the highest level of government by not only permitting, but actively encouraging lawlessness, conflicts of interest, and the prioritization of the interests of the president over the interests of the American people."
"In postponing the vote, it is clear that Blanche’s nomination is hanging by a thread," Gilbert added. "Trump should concede defeat and revoke Blanche’s nomination immediately. His personal fixer must not helm the DOJ."
According to conservative legal analyst Ed Whelan, it's likely that Trump could allow Blanche to continue running the DOJ indefinitely in an acting capacity given that the US Senate already confirmed him to be deputy AG.
"It's not at all clear that the time limit under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act applies to a Deputy AG who is serving as Acting AG," Whelan wrote in a social media post. "And in any event, Blanche in his capacity as Deputy AG has virtually all of the powers of the AG. So the reality is that whether or not Blanche is confirmed as AG, he can continue to run DOJ indefinitely."
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Amnesty Warns India Risks Complicity in Gaza Genocide by Selling Arms to Israel
“The Indian government must immediately stop authorizing exports of weapons, ammunition, and parts to Israel."
Jul 30, 2026
Continued weapons exports to Israel could make India, members of its far-right government, and the country's arms firms complicit in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, an investigation published Thursday by Amnesty International warned.
Amnesty's report, Made in India: The Supply of Weapons and Ammunition to Israel, documents sustained exports of military components and materials to Israel by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, despite mounting international legal warnings that states must halt arms transfers where there is a substantial risk they could facilitate genocide or other grave violations of international law.
“Our research reveals India’s continuing support to the Israeli military and defense sector despite the genocide in Gaza, which has been broadcast worldwide on an almost daily basis for years,” Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard said in a statement introducing the report.
The investigation analyzed shipment-level trade data between India and Israel to reveal how Indian arms, ammunition, and other military components have been exported to large Israeli companies that supply the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as it wages a US-backed war that Amnesty and many other rights groups, national governments, and experts—including a United Nations commission of inquiry—contend is a genocide.
Amnesty researchers found that the 2,596 shipments of weapons, ammunition, parts, and components sent from India to Israel since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023 include 390,516 small arms parts for military-grade weapons, 564,970 parts of explosive ordnance like drone warheads and artillery shell casings, and 298 components for military vehicles.
"While the Israeli military was inflicting widespread death, destruction and suffering on Palestinians in Gaza, Indian companies continued to profit by supplying components and munitions destined for Israel’s defense sector," Callamard said.
While nowhere near the scale and scope of the tens of billions of dollars in armed aid the US has sent Israel since October 2023 under the Biden and Trump administrations—or even what other countries like Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and France export—India's military shipments to Israel have still exposed New Delhi to charges of complicity in the death or injury of more than 250,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians; the physical annihilation of Gaza; and the forced displacement and engineered starvation of millions of its people by Israel.
"India manufactures and supplies arms transferred to Israel through its ownership and control over key supplier companies," Callamard said. "Not only has India failed to regulate arms exports to Israel by private companies in line with international law and standards; it has also deepened its defense partnership with Israel."
“In light of the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures orders recognizing a plausible risk of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, the Indian authorities cannot credibly argue that they did not know that continuing to authorize and facilitate arms transfers to Israel carries a substantial risk of contributing to serious violations of international law," she added.
The ICJ is currently weighing a genocide case filed by South Africa against Israel, and has issued a series of provisional orders to prevent genocidal acts that Israel is accused of ignoring.
While India formally recognized Israel in 1950, for decades New Delhi maintained limited relations, partly due to its support for the Palestinian cause, leadership in the Non-Aligned Movement, and domestic political considerations. Full diplomatic relations weren't established until 1992.
Since then—and especially since the rise of Modi and the Hindu nationalist BJP—bilateral ties have expanded rapidly. Israel has become one of India's largest arms suppliers, selling radar systems, drones, missiles, surveillance equipment, and air defense technology. Joint military research and production have increased, as have public security, intelligence sharing, and other efforts against what both countries call terrorism committed by people resisting Israel's illegal occupation in Palestine and Indian repression in the parts of Jammu and Kashmir that New Delhi controls.
Modi and Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—have also forged close personal relations. Both leaders are right-wing nationalists who utilize religious supremacism to exclude or marginalize Muslims, and both have been accused of increasing authoritarianism, just like their common ally, US President Donald Trump. Protests against Israel's Gaza onslaught have been violently suppressed in both countries.
Prominent left-wing Indians have long condemned their government's ties with Israel.
“At a time when the ceasefire is being used as an excuse to bomb and vaporize Palestinians and occupy Gaza, the Indian government is choosing to stand with genocidal Israel and its imperialist masters like America and is working overtime to benefit the corporations from the occupation of Palestine," Indian People in Solidarity With Palestine and the India chapter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement said earlier this year in a joint statement coinciding with a Modi's visit to Israel.
Famed Indian author Arundhati Roy warned two years ago that if India did not stop arming Israel, “it will forever be complicit in aiding and abetting a genocide that is being telecast live for the world to watch.”
In her statement Tuesday, Callamard said that “the Indian government must immediately stop authorizing exports of weapons, ammunition, and parts to Israel."
"It must also ensure that companies operating under its jurisdiction do not contribute to crimes under international law," she added. "All companies have a responsibility to respect human rights throughout their global operations, which includes taking proactive and robust measures early on to ensure that their products are not involved in serious violations of international law."
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'Tell Us Where That Money Is Going': Sanders Bill Would Penalize Pentagon for Failing Audits
"We have got to end the absurdity of the Pentagon being the only major federal agency that has never passed an independent audit."
Jul 30, 2026
Bipartisan legislation reintroduced Thursday by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Grassley would impose budgetary penalties on the US Department of Defense for failing to pass a complete and independent audit.
If enacted, the Audit the Pentagon Act would withhold 2% of the budget of any Defense Department office that fails to achieve a clean audit, and the funds would be returned to the US Treasury.
The Pentagon has failed eight consecutive audits without any consequences, as lawmakers from both parties continue to approve massive budget increases each year. For fiscal year 2027, the Trump administration is seeking $1.5 trillion in total military spending as it wages war against Iran with no end in sight.
“The Pentagon has been plagued by a massive amount of waste, fraud and financial mismanagement for decades,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement on Thursday. “Year after year, the Pentagon fails an audit, and year after year, Congress hands it another blank check."
"At a moment when the administration has dragged us into an unconstitutional war with Iran and is demanding the largest military budget in our history to pay for it, the Pentagon still cannot tell us where trillions of dollars have gone," Sanders added. "We have got to end the absurdity of the Pentagon being the only major federal agency that has never passed an independent audit.”
The Audit the Pentagon Act has 10 Senate co-sponsors so far: Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).
The latest version of the bill, which was first introduced in 2021, comes as the Trump administration is seeking tens of billions of dollars in funding for the Iran war, which Congress never authorized. Experts have warned for months that the Pentagon is not being transparent about the war's financial cost, which is likely to be far higher than the department's official estimate of $37.5 billion.
“You have the largest agency in terms of discretionary spending for eight years in a row unable to explain and defend the funding that they have, and we have seen enormous examples of waste and fraud,” Sanders told NBC News in an interview. “Tell us where that money is going, period.”
In a press release, Sanders' office highlighted several examples of what it described as "waste and fraud" at the Pentagon:
- Almost $141 billion spent on a Northrop Grumman ballistic missile project that was supposed to cost $77 billion, and which is seven years behind schedule;
- More than $126 billion spent on a General Dynamics submarine program which has run $17 billion over cost. The per-sub cost has nearly doubled since 2019;
- More than $12 billion spent on one missile battery from Leidos and Dynetics that the Pentagon can’t even confirm works; and
- More than $6 billion spent over 16 years on a Raytheon project to build a GPS system. The Pentagon cancelled the project in April due to “insurmountable” problems with its product.
Earlier this month, a version of the Audit the Pentagon Act was attached to the House's National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The Senate Democratic caucus blocked the upper chamber's version of the NDAA earlier this month over President Donald Trump's illegal Iran war.
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Green Groups Rally Behind Tennessee's Justin Pearson for Congress
"Justin would be one of Congress' strongest voices protecting communities from Big Oil's pollution and climate disasters, while championing a just transition to affordable renewable energy."
Jul 30, 2026
A week away from Tennessee's Democratic primary, a coalition of national advocacy groups endorsed Justin Pearson, who is running to represent the state's 9th Congressional District in the US House of Representatives.
"Tennesseans deserve a champion who will stand up to corporate polluters and fight to ensure every community has a voice in shaping its future," said Brett Hartl, national political director at the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund. "Justin Pearson understands that strong environmental protections depend on a healthy democracy where people, not powerful special interests, hold the power to protect their communities and natural heritage."
In addition to Hartl's group, Climate Hawks Vote, Food & Water Action, Friends of the Earth Action, GrayPAC, Jane Fonda Climate PAC, Oil Change Action, and US Mobilizing for Urgent Sustainable Transformation all endorsed Pearson, who currently represents the 86th District in the Tennessee House of Representatives.
Friends of the Earth Action president Erich Pica argued that "in Congress, Justin Pearson will serve Tennessee's 9th Congressional District with integrity, devotion, and hope, at a time when this country needs all three."
"He will fight to build the green economy, securing not only jobs but also a livable world for our children and grandchildren," Pica continued. "He will work to ensure that everyone has access to healthcare, affordable housing, and clean air and clean water. He will lead on the climate crisis while others barely talk about it."
Pearson previously garnered national attention in April 2023 when he and state Rep. Justin Jones (D-52) were expelled from the GOP-controlled Tennessee House for protesting against gun violence; both ultimately won back their seats.
Since Pearson launched his campaign for Congress, demanding not only stricter gun laws but also a higher minimum wage, climate justice, affordable housing, Medicare for All, protections for immigrants, and an end to spending taxpayer dollars on war, he has picked up support from progressive organizations and leaders, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Democratic Reps. Maxwell Frost (Fla.), Ro Khanna (Calif.), Summer Lee (Pa.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Delia Ramirez (Ill.), and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.).
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act in March, and earlier this month, Pearson joined AOC, Lee, and Pressley in southwest Memphis, near a data center owned by billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceXAI and used by Anthropic. As with other communities across the country that are home to such facilities, locals are concerned about air pollution and water use.
"Justin Pearson is the kind of leader that is sorely needed in Washington. He is a genuine champion for working families, for civil rights, and for environmental justice," Thomas Meyer, deputy political director at Food & Water Action, said Thursday. "Justin's principled stand against corporate polluters, from oil and gas pipelines to Elon Musk's data center, shows that he isn't afraid to take on difficult and important fights."
💥 We’re proud to endorse Justin Pearson, a data center fighter + voting rights champ running for Congress in TN. As an organizer + state rep, Justin fought to protect his community from polluting fossil fuel projects, including an X/AI data center. Now, he's ready to take that fight to Congress.
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— Oil Change Action (@oilchangeaction.org) July 30, 2026 at 11:00 AM
The fight for the seat Pearson hopes to hold has been a key factor in Democrats' efforts to reclaim control of Congress and Republicans' attempts to keep their slim majorities, including by redrawing political maps to favor the GOP, at the command of President Donald Trump.
After the US Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority issued an April ruling that further gutted the Voting Rights Act, Tennessee Republicans "rushed to be the first to shamelessly capitalize on it," targeting the state's only majority-Black district, where Pearson is running. Despite a swiftly filed legal challenge, a three-judge panel recently allowed the rigged map to stand.
Climate Hawks Vote political director RL Miller declared Thursday that "the way we fight back against Republican gerrymandering of states like Tennessee is by electing voting rights champions."
"The way we fight back against polluters is by electing environmental justice champions," Miller said. "Justin Pearson stands for everything that matters in American politics right now, and Climate Hawks Vote is thrilled to endorse him."
In addition to highlighting his fight against the recent map rigging, Allie Rosenbluth, campaign manager at Oil Change Action, stressed that Pearson does not accept fossil fuel money or contributions from corporate political action committees.
"We are proud to endorse Justin Pearson, who has spent his career fighting for racial, economic, and environmental justice," she said. "He doesn't back down in the face of entrenched interests' efforts to suppress working people's political power, like Republicans' racist redrawing of his district. If elected, Justin would be one of Congress' strongest voices protecting communities from Big Oil’s pollution and climate disasters, while championing a just transition to affordable renewable energy."
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Hong Says as Governor, She Would Ensure Wisconsin Doesn’t Cooperate With NSPM-7
"Hong’s answers suggest a willingness to stand up to the federal government even when the odds look slim," wrote journalist Ken Klippenstein.
Jul 30, 2026
In a recent interview, Wisconsin state lawmaker Francesca Hong—the front-runner in the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary race, according to numerous polls—shared plans to counter President Donald Trump's attacks on left-wing organizers that journalist Ken Klippenstein said he had "not seen from any other candidate" running for public office.
Klippenstein, a resident of Wisconsin, sent a questionnaire on national security to the top three candidates running in the primary scheduled for August 11—Hong, a democratic socialist; former state Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes; and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who has emerged as the Democratic establishment's pick with an endorsement from Gov. Tony Evers.
Hong indicated in her response last week that should she win the primary and the November general election against GOP US Rep. Tom Tiffany, she "may be the first" governor in the US to curb the power of the state's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), which like other FBI-led task forces across the country has been directed by President Donald Trump to "coordinate and supervise" a national strategy to "investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts."
Hong said she would use her authority over state police forces as governor "to cease any cooperation with a federal joint operation task force that is designed to target American citizens exercising their civil liberties.”
Trump's directive came last year in the form of National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), which was issued in the weeks following the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. Trump declared immediately after the killing—before any investigation had taken place—that the "radical left" was to blame, and swiftly took steps to crack down on left-wing organizers, despite extensive evidence that a majority of political violence in the US is perpetrated by people on the far right.
The president signed an executive order declaring that "antifa"—which is not an organization—was a domestic terrorist group, and included in NSPM-7 a list of viewpoints held by left-wing organizers he also viewed as "domestic terrorists," including anti-capitalism; anti-Christianity; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility toward those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.
Under NSPM-7, local law enforcement agencies participate with JTTFs that were established in every state after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Less than a year after the memo was signed, NSPM-7 has "already produced results," said Klippenstein. The document underpinned the convictions of a group of activists who demonstrated against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. The activists were sentenced last month to 30-100 years in prison, with the shortest sentence going to Daniel “Des” Rolando Sanchez Estrada for moving a box that contained leftist zines to avoid incriminating his wife. Sanchez Estrada was found guilty of “corruptly concealing a document or record” under NSPM-7.
A US attorney in Minnesota also cited the directive by name when 15 anti-ICE protesters were convicted, and Klippenstein argued in January that an ICE agent's fatal shooting of protester Renee Good had "NSPM-7 written all over it,” with then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accusing Good of "domestic terrorism."
Earlier this month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that under NSPM-7, the administration had “designated four violent far-left extremist groups as foreign terrorist organizations, and there will be more designations soon.”
But in Wisconsin, Hong suggested she would discontinue the memorandum of understanding (MOU) that commits local police departments to work with the JTTF.
“These MOUs are a loophole to essentially federalize local police forces," she told Klippenstein last week in response to the questionnaire. "I do not wish to see Wisconsin become a patchwork of communities where people are unsure if they are safe depending on which side of the county line they may find themselves.”
Klippenstein credited Barnes with also responding to the questionnaire with "skepticism" of the MOUs, saying that as governor, he would "carefully review MOUs to ensure that any federal-state law enforcement cooperation is aimed squarely at keeping Wisconsinites safe, not supporting Trump’s dangerous, unconstitutional attacks on Americans whose only crime is disagreeing with him.”
Crowley did not respond to Klippenstein's questions.
Hong and Barnes also said they would not support Trump's use of Wisconsin National Guard troops in the US-Israeli war on Iran, with Hong saying she would "refuse to comply with any request from this administration that perpetuates war and genocide around the world to the extent I can."
Hong said she would file a legal challenge to stop such a deployment, and Barnes said he would also consider a lawsuit.
"Hong’s answers suggest a willingness to stand up to the federal government even when the odds look slim," wrote Klippenstein. "That stands out at a time when so many see the Democratic Party as pre-folded lawn chairs allergic to conflict. The sense I get from talking to her supporters is that this willingness to throw a punch is a big part of her appeal."
Barnes was an early favorite in the race, while Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez was seen as the candidate preferred by the Democratic establishment. Crowley dropped out of the race and endorsed Rodriguez in early July, but restarted his bid after a campaign finance controversy pushed Rodriguez to drop out.
Hong has been consistently leading in polls tracked by The New York Times since February, with the latest survey from Marquette University Law School, released on Thursday, showing her with a 25-point lead.
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Senate Dems Push Trump to Restore Blue-State Grants Canceled for Partisan Reasons
"Once an administration begins punishing Americans for how they vote, the threat extends far beyond these projects."
Jul 30, 2026
A group of 39 Democratic senators on Thursday told the Trump White House to restore grants for their states that the administration itself admitted were canceled for purely political reasons.
In a court filing earlier this month, attorneys representing the US Department of Energy (DOE) acknowledged that decisions about canceling grants for a series of renewable energy projects were based “solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State."
The Democratic senators responded with a letter to US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought demanding that the cancelations be reversed.
"You not only acted outside the bounds of the law," the senators wrote, "but cancelled projects that would have provided jobs, onshored manufacturing, and lowered skyrocketing energy prices. Congress authorized those projects and appropriated funding under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and annual appropriation bills."
Later in the letter, the senators argued that more was at stake beyond grants for green energy.
"Once an administration begins punishing Americans for how they vote, the threat extends far beyond these projects," the Democrats wrote. "No state, community, business, or worker can trust that the federal government will apply the law fairly."
"This is not only an attack on jobs, affordable energy, and America’s economic competitiveness," the Democrats added. "It is an attack on the rule of law and the basic democratic principle that the federal government serves the entire country—not merely those who support the president."
Last year, the DOE recommended canceling more than 600 grants awarded for energy projects under former President Joe Biden’s administration. However, the OMB subsequently intervened and canceled fewer than half of the recommended projects, while keeping grants for projects in states that voted for President Donald Trump.
After a group of California researchers challenged the terminated grants in a lawsuit, the DOE acknowledged that “with one exception, the 284 terminated grants had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing senators.”
The DOE also admitted that there was no “programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor” to justify the cuts.
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US Strike on Iran Kills 2-Year-Old Child and Family, Leaves Two Other Kids Beneath Rubble
Iran has reported that at least 383 children, including seven infants, had been killed in the US-Israeli war there, prior to the resumption of attacks this month.
Jul 30, 2026
A family of three, including their 2-year-old child, were killed by US strikes against a residential building in Iran's Qeshm City, according to reports from Iranian media on Thursday.
Videos posted by the official IRNA news agency showed rescue teams searching through rubble for survivors. Two other children, ages 7 and 9, were found wounded in the wreckage and have been transported to the hospital, according to the agency.
The US attack on the building in the neighborhood of Chah Tangu was one of several launched against residential areas across Qeshm Island in the Persian Gulf overnight in what US Central Command (CENTCOM) said were dozens of strikes on Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) sites across the country.
The IRGC said that it would respond to Thursday's strikes by hitting back against the “aggressor." Iranian strikes on sites in Kuwait and Jordan followed shortly after, leading to the death of a worker in a Chinese-owned building in Kuwait. Iran also claimed that its attacks destroyed US aircraft in Jordan, which has not been confirmed.
The wave of US attacks came after Trump vowed on Wednesday to "beat the fucking shit out of" Iran after it fired ballistic missiles toward US troops in Jordan, the first such strike since a brief bombing pause over the weekend. The US also partnered with Saudi Arabia to carry out attacks on Iran-backed militias in Iraq, which reportedly killed 20 fighters and six Iranian advisers.
In a statement on Thursday, CENTCOM said it had "successfully completed a heavy wave of strikes" against Iran "in response to yesterday’s attempted missile attacks on US forces." It did not specify the strategic reason for the strikes on Qeshm or acknowledge the reported civilian casualties.
According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), at least 254 children have been killed in Iran since the US and Israel launched the war on February 28, among more than 1,700 total civilians.
Iran has reported that at least 383 children, including seven infants, had been killed over the course of the war, prior to the resumption of attacks in July. With Thursday’s attacks, at least three more children have been killed since the conflict resumed this month.
Many of those casualties include at least 123 children killed by US strikes on the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab on the first day of the war. Earlier this month, Trump declined to release the findings of a Pentagon investigation into the massacre, saying it would be impossible to ever determine who was at fault.
Since restarting the war earlier this month, the US has focused its attacks on southern Iran in areas near the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has once again functionally blocked travel, despite US demands for unrestricted travel through the waterway, which carried around a fifth of the global oil supply before the war.
Trump's continued escalation comes as Americans are overwhelmingly skeptical of the war. A CNN poll released Wednesday showed that 67% of Americans believe Trump's military actions have "hurt the US" by causing oil prices to spike. Nearly three-quarters of Americans believe Trump does not “have a clear plan for handling the situation in Iran,” according to the poll.
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Hospitals See Massive Surge in Uninsured Patients After GOP's Healthcare Cuts
"We’re really crushing people who are desperately trying to pay their bills," said a chief executive at a nonprofit hospital group.
Jul 30, 2026
Months after congressional Republicans refused to extend enhanced subsidies for Americans who receive their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, hospitals across the US are seeing a surge in uninsured patients seeking emergency medical care.
According to a Thursday report in The New York Times, executives at large hospital systems have been raising alarms over "the unexpectedly sharp rise in uninsured patients and the costs associated with treating them."
With many uninsured patients unable to pay their hospital bills, the Times noted, hospitals are seeing "lost revenues amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars across the country's vast health systems."
The Times linked this surge in uninsured patients directly to the Republican-controlled Congress allowing more generous subsidies for plans purchased through the ACA to lapse at the end of 2025. Enrollment in the program has fallen by about 3 million people since last year.
"What that tells me is that there are patients who are completely unable to pay," Laura Kaiser, chief executive of Catholic nonprofit hospital group SSM Health, told the Times. "We’re really crushing people who are desperately trying to pay their bills."
Executives at Universal Health Services (UHS), a for-profit hospital operator, said during an earnings call on Tuesday that the losses they expect to incur from treating uninsured patients have been significantly higher than their initial projects.
As reported by Healthcare Dive on Wednesday, UHS had initially projected that some patients who dropped their coverage provided by the ACA would find another way to get health insurance.
However, UHS CFO Steve Filton told investors that "it felt like virtually everyone who lost their exchange coverage became an uninsured patient."
UHS is hardly alone in suffering losses due to lapsed ACA subsidies, as Axios reported on Tuesday that HCA Healthcare, the largest for-profit hospital chain in the US, is projecting a $400 million hit to revenue that is tied partially to "an influx of uninsured patients."
HCA CEO Sam Hazen said the increase in uninsured patients was a direct consequence of the GOP's refusal to extend the ACA subsidies.
"The effects, as expected, were that many people became uninsured and still needed emergency care from hospitals," Hazen said. "As we look at the first half of the year, our expectations proved accurate, although the impact was greater than our estimates."
An increase in uninsured patients is bad both for hospitals' finances and patients themselves.
As KFF explained in a June report, people without insurance are more likely to avoid seeking medical treatment until their situation becomes too dire to ignore.
"People without health coverage are more likely to be hospitalized for avoidable health problems," KFF wrote, "and to experience declines in their overall health as a consequence of having undiagnosed conditions and a lower likelihood of receiving preventive and chronic disease management care. When they are hospitalized, uninsured people receive fewer diagnostic and therapeutic services and also have higher mortality rates than those with insurance."
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'This Is Obscene': Shell Profits More Than Double as Iran War Pushes Up Gas Prices
"We're running out of words to describe the obscenity of these numbers."
Jul 30, 2026
The London-based oil behemoth Shell reported Thursday that its net profit more than doubled in the second quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2025 as the Iran war pushed up energy prices, causing pain for consumers in the United Kingdom and around the world.
“These profits have been built on an energy crisis that’s left households across the country struggling with high energy bills at home and expensive fuel at the pumps," Danny Gross, energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth UK, said in a statement. "This underlines the urgent need to end our dependence on costly oil and gas."
From April to June, Shell posted $9.84 billion in profit—the company's best quarter in four years. Wael Sawan, Shell's CEO, said the company's "operational performance enabled very strong results during another quarter of severe disruption in global energy
markets, as we worked hard to provide critical energy supplies and products to our customers."
Shell said it would reward shareholders with another $3 billion in stock buybacks following the second-quarter results, which were released as the UK faced a deadly heatwave. UK authorities said Thursday that there were 2,877 heat-associated deaths in May and June—putting the country on track to see its highest level of heat-related deaths on record.
"This is obscene," Zack Polanski, leader of the UK Green Party, wrote on social media in response to Shell's earnings report.
"While the cost of living crisis continues to spiral, with food and fuel prices soaring," Polanski wrote, "so do global oil and gas companies profits."
Rudy Schulkind, political campaigner with Greenpeace UK, said that "we're running out of words to describe the obscenity of these numbers."
An analysis released last month by the environmental group 350.org estimated that over $700 billion "will be siphoned from businesses and households to the oil and gas industry" by the end of the year due to price increases caused by the war that the US and Israel launched in late February.
Oxfam projected earlier this week that the world's six largest fossil fuel corporations—Shell among them—would double their combined profit in the second quarter of 2026. The humanitarian group also found that "the emissions from BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies were sufficient to cause around one in four heatwaves reported globally between 2000 and 2023—heatwaves that would have been virtually impossible without human-made climate change."
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Dem Establishment Intensifies Attacks on El-Sayed as New Poll Shows Him Leading by Double Digits
A Michigan congresswoman called El-Sayed "anti-American" in an interview Thursday in what one progressive lawmaker said was a "racist" attack.
Jul 30, 2026
With a number of recent polls finding former public health official Abdul El-Sayed with a strong lead against Rep. Haley Stevens in the Michigan US Senate race, establishment Democrats are resorting this week to attacks that some critics said amounted to racism.
The latest survey, out Thursday from the highly respected, non-partisan Emerson College Polling along with WLNS/WOODTV, found El-Sayed with 54% support, while Stevens had 39%.
Six percent of respondents said they were undecided about the primary election, in which Michigan voters will go to the polls on August 4, and 2% said they backed state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-8), who suspended her campaign earlier this summer.
El-Sayed had the support of voters under 50 by 42 percentage points, as well as voters age 50-60 by 12 points.
The poll came on the heels of another survey by Tavern Research, which found El-Sayed—who has built his campaign around the pledge, "Money out of politics, money in your pocket, and Medicare for All"—leading Stevens by 11 points.
Outside groups' spending on behalf of Stevens, including roughly $60 million in funding from a super political action committee affiliated with the increasingly unpopular American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has become a major topic of discussion in the race, with El-Sayed arguing that his opponent's reliance on such outsized spending is proof that she is far less "electable" than her supporters in the Democratic establishment have argued.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Wednesday that billionaires are clearly "panicked" by the possibility of a Democratic Senate candidate whose victory would "make it clearer than ever that the American people are sick and tired of the same-old, same-old establishment politics and policies."
Even with money pouring into Michigan to back Stevens, who has praised US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and said she would not support any conditions on military aid to Israel—further distancing herself from Democratic voters' views—the congresswoman's supporters have resorted to attacks on El-Sayed, with Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-Mich.) recently making numerous media appearances to portray him—without evidence—as "sexist" and "un-American."
Scholten told Semafor Thursday that El-Sayed "has allowed distinctly anti-American sentiment to enter our public dialogue"—an apparent reference to his earlier campaigning with commentator Hasan Piker, an outspoken critic of Israel who once said the US "deserved" the September 11 attacks, a remark he later clarified and apologized for.
Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman (D-97) said Scholten's vague comment ignored El-Sayed's own clear statements about his love for and belief in the potential of the United States.
"She’s just racist," Romman said of the remark. "All people have to do is listen to Abdul speak for barely a few minutes, and they’ll hear a deep love for our country."
The United Democracy Project, the super PAC tied to AIPAC, has also attacked El-Sayed for his association with Piker and baselessly claimed in one commercial that the candidate “expressed sympathy for a terrorist." Scholten's comment also echoed the campaign of Republican candidate Mike Rogers, a former US House member who said in a call with supporters, “I don’t think he likes America, candidly.”
AIPAC-funded ads have also claimed El-Sayed's rhetoric is "uniquely sexist."
The commentary from both Democrats and Republicans are "reproducing tropes that have just been around for centuries" about Muslims, Nancy Khalil, an anthropologist at University of Michigan, told The Intercept this week, referring to stereotypes painting Arab and Muslim men as "controlling of women."
“We’re seeing it come from within his own party," said Khalil.
Dr. Adam Hamawy, a surgeon who won the Democratic primary race in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District in June after also campaigning on Medicare for All and other popular progressive policies, told The Intercept that he faced similar attacks.
"They’re questioning his loyalty, they are not talking about issues,” Hamawy said. “And that was the same thing here as well: They didn’t attack me on issues, they attacked me for who I was.”
While making negative claims about El-Sayed's character, some in the Democratic establishment have refused to say they would vote for the Medicare for All advocate in the general election if he wins the primary. Scholten refused to commit to backing him in an interview with CNN last week, while Michael LaRosa, the former press secretary for First Lady Jill Biden during the Biden administration, said Wednesday that he would "do everything I can to make sure he loses" the general election, due to comments El-Sayed made about supporting primary challenges of Democrats including Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.).
Sanders said Wednesday on CNN that he was committed to supporting whichever candidate wins the primary, in the interest of securing a Democratic Senate seat in the crucial election.
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