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For Immediate Release
December, 01 2021, 10:24am EDT
Contact:
Lorne Stockman, lorne@priceofoil.org
Cate Bonacini, press@ciel.org
Alan Septoff, aseptoff@earthworks.org
Report: U.S. Crude Exports Increased Nearly 600% From 2015 to 2020 After Lifting of the Crude Export Ban--Driving Permian Oil Production To Increase 135% Over the Period
Surge in oil production not driven by U.S. demand, but by exports to global markets. The U.S. exported 30% of crude oil production in 2020.
WASHINGTON
Oil Change International, Earthworks, and the Center for International Environmental Law today released the third chapter of the The Permian Basin Climate Bomb report series, centering on the relationship between the Permian's rampant oil production, export markets and the massive buildout of pipelines and infrastructure.
The latest installment reveals that while Permian oil production grew 135% from 2015 to 2020, U.S. oil consumption was stagnant. The spread of pipelines, export terminals, tank farms and petrochemical facilities across the Gulf Coast intensified environmental injustice in the region, and was driven by oil, gas and petrochemical exports, not rising U.S. demand.
The report adds that while oil drives drilling and fracking in the Permian, the export boom is not confined to crude. Since the first U.S. LNG terminal started exporting in early 2016, U.S. exports of gas, which previously were mostly via pipeline to Canada and Mexico, have tripled. In 2020, the U.S. exported 16% of gas production. If the current crop of proposed LNG plants go ahead, this could grow substantially. The gas export boom is significantly driven by burgeoning supplies of cheap associated gas from the Permian Basin.
The report highlights several proposed export terminals facing community opposition, including the Sea Port Oil Terminal (SPOT) located near Surfside Beach, TX, the Texas Gulflink Terminal near Jones Creek, TX, the Rio Grande LNG Terminal near Brownsville, TX, and the Plaquemines LNG Terminal near Ironton, LA.
Parts 4-6 of the series will be released over the coming weeks.
Read the third installment of the Permian Climate Bomb: https://www.permianclimatebomb.org/chapter-3
Read the third installment of the Permian Climate Bomb: (en espanol): https://www.permianclimatebomb.org/es/capitulo-3
QUOTES:
"The Permian Basin has, for the past decade, been the site of an oil and gas boom of unprecedented scale. Producers have free rein to pollute and methane is routinely released in vast quantities. Oil exports fuel Permian production growth and today they constitute around 30% of US oil production. While climate science tells us that we must consume 40% less oil in 2030, Permian producers plan to grow production more than 50%. This must not happen. Gulf Coast communities can no longer bear the brunt of this toxic trade or its climate impacts. Building back better means building back fossil free--starting with the Permian Basin." -- Lorne Stockman, Research Co-Director, Oil Change International
"Unless President Biden defuses the Permian climate bomb exploding in my backyard, we won't prevent catastrophic climate change or meet our national climate commitments. A 'code red' demands emergency action, not business as usual. The President can show he's serious about climate by declaring a climate emergency, reinstating the crude export ban, enacting the toughest possible rules to cut oil and gas methane pollution, and laying the political groundwork to end new oil and gas production." -- Miguel Escoto, Earthworks West Texas Field Advocate and El Paso resident.
"If the Biden Administration wants to be serious about its promise to demonstrate US climate leadership, it must first clean up its own backyard. The Permian Basin is the single largest fracking basin globally, and the continued reckless pursuit of oil extraction from New Mexico to the Gulf Coast is the ultimate display of hypocrisy. As long as wells are pumping, the United States enables a worsening climate emergency, endangers the health and safety of communities, and contributes to the destruction of ecosystems. The Administration must use all of the tools at its disposal to prevent the next decade in the Permian from being a repeat of the last. At a minimum, that means rejecting permits for new export facilities, petrochemical plants, and other fossil fuel infrastructure." -- Steven Feit, Senior Attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law
"The Permian climate bomb starts with oil and gas wells spewing toxics, including the ones across the street that forced us from our home. Cleaning up the Permian won't just help the climate, it'll protect the health of people that live here." -- Fort Davis, Texas resident Sue Franklin
"Gas from the Permian fuels the industrial beast of pollution in the Gulf coast, especially in Port Arthur, TX, my home. The facilities using this gas include the largest refinery in the country; the world's largest steam cracker, and the explosive expansions in refining, LNG, pipelines, and export facilities. This 'boom' has contributed to environmental degradation, significant loss of quality of life, nonattainment air quality, water-borne pollution, and diminished health for my fenceline community. Fracked Permian gas contributes to our significantly higher risk of cancer, heart lung and kidney disease. And then, the storms; give major hurricanes in the last 25 years! Catastrophic flooding and unseasonal weather events, all compounded by the greenhouse gases of the Permian. Port Arthur, and the entire Gulf Coast, has become a sacrifice zone, so America can feed it's thirst for toxic fossil fuels. We can no longer afford to be the unwitting victim of this exploitation from the use of fracked Permian gas; it needs to end, NOW! and utilize clean, green renewable sources of energy in its stead. We say, 'Keep it in the Ground'" -- John Beard, Port Arthur Community Action Network (PACAN)
Read the third installment of the Permian Climate Bomb: https://www.permianclimatebomb.org/chapter-3
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.
(202) 518-9029LATEST NEWS
Can Flanagan in Minnesota and Wisconsin's Hong Continue Progressive Wave in Midwest?
The Minnesota official took aim at the "special interests" funding her opponent's campaign ahead of the election, while Francesca Hong rejected claims that her priorities are too "extreme" for Wisconsin.
Aug 11, 2026
As the Democratic establishment and the corporate media continue to grapple with the results of last week's Senate primary in Michigan, which Abdul El-Sayed won after campaigning on Medicare for All, ending corporations' grip on elections, and investing in the social safety net instead of foreign wars, two more high-profile Midwestern races on Tuesday may provide more answers about the direction in which the Democratic base hopes to push the party.
In Minnesota, progressive Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is facing US Rep. Angie Craig in the Democratic Senate primary, while in neighboring Wisconsin, democratic socialist state Rep. Francesca Hong's (D-76) closest opponent is Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley.
As in Michigan, where Democratic operatives have insisted that Rep. Haley Stevens would have been a better bet to win against Republican candidate Mike Rogers, supporters of Craig claim the congresswoman is more "electable" than Flanagan, who supports Medicare for All, an end to "offensive weapons sales to Israel," and publicly financed universal pre-kindergarten.
“Electability is probably the No. 1 factor,” Joe Radinovich, a Democratic strategist who views Craig as the better candidate to face a Republican in the November midterms, told The New York Times.
But a number of Craig's positions and ties suggest her backers may be working with a flawed understanding of what makes a candidate appealing to voters in 2026, with nearly half of Democratic voters in swing districts last year telling Upswing Strategies that they would avoid supporting a candidate who was funded by the pro-Israel lobby, 78% of Democrats saying in a poll in December that they supported Medicare for All, and half of Americans telling YouGov last month that they believed US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should be abolished.
Craig has received major support from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in the past, but says she asked the powerful pro-Israel group not to donate to her this year as Americans sour on US military support for Israel, which, with the backing of the Biden and Trump administrations, has slaughtered more than 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023. AIPAC has continued hosting fundraisers to boost Craig's campaign indirectly.
Craig has refused to call Israel's attacks on Gaza a genocide, while Flanagan has joined top human rights organizations and Holocaust experts in doing so, saying that “American taxpayer dollars should not be used to fuel the horrific violence and suffering that’s being experienced there."
The congresswoman is also out of step with the majority of Democrats on healthcare, pushing for legislation that would "build on" the Affordable Care Act instead of establishing a national healthcare plan, and on immigration policy. She was the only Democrat in Minnesota to support the Laken Riley Act, which gave ICE broader power to detain immigrants. Although Craig initially defended her vote, she expressed regret in March, after two Minnesota residents were killed by federal immigration agents who were part of President Donald Trump's crackdown in the state.
Flanagan has not joined the specific call to abolish ICE, but told The New York Times: “Whatever word you want to use, it can’t exist like this anymore. We have to rip ICE apart and start over.”
Outside groups, including super political action committees (PACs) representing cryptocurrency interests, have poured roughly $20 million into the effort to elect Craig, a co-sponsor of the CLARITY Act. The bill would split regulation of digital assets between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the industry-friendly Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Flanagan on Monday said she was not intimidated by the special interests that, as she said "think they can buy this Senate seat."
The lieutenant governor has been endorsed by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Tina Smith (D-Minn.), among others, as well as a number of labor unions, the anti-corruption group End Citizens United, and the advocacy group Indivisible.
Some recent polls have shown Craig with a small lead, while some internal surveys by Flanagan's campaign have shown the lieutenant governor several points ahead of her opponent.
Sanders predicted "a tight race" on Sunday in an interview with Margaret Brennan of CBS News' "Face the Nation."
"I hope very much that Peggy wins," said the senator. "I think what we’re seeing in Minnesota, Margaret, in Michigan, and all across this country, is that people understand that we’re living with an economy that is rigged. You have working families, 60% of our people, living paycheck to paycheck. People can’t afford groceries, housing, healthcare, basic necessities of life."
In Wisconsin, Sanders, Warren, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are among the high-profile progressives who have declined to wade into the race and endorse Hong, who has consistently led by double digits in polls since February.
The gubernatorial candidate has distanced herself recently from what she called "bad takes"—a call in 2020 to "cancel Thanksgiving" and support for abolishing law enforcement.
“I will not abolish the police," said Hong in a debate in July. “I want to focus on stopping violent crime and giving law enforcement the resources and the training that they need but ensure that we are also holding accountable law enforcement that does not follow the law."
But Hong has won the support of Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), with Omar calling her a "true champion for working families" and highlighting her support for broadly popular proposals like universal childcare, Medicare for All, and guaranteed paid leave.
Opponents of Hong are striving to attach the word "communism" to her political priorities—a clear sign, said Gustavo Gordillo of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) chapter in New York City recently, that "democratic socialism is not the scary word it used to be" for voters.
When asked by Fox News on Tuesday about alleged "fears that democratic socialism could turn into communism," Hong dismissed the idea, echoing Ocasio-Cortez's recent comment that "we can't even raise the minimum wage" in Congress.
"This is a state where we still have a $2.33 tipped minimum wage and $7.25 minimum wage," said Hong. "I think it's gonna be hard to turn that into socialism soon, but what we can do with this campaign is make sure we fight for policies that put working-class people first."
She added that she rejects claims that she is too "extreme" to win the general election in November due to her support for policies like taxing the rich and abolishing ICE, countering that Republican primary front-runner Rep. Tom Tiffany has displayed extremism by denying the 2020 election results and voting to keep files regarding convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a former associate of Trump, hidden from the public.
"What's extreme is that Congressman Tiffany, a longtime DC congressman, has voted against the interests of Wisconsinites over and over again," said Hong.
Q: Were you prepared for the pushback you received, especially from Republicans, framing you as far too extreme for Wisconsin?
FRANCESCA HONG: What's extreme is Rep. Tiffany has voted against the interests of Wisconsinites over and over again. What's extreme is that he's an… pic.twitter.com/QW0M5AVIVc
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 11, 2026
The Intercept noted that despite the recent hand-wringing in the corporate media over Hong's past comments on Thanksgiving—complete with a Times article that asked whether voters can forgive her—"the Times’ on-the-ground reporting managed to dig up precisely one Wisconsinite who would not."
"Even allowing for the fact that the attacks on Hong follow a well-established right-wing tradition—let us never forget those who laid down their lives in the War on Christmas—why has such a ridiculous controversy come to dominate efforts to quash her campaign?" asked Intercept reporter Sean Bell.
"The answer is simple: Nothing else has worked, and that failure indicates a worrying pattern for the Democratic establishment terrified of an insurgent left," Bell continued. "As the numerous recent victories for DSA-backed or progressive Democratic candidates have demonstrated, attacking the left on policy is not the winning strategy it once was. Many voters no longer recoil at the mere mention of universal healthcare, rent controls, or the dreaded 'socialism.'"
Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, which has endorsed both Hong and Flanagan, issued a reminder on Tuesday: "Here’s how electability actually works: The most electable candidate is the one who gets the most votes. This narrative was always manufactured by people afraid of Francesca—and afraid of what happens when working people actually win. Her supposedly ‘radical’ agenda is healthcare, affordable childcare, and making billionaires pay their fair share."
"That’s not unelectable," he said. "That’s what working people are asking for.”
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Yale Study: Medicare for All Would Save Over 114,000 Lives and $1 Trillion a Year
"Do not tell me we cannot afford Medicare for All," said Sen. Bernie Sanders. "What we cannot afford is a broken healthcare system based on greed."
Aug 11, 2026
Previous research has shown that shifting the United States to a Medicare for All system could save roughly 68,000 lives and $650 billion per year, but a new study by experts at Yale University suggests the savings would likely be even greater on both fronts.
In a Tuesday statement, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), lead sponsor of the Medicare for All Act in the Senate, highlighted the findings, published recently on medRxiv, a server for preprints, or research that hasn't yet been peer reviewed.
"The US spends more on healthcare than any other nation, yet tens of millions of Americans are uninsured or underinsured, and coverage retractions enacted in 2025 are widening these gaps," the five experts wrote.
Upward of 15 million Americans could lose health insurance coverage over the next decade because of Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump's so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the Republican-led Congress' failure to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that expired at the end of last year.
"The misalignment between the for-profit insurance architecture and optimal patient care, together with the inefficiencies of a fragmented system, contributes to both unnecessary costs and preventable mortality," according to the Yale researchers. "We update our previous analyses with the most recent data to project the economic benefits and the number of lives saved that would be achieved by single-payer universal coverage, as proposed in the Medicare for All Act."
"We estimate that such a system would reduce national health expenditure by $1,041 billion annually," they explained. "Sources of savings include reductions in administrative overhead, pharmaceutical prices, fraudulent billing, and avoidable emergency care. Combined with the reversal of recent retractions, universal coverage would save over 114,000 lives annually."
Specifically, as Sanders' office detailed in a statement, Americans would save:
- $377.5 billion by paying no more than other major countries for prescription drugs;
- $286.3 billion by eliminating bureaucracy and waste;
- $285.7 billion by curbing fraudulent billing;
- $100 billion by preventing costly emergency room and hospital visits; and
- $295.6 billion by reimbursing providers fairly for the care they provide.
Welcoming the findings, the senator declared that "this study confirms what we have known for years: Medicare for All saves lives and saves money. In fact, guaranteeing healthcare as a human right through a Medicare for All, single-payer system would cost $1 trillion less than our current dysfunctional system."
"It would save working families thousands of dollars a year. And it would prevent over 100,000 Americans from dying unnecessarily each and every year because they cannot make it to a doctor in time," he stressed. "At a time when 15 million Americans are being thrown off the healthcare they have and 20 million Americans have already seen their premiums double, on average, as a result of Trump's so-called 'Big Beautiful Bill,' we need Medicare for All now more than ever."
"The time is now to end the greed of the big insurance and drug companies and pass Medicare for All," he added.
The research comes as Americans face high prices for not only healthcare but also food, gasoline, housing, and more under President Donald Trump and the GOP-led Congress. It also comes amid a renewed push by hundreds of advocacy groups that support Medicare for All and a wave of victories by progressive candidates who support the policy.
Among them is former Detroit health official Abdul El-Sayed, who won the Democratic primary for US Senate in Michigan last week having campaigned on a promise to prioritize "money out of politics, money in your pocket, and Medicare for All." His victory followed those of various other candidates, from Colorado to New York and Pennsylvania.
However, it's not just elected Republicans standing the way of a transition to universal healthcare in the United States. As a Monday analysis from the investigative outlet Sludge shows, the health insurance industry is pouring money into Third Way, a think tank reportedly preparing to spend $15 million combating the rise of candidates who support progressive policies including Medicare for All.
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'Fighting for the Peeping Tom Vote': El-Sayed Calls Out PATRIOT Act Champion Rogers Over Privacy
"You can't have your privacy violated if you don't know your privacy is violated," Rogers said in an infamous clip from 2013 as he defended the NSA's mass spying programs.
Aug 11, 2026
Amid an expanding assault on privacy by the federal government, Democratic nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed has brought the issue of mass surveillance to the forefront of Michigan's Senate race, attacking his Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, for his longtime defense of the PATRIOT Act.
"Mike Rogers out here fighting for the Peeping Tom vote," wrote El-Sayed, a former public health official, in a social media post on Monday. "Creepy stuff, Mike."
El-Sayed was responding to an unearthed comment from Rogers, then the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, made during a 2013 committee hearing in Congress just months after whistleblower Edward Snowden's explosive revelations about the extent of the National Security Agency's (NSA) warrantless surveillance of Americans.
At the time, Congress was debating whether to enact legislation reining in a provision in the PATRIOT Act, Section 215, which the government had used to secretly collect phone records and other information in bulk from Americans not accused of wrongdoing.
Rogers was pushing American University law professor Stephen Vladeck to agree that the government should be allowed to examine Americans' business records to determine if they were connected to a foreign terrorist organization. Vladeck said he believed it should, but that protecting Americans' privacy needed to be taken into account. "The way we do it matters," he said.
The chair responded that in the decade since the policy had been enacted, nobody had ever complained about it. Vladeck, noting that the program was a secret, responded: "But who would be complaining?”
"Somebody whose privacy was violated," Rogers retorted. "You can't have your privacy violated if you don't know your privacy is violated."
The quote is highly representative of Rogers' record of support for extensive government surveillance over his decade-and-a-half in Congress. He was one of the PATRIOT Act's leading champions since its introduction in 2001 and led the charge to stop mass collection powers from being curtailed after the Snowden revelations.
“The charge that the program tramples on the privacy of citizens is simply wrong,” he said in a statement with Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), then the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee.
Rogers and Ruppersberger also coauthored the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) in 2012, which would have allowed companies to share cybersecurity-related information with the government, including the NSA, with protections from existing privacy restrictions. The American Civil Liberties Union argued that the bill, which failed in the Senate, would have allowed the government to obtain large amounts of sensitive personal data with few restrictions.
"You can't have your privacy violated if you don't know your privacy is violated."
In 2026, as artificial intelligence becomes a new tool for even more powerful and pervasive spying, El-Sayed has said the government must be banned from using it to "conduct warrantless surveillance."
As part of an AI policy platform rolled out in June, he said rules should be put in place to prevent its use for "domestic authoritarianism," including "mass political surveillance, protected-characteristic predictive policing, or AI targeting of dissent."
During President Donald Trump's second term, as he's used anti-"terrorism" rhetoric to justify a legal crackdown on domestic opposition, the government's expanding spy powers have become an increasing concern.
With the aid of private surveillance companies like Palantir, the administration has created an unprecedented surveillance dragnet that connects AI-powered facial recognition technology, license plate readers, and phone location tools to piles of data on Americans that have been used to supercharge its mass deportation campaign and aggressively monitor protesters and dissenters.
It has been met with some pushback in the Senate, where Republicans earlier this year narrowly failed to extend Trump's powers to surveil noncitizens under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) without warrants. Though US citizens are not supposed to be targeted, civil liberties advocates argue that their information is often collected easily and the government has used it to prosecute them.
Rogers has attempted to back off some of his earlier defense of mass surveillance, though he has not meaningfully pushed to reduce the government's spying powers. During a losing Senate bid against Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) in 2024, he said that it's "wrong" for the FBI to conduct warrantless searches against US citizens, but did not call for actually repealing or blocking Section 702.
Since serving in Congress, Rogers parlayed his time overseeing the intelligence community into a lucrative career advising and governing cybersecurity, intelligence, and government-contracting firms.
He served as a senior security adviser to AT&T while the company operated a little-known program that gave law enforcement access to searches of trillions of domestic phone records, though there is no record that he personally worked on the program.
Michigan Advance reported earlier this year that he also made almost $100,000 advising a company that helped the government of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro spy on dissidents.
Noting the Republican nominee's recent pivot to Trumpian election denialism, journalist Spencer Ackerman—who has extensively covered the expansion of government surveillance during the War on Terror—suggested in a post on social media that there is little reason to believe Rogers has changed much after over a decade out of Congress.
"I saw up close his efforts, post-Snowden, to protect the NSA and ensure it continues to nullify your constitutionally-protected privacy," Ackerman said. "He was for impunity then and wants the same thing for himself."
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Analysis Shows Insurance Industry Funding Third Way as It Plots 'War' on Medicare for All Backers
Third Way has received donations from CVS Health, Johnson & Johnson, and an organization that counts the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association as one of its members, tax filings reveal.
Aug 11, 2026
The investigative outlet Sludge published an analysis on Monday showing that the health insurance industry is among the corporate donors to Third Way, a think tank that is reportedly preparing to pour $15 million into an effort to combat the rise of candidates who support Medicare for All and other progressive policies.
Third Way, which has long been hostile to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and Medicare for All in particular, does not publicly disclose its donors. But Sludge's David Moore uncovered some of the group's benefactors by examining corporate tax filings, which revealed that the private insurance industry group Better Solutions for Healthcare (BSFH) donated $50,000 to Third Way's advocacy arm in 2024.
Among BSFH's members are the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and the health insurance industry trade group AHIP. Moore noted that BSFH is "run out of the offices of leading Republican digital and strategy firm Targeted Victory in Arlington" and was founded by GOP operative Alexander Schriver.
Sludge's review of corporate tax filings showed other healthcare industry donors to Third Way, including CVS Health and Johnson & Johnson.
"Another corporate lobbying heavyweight, the Business Roundtable (BRT), gave $50,000 to Third Way in 2024, up from the $25,000 it gave in 2023 and down from the $75,000 it gave in 2022," Moore reported. "Each year in 2019, 2020, and 2021, BRT gave $50,000 to Third Way. The CEO group’s health insurance members include the heads of UnitedHealth, Cigna, Elevance (formerly Anthem), CVS Health—all members of AHIP (formerly America's Health Insurance Plans), save for UnitedHealth—as well as healthcare company Centene and many Big Pharma firms like Johnson & Johnson."
NEW: Who's funding the dark money Third Way, dug up in most recent tax filings:
- Republican-run insurance industry front group
- Health insurance giant
- Big Pharma
- More insurance lobbyists
...as it fights the Democratic left and Medicare for All:https://t.co/w787PVhxsH
— David Moore (@ppolitics) August 11, 2026
Moore's reporting came days Third Way president Jonathan Cowan told The New York Times that his organization is "preparing for the next war that is coming."
Cowan said that "it is deeply troubling to see radical, far-left candidates winning in places that are potentially presidential swing states"—a comment published two days after progressive epidemiologist Abdul El-Sayed, a vocal supporter of Medicare for All, won the Democratic primary for a critical US Senate seat in Michigan.
The Times story characterized Third Way as "a leading centrist Democratic group," without mentioning the organization's corporate ties.
"Post El-Sayed’s win, Third Way has done media hits in NYT, CNN, WaPo, Vox, and not one of these outlets has mentioned who funds Third Way historically or bothered to ask who their current donors are," journalist Adam Johnson wrote in a social media post on Tuesday, praising Sludge's review of tax records.
"Journalists are, in principle, supposed to do what David did here: investigate ulterior motives, follow the money, dig deeper," Johnson wrote. "Alas what mainstream outlets have done for Third Way this past week is credulously take them at their word they are merely 'concerned about electability.'"
Earlier this year, Third Way published a memo attacking Medicare for All and its purportedly "astronomical cost." (The memo does not mention research showing that a Medicare for All system would cost less than the status quo, while providing comprehensive universal health coverage and saving tens of thousands of lives per year.)
A recent study by Yale University researchers found that a Medicare for All system would reduce US national health expenditures by more than $1 trillion a year and "save over 114,000 lives annually."
Dr. Ed Weisbart, the national board secretary of Physicians for a National Health Program, told Sludge that "anybody who chooses to attack [Medicare for All] is putting themselves out of step with what I think most people in our country see as the solution."
“People want this, even when they understand that of course it's going to mean a change in their taxes—but they also understand that for 95% of people or so, the change in taxes is smaller than the amount that they would save by not having premiums, not having co-pays, not having deductibles,” said Weisbart. “People are getting that. And if you try to market a political view that's opposite, people see right through that."
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'Resign Today': Senate Dem Says Huckabee Must Step Down for Groveling to Israeli Government
"He’s become a complete apologist for the most extreme Israeli government in history," Sen. Chris Van Hollen said of US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
Aug 11, 2026
Sen. Chris Van Hollen on Monday called on Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, to resign after repeatedly failing to condemn mistreatment of American citizens by the Israeli government.
In a video posted on social media, Van Hollen (D-Md.) recounted instances of US citizens being detained or abused by Israeli security forces, along with Huckabee's lack of response.
"On his watch, we continue to see American citizens being mistreated, wrongfully detained," Van Hollen explained, referencing the recent detentions of 20-year-old American citizen Sama Safi and 16-year-old Adam Karakrah.
Van Hollen added that he and more than two dozen fellow US senators have urged Huckabee to hold Israel accountable for "the killings of nine Americans over just the last four years" by either Israeli settlers in the West Bank or members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
"And yet, no accountability," said Van Hollen. "No justice."
The Maryland Democrat further called out Huckabee for failing to abide by his professed compassion for the Palestinian Christian community.
"We've seen an increase in violent settler attacks on Christian villages in the West Bank, and we've seen those attacks conducted with impunity," he said. "And when asked about this, Ambassador Huckabee said, 'Well, look at me. I'm a Christian and I think I'm doing OK here in the Holy Land.'"
"And that exposes the entire problem," Van Hollen continued. "Because what Ambassador Huckabee is talking about is visitors to the Holy Land, Christian visitors, including evangelicals who come on the kind of tours that Ambassador Huckabee used to lead. Well, what about the Christians who have lived in the Holy Land for thousands and thousands of years?"
The senator then speculated that Huckabee simply "doesn't care" because "he's become a complete apologist for the most extreme Israeli government in history."
"He should be defending Americans and defending American interests," Van Hollen concluded. "He's failed to do so. He should resign today."
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Mamdani Backs Proposal to End Amazon's 'Exploitative' Delivery Model in New York City
If passed, the Delivery Protection Act would be the first law in the US to regulate Amazon's vast network of subcontractors that handle the company's deliveries.
Aug 11, 2026
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has thrown his support behind legislation that could become a first-in-the-nation law to regulate Amazon's network of subcontractors that deliver the $3 trillion company's packages—an "exploitative business model" that shields the e-commerce giant from accountability, as Mamdani said Monday.
The Democratic mayor endorsed the Delivery Protection Act, proposed by New York City Council Member Tiffany Cabán, which would establish new safety, training, and labor standards for "last-mile" warehouses and distribution facilities in New York City, and hold the companies that operate the facilities, such as Amazon and FedEx, liable for employing the workers who make hundreds of deliveries per day across the city.
As the mayor's office said Monday, at least 11 last-mile facilities have opened across New York City since 2020, with subcontractors running the warehouses as Amazon directs the hiring of delivery drivers, the routes they use, and requires them to use Amazon-branded vehicles and uniforms.
But while exerting control over the deliveries, Amazon pushes responsibility for the vehicles used onto the subcontractors, as delivery workers explained in a video released on social media by Mamdani on Monday.
"When injuries and worker accidents skyrocket, Amazon says they have nothing to do with it. They can't have it both ways," said the workers.
If it looks like an Amazon delivery and drives like an Amazon delivery, then it's an Amazon delivery, right? Not according to Amazon.
Big companies like Amazon have built a vast network of subcontractors who deliver their packages while shielding them from accountability.
It… pic.twitter.com/6hQVV8GoNH
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) August 10, 2026
According to a report by the Office of the Comptroller in New York City last year, 78% of areas surrounding last-mile facilities saw an increase in injury-causing crashes after the warehouses opened.
“Corporations like Amazon build billion-dollar business models by insulating themselves from accountability through a system of exploitative subcontracting," said Mamdani in a statement. "As last-mile delivery centers have exploded across New York, so too have traffic accidents and worker injuries. The Delivery Protection Act is commonsense regulation that protects delivery workers, safeguards the communities where these facilities operate, and ensures that the corporations benefiting from workers’ labor are responsible for the consequences of their business practices."
"The people who make these companies run deserve dignity, stability, and a safe workplace," he added. "It's time to end the subcontracting model that puts profits over people and build an economy that works for working New Yorkers.”
By using subcontractors, Amazon can avoid municipal regulations regarding minimum pay and benefits. A nationwide survey by the Shift Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy last year found that Amazon delivery drivers are paid an average of $19 per hour, compared with $35 per hour at UPS and $25 per hour at FedEx. Pay does not rise with tenure at Amazon, as opposed to its delivery competitors, and fewer than half of Amazon drivers have access to health insurance, paid vacation, and retirement plans that are provided to nearly all UPS delivery workers.
In New York City, pay for the drivers who make Amazon's deliveries is higher, starting at about $20 per hour and averaging close to $24 per hour. But one driver in Queens, Luc Rene, told The New York Times that Amazon controls the volume of packages he delivers and has refused to allow the subcontractor he works for, DNA Logistics, to lighten the workload during extreme heat and other inclement weather.
The company could not be reached for a comment to the Times, and Amazon did not address Rene's allegations but claimed it adjusts drivers' routes due to inclement weather.
Amazon has claimed that the Delivery Protection Act—which would require last-mile facilities to obtain licenses from the city's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, ensure worker protections, and hold companies accountable for delivery quotas, schedules, and routes—would raise costs for people who use delivery services, with one Amazon-commissioned study claiming households would spend $664 more annually if the company had to comply with the law.
But Brendan Griffith, president of the New York City Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, said the workers and communities in New York City are already "paying the price" for Amazon's reliance on subcontractors.
“The Delivery Protection Act will establish stronger protections for worker safety, employment, and responsible operations while bringing long-overdue oversight to an industry where major operators have too often hidden behind subcontractors," said Griffith. "To be clear: when these companies 'raise the alarm' of fewer jobs, higher prices, or service reductions, they are describing choices that they may make, not in the best interest of consumers and workers but to protect their bottom line. We thank Mayor Mamdani for standing with the Amazon Teamsters and the labor movement in support of this legislation that puts NYC workers—who are also consumers—first, and we urge the City Council to pass it without delay.”
Mamdani's advocacy for the legislation in New York City caught the attention of at least one lawmaker across the country.
"We should pass something like this in Colorado," said state Rep. Javier Mabrey (D-1).
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'Truly Devastating': Trump Ends Federal Funding for Key Arctic Climate Report
"For two decades," said one of the report's authors, "it has documented conditions across the Arctic system, bringing together physical and social sciences with real-world observations/data and consistent updates."
Aug 11, 2026
The Trump administration has reportedly decided to yank federal funding from an annual National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report that examined the state of the Arctic, which is warming significantly faster than other regions of the world as continued fossil fuel extraction and use drive up global temperatures.
Politico, which first reported the decision, noted that the move "jeopardizes public dissemination of the report that NOAA has published since 2006. It has previously been available on the agency’s website, requires NOAA staff for its production, and pools data from NOAA scientists for many of its findings."
Zack Labe, a climate scientist who has been an author on NOAA’s peer-reviewed Arctic Report Card since 2020, wrote on social media that the Trump administration's decision "is truly devastating."
"The Arctic Report Card has been one of my favorite scientific endeavors," Labe wrote. "For two decades, it has documented conditions across the Arctic system, bringing together physical and social sciences with real-world observations/data and consistent updates."
Speaking to the science news outlet EOS, Labe warned that "the loss of the Arctic Report Card would be significant not only for the scientific community, but also for decision-makers and the public."
"Written for a broad audience and developed by more than 100 scientists from around the world, the report is an important resource for consistently documenting changes in one of the fastest warming regions on our planet," Labe added. "Discontinuing it would create a significant gap in our ability to track and connect these changes from year to year, with implications for people and communities around the world."
Last year's edition of the report card found that "surface air temperatures across the Arctic from October 2024 through September 2025 were the warmest recorded since 1900."
"The last 10 years are the 10 warmest on record in the Arctic," the report observed.
The Trump administration, packed with fossil fuel industry allies and headed by a climate denier, has worked aggressively to gut federal initiatives designed to track the worsening impact of the global climate emergency. Since taking power last year, the administration has dismissed government scientists, scrubbed climate information from federal websites, stopped updating a database that tracked the country's costliest weather disasters, and picked a climate denier to oversee the federal government's flagship climate report.
Rick Thoman, an Arctic climate specialist, called the Trump administration's latest move "devastating news for Arctic environmental monitoring."
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July Was Hottest Month in History of Contiguous US, Breaking Dust Bowl Record
"If we're exceeding records from the Dust Bowl, that says that we're in deep trouble," warned one meteorologist.
Aug 10, 2026
While President Donald Trump continued his war on renewables and support for climate-wrecking fossil fuels, the contiguous United States endured the hottest July on record, according to data released Monday by his own government.
"July 2026 averaged 76.9ºF, the warmest month on record (1895-present)," National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced. That figure was "3.3ºF above the 20th-century average. This was the warmest July—and warmest month—in the 132-year record, 0.1-0.2ºF warmer than July 1936 and July 2012."
The Associated Press highlighted that last month's average for the Lower 48 eclipsed "the Dust Bowl's July 1936 by an eighth of a degree," a development that meteorologist Jeff Masters of Yale Climate Connections described as alarming.
"It's not good when you’re breaking records from the Dust Bowl, which we are in this case," he told the AP. "And that was a crazy sort of situation where you put tens of millions of people in motion. You had this great migration because of the drought and the heat that hit the center of the US—just a cataclysmic event in US history. If we're exceeding records from the Dust Bowl, that says that we're in deep trouble."
Separately, Masters and fellow meteorologist Bob Henson wrote at Yale Climate Connections that "there's no denying the scorching conditions of the 1930s Dust Bowl. An impressive 24 of the 48 contiguous US states have yet to exceed the single hottest readings observed in each of those states during the 1930s."
"However, the Dust Bowl has been misused for years in climate-denial writing and speaking to argue that human activity isn't warming the nation's climate to any great degree. In fact, human influence played a vast part in the Dust Bowl itself," they explained. "Decades of overplowing by European settlers in the Plains and Midwest—in the erroneous belief that 'rain follows the plow'—left the landscape vulnerable when a sequence of multi-year droughts struck. Huge volumes of topsoil simply blew away, and the denuded land heated up far more quickly than better-managed land would have. The Dust Bowl intersected with the Great Depression to make the 1930s a period of profound misery for millions of Americans."
"A 2022 study, 'How the Great Plains Dust Bowl drought spread heat extremes around the Northern Hemisphere,' showed how the Dust Bowl's physical influence extended well beyond US borders," the pair added. "As lead author Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research put it, 'This is a mechanism that arose in a unique way from human influence—not by burning fossil fuels but from plowing up the middle third of the US.'"
We just broke a heat record set during the Dust Bowl. 😬That record has been a favorite talking point of climate deniers. Now it's bitten the dust: yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/08/the-...New from @drjeffmasters.bsky.social and @bhensonweather.bsky.social
[image or embed]
— Yale Climate Connections (@climateconnections.bsky.social) August 10, 2026 at 2:50 PM
Wildfires broke out across Canada and in the United States' Pacific Northwest last month, burning over 140,000 acres in Oregon alone. NOAA found that "daytime maximum temperatures averaged 89.5ºF, 2.9ºF above average, ranking as the sixth-warmest month on record for average high temperatures, while overnight minimum temperatures averaged 64.2ºF, 3.7ºF above average, ranking as the warmest month on record for average low temperatures, surpassing July 2022 by 0.7ºF."
Those high temperatures overnight can be dangerous. Masters told the AP that "if you're talking heatwaves, that nighttime low is incredibly important for determining total heat stress... So if it doesn’t cool off at night, your body doesn't have time to readjust to all the heat."
While July set a new record in the United States, because of the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis, "this may be one of the coolest years we’re gonna experience for the rest of our lives," the meteorologist also said. He added that humanity needs "to stop burning so many fossil fuels. We also need to be spending money to adapt to the new climate that we've put in place."
Wildfires also impacted the European Union last month—and NOAA's new numbers came out as the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service announced Monday that worldwide, last month was second warmest July on record, tied with 2024. The agency also found that the average global ocean surface temperature was the hottest ever recorded in July, fueled in part by El Niño conditions.
"Our leaders’ response has to be swifter and stronger than El Niño," argued Anne Jellema, executive director of the advocacy group 350.org. "We already know that global heating is supercharging extreme weather damage, and the public wants polluters to pay for it. With Big Oil's earnings skyrocketing while a global food crisis looms, now is the time to act. The only way to stave off a humanitarian disaster is to make those causing it pay upfront—before even more damage is done."
The Guardian pointed out that "an unusually strong El Niño event, a periodic climate feature where a section of the Pacific Ocean heats up causing weather around the world to alter, is likely to cause next year to be the hottest on record globally, surpassing a record set just in 2024. Some scientists think the developing El Niño could even ensure that this year is the one that breaks the record."
Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, told the newspaper that "the bottom line... is that we expect to set record global temperatures as long as carbon emissions continue to warm the planet, and typically these records are set during major El Niño events."
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Trump Order Rooted in Debunked Vaccine-Autism Link 'Will Get Kids Killed,' Warns Critic
Protect Our Care called the president's decree on the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine "a wildly dangerous escalation of the administration’s deadly anti-vax agenda."
Aug 10, 2026
US President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order overhauling federal childhood vaccine recommendations, reviving a discredited theory that vaccines may contribute to autism and prompting condemnation from public health advocates and even rebuke from a Republican senator.
Trump's order, “Delivering Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans,” calls for separating the combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination into three individual shots "once such products are domestically available." The directive also recommends administering childhood immunizations during separate medical visits, "to the maximum extent feasible."
At a press conference, Trump explained that the recommendations in his order concern "many subjects, but including autism in particular."
"Decades ago, children received only a small fraction of the vaccines required today," the president said. "In those times, people were much healthier and, of course, the high rates of autism now observed did not exist. So, there's a reason for such epidemic rates of autism. And we're going to bring it back to much closer to where it was."
"While we do not know exactly what the cause is with respect to autism, it is essential to our research efforts that we have the very best vaccine recommendations in the entire world," he added. "So we're reducing them, we're changing it to visits over the period of a year, a year and a half, so they get 20% of what they would have gotten in one big shot."
Decades of rigorous research have failed to produce any credible scientific link between vaccines and autism. That has not stopped influential figures, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., from claiming such a link. Trump and Kennedy also alarmed experts by claiming last year that acetaminophen, commonly known by the brand name Tylenol, is linked to autism spectrum disorders in developing fetuses when taken during pregnancy.
While anti-vaccine and vaccine skeptic voices applauded Trump’s order, public health experts said the directive will prove deadly.
Trump also claimed that inoculating children with all three components of the MMR vaccine could possibly be "quite lethal," but when asked by a reporter for evidence supporting that claim, the president could offer none.
I put together these two parts of Trump’s event on vaccines.
Trump claims there is a possibility that the MMR vaccine could be “quite lethal.” But later, when asked if he has any evidence to back up his claims, he says no pic.twitter.com/AwuW9IiYNl
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 10, 2026
The Affordable Care Act advocacy group Protect Our Care warned that Trump's executive order on the "nonexistent autism-vaccine link will get kids killed" and "is a wildly dangerous escalation of the administration’s deadly anti-vax agenda."
“Pushing parents to spread out these lifesaving vaccines over time is guaranteed to increase kids’ exposure to these very harmful diseases, including the simple reality that follow-up appointments will be missed," Protect Our Care senior adviserc Anne Shoup said in a statement. "If Trump’s baseless, science-free decree is followed, the end result will not be fewer children with autism, but far more in the ER or even the morgue."
"Whether or not state health departments follow Trump’s ignorant guidance, this official proclamation from the highest level of power will have a further chilling effect on vaccination rates across the board," Shoup added. "All Trump is doing is fanning more unfounded fear, pressuring a further drop in vaccination rates, and welcoming a resurgence of preventable diseases once thought eradicated. For the anti-vaxxer-in-chief, the current record-breaking measles crisis is apparently not on a grand enough scale.”
Anthony Wright, executive director at the health advocacy group Families USA, said in a statement that “today, the president announced yet another change in vaccine policy that is not based on science or medical evidence."
"The science has not changed. Vaccines that prevent common illnesses like rotavirus, hepatitis B, and the flu are just as safe and effective today as they were yesterday," he continued. "The new policy will simply create chaos and confusion for patients and providers, and increase costs for families when getting their kids vaccinated."
"This executive order seeks to sidestep the established panel of experts entirely, replacing decades of bipartisan, public, evidence-based review with the whims of a rogue White House and HHS secretary," Wright said. "This new directive sabotages a science-based process that has successfully prevented widespread outbreaks among American children for generations."
“Downgrading the universal recommendation for common, lifesaving vaccines will cause confusion for parents and providers alike, and confusion costs lives," he added. "Removing the presumption that every child should receive them isn't just dangerous; it risks undermining the guarantee that recommended vaccines are covered without cost-sharing, forcing families to choose between protecting their kids and paying for an expensive doctor's visit."
Dr. Robert Steinbrook, health research group director at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said that "the Trump administration is continuing a mindless anti-scientific assault on the childhood vaccine schedule and falsely tying vaccines to autism."
"There is no medical reason for the MMR vaccine to be split into three separate single-disease shots that would be administered at separate office visits, changes that would only decrease vaccine coverage and increase healthcare costs," he continued. "Under the draft executive order, mandatory vaccine requirements for children to attend school would be also put at further risk. These and other directives are the exact opposite of ‘Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations’ during the worst year for measles cases in decades."
The resurgence in measles is directly linked to vaccine refusal and hesitancy stoked by influential figures and fora like Kennedy and the Children's Health Defense nonprofit group he formerly chaired.
Trump will sign an executive order proposing reducing childhood vaccines, and separating the MMR vaccine into 3 individual shots.This reckless move will decrease vaccine uptake further at a time where measles cases are at a 35-year high, and the US is set to lose its measles elimination status.
— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran.com) August 10, 2026 at 12:24 PM
“Senate confirmation of Dr. Erica Schwartz as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should have restored sanity to the federal government’s vaccine policies," Steinbrook added. "Regrettably, within days of Schwartz’s confirmation, the Trump administration has offered only more irrational nonsense.”
Trump and Kennedy have pursued a broad rollback of federal vaccine policy, including by purging the CDC's entire vaccine advisory committee and replacing its members with controversial figures; reducing or eliminating universal recommendations for several vaccines, including Covid-19, flu, hepatitis B, and some childhood vaccines; canceling hundreds of millions of dollars in mRNA-vaccine development funding; and pushing individual decision-making.
Physicians serving in Congress from both parties also decried Trump's order.
“Donald Trump and RFK Jr. have gambled with American lives and seem determined to turn the clock back on decades of medical and scientific progress," said Congresswoman Kelly Morrison (D-Minn.), an OB-GYN. "Communities across the country continue to face outbreaks of preventable diseases, and Trump and RFK Jr. are doubling down on their dangerous disinformation."
"Meanwhile, working families continue to see their healthcare and prescription drug costs skyrocket—all so Trump can pay for tax handouts for billionaires," she added, referring to the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill signed by the president in July 2025. "Families shouldn’t have to worry that Trump and RFK Jr. will stand in the way of protecting themselves and their loved ones from serious illnesses.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a gastroenterologist who voted to confirm Kennedy, wrote on X: "I’m a doctor. This executive order is wrong. The president does not have the expertise to make these changes."
"Vaccines are overwhelmingly safe. Vaccines are effective. Vaccines DO NOT cause autism," he continued. "Breaking up vaccines will mean children have to get more shots to get the same protection, not fewer shots. It will increase hesitancy and make children less safe."
"Parents should listen to their child’s pediatrician about vaccines rather than listening to an inaccurate executive order," Cassidy added. "This is so wrong."
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Hegseth: Honor Lindsey Graham by Giving Pentagon $1.5 Trillion
"Lindsey himself said to me, in his office, 'This is the best military budget I've seen since I've been in Congress,'" the Pentagon chief claimed.
Aug 10, 2026
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth "can't persuade Republicans to back his big budget," but that didn't stop him from pushing the $1.5 trillion proposal during a Monday event to rename Joint Base Charleston after the late Sen. Lindsey Graham.
When Graham, who served in the Air Force, unexpectedly died last month, critics remembered the South Carolina Republican as someone who "never met a war he didn't want to send your kids to," as well as "a bloodthirsty bastard who cheered the killing of Muslims and sold his soul to the fascists."
On Monday, Hegseth—who deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq—fondly recalled meeting with Graham while part of the group Vets for Freedom. Joined at the base by the senator's replacement, his sister Darline Graham, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is from South Carolina, the Pentagon chief declared that "it falls to us to complete the work that Lindsey Graham began and advocated for for decades."
"As we gather here today, the War Department is seeking a historic, generational investment of $1.5 trillion for America's warriors, and Lindsey himself said to me, in his office, 'This is the best military budget I've seen since I've been in Congress,'" Hegseth claimed, using President Donald Trump's preferred name for the Department of Defense.
"This department pays tribute to Lindsey Graham in the naming of this base, but there could be no greater tribute than for Congress to give and invest in our warriors for the full $1.5 trillion," he added.
The GOP narrowly controls both chambers of Congress, but as Politico reported just hours before the event, "Hegseth hasn't persuaded Republicans to steamroll Democrats and advance the record-breaking plan, despite regularly trekking to the Hill in recent weeks and hobnobbing with lawmakers. Instead, an increasingly vocal group of GOP lawmakers argue the administration hasn't explained why Republicans should burn valuable political capital in pursuit of Trump's vision—especially with the midterms just months away."
"Several top Republicans are skeptical about the Trump administration's two-track approach to clinching $1.5 trillion. This relies on the GOP using the partisan reconciliation process—which allows the majority to bypass Democrats entirely—to provide $350 billion, the bulk of the increase," the outlet detailed. The Republican majority "has—mostly—had Hegseth's back" since the battle to confirm him, despite widely condemned bombings of boats allegedly trafficking drugs on the high seas and the ongoing war on Iran.
Hegseth on Monday shared some supposed details from his last meeting with Graham, who chaired the Senate Budget Committee.
"Mr. Secretary, what do you need for a reconciliation?" Graham said, according to Hegseth. "I said: 'Well, in total, sir, we're going to need $350 billion for our military. That's what we believe gets us to $1.5 trillion—$115 [billion] in the base budget, $350 [billion] in reconciliation, and we'll be ready.'"
"He looked at me and said, 'How's $355 [billion] sound to you?' He wanted to give even more than $350 [billion]," Hegseth continued. "I saw firsthand as a young first lieutenant, as a captain in a combat zone, and as a secretary, the unwavering commitment of Lindsey Graham."
Hegseth's recounting of their meeting isn't the first time Graham's pro-war ideology has been highlighted since he died. As Common Dreams reported late last month, footage filmed for a documentary that was in the works shows the then-senator joyfully reacting to Trump's Iran War. He said: "I almost cried. I mean, like, how long have we been pushing this?"
Responding to the release of that footage, Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, said that "the warmonger got his wish and the result has been a catastrophe."
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