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Climate Progress Is Still Going Strong When Workers Take the Lead
Labor in Maine and elsewhere is proud to be advocating for and building clean power that provides affordable energy and good jobs for our communities.
Feb 01, 2026
The first year of this Trump administration has dealt significant blows to the advancement of clean energy and efforts to lower energy prices. The federal government has cut clean energy funding, repeatedly disrupted construction on in-progress wind energy projects, and shut down energy affordability programs. For workers on solar and wind energy projects, there’s been no shortage of bad news.
And yet, there’s also been undeniable progress. In the absence of federal leadership, state and local governments have picked up the slack, and labor unions have taken action.
To see what I mean, just take a closer look at my home state of Maine. In 2025, we had one of the most successful legislative sessions for climate and workers in our history. We passed landmark bills that expanded the state’s ability to build new clean energy projects and committed the state to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2040. Strong labor standards throughout this legislation help ensure every clean energy project we build in Maine creates high-quality, family-sustaining jobs while protecting ratepayers from rising costs. Policies like this are how we can insulate ourselves from harmful federal actions and continue to deliver real benefits. Other states could take note.
Across the country, energy demand is rising for the first time in decades, and we’re not building enough new energy to keep up. This supply and demand imbalance is pushing energy bills to unaffordable prices for working families, who are already struggling to stay afloat. At the same time, we’re experiencing the impacts of climate change with more and more frequency—extreme cold and devastating storms in the winter; scorching heatwaves, wildfires, and smog in the summer.
If we want climate policy to be popular and durable, it needs to do more than reduce emissions. It needs to materially deliver for working people.
This moment of high costs, worsening climate impacts, and a lack of good-wage jobs requires us to build more clean energy, urgently. We simply cannot bring down energy prices without more energy. Labor unions understand this, and we understand that clean energy will and is already creating thousands of job opportunities.
That’s why we so ardently fight for strong climate legislation in our state. It’s why our members were some of the first to speak up against federal cuts to clean energy tax credits. And throughout it all, we’re still building solar panels, installing heat pumps, erecting wind turbines, and upgrading building efficiency—work that makes our communities cleaner and safer.
Labor’s work for climate action will continue on, both in Maine and across the country. If we want climate policy to be popular and durable, it needs to do more than reduce emissions. It needs to materially deliver for working people—with good jobs, higher wages, and lower bills. It’s both possible and necessary to do all of this at once.
This year in Maine, we’re working to push the envelope even further to win bold, worker-led climate policy while driving down costs for ratepayers.
For example, we are advancing legislation that would streamline permitting of utility-scale clean energy projects built in Maine with high-road labor standards, accelerating the pace by which Maine brings clean energy online that is cheaper and lowering our exposure to global energy price volatility through greater energy independence.
The onus has certainly shifted to states to lead on climate and affordability; it’s not coming from the federal level. But that hasn’t deterred us in Maine, and it shouldn’t deter the rest of the country either. Even in red states like Texas, our brothers and sisters in labor have pushed for and won local climate progress.
Labor is proud to be advocating for and building clean power that provides affordable energy and good jobs for our communities. With working people at the table, we can drive meaningful climate action and pocketbook benefits for working people—all at once.
Let us not be afraid or resigned in this moment. Maine is proof that we can still create union jobs, lower costs, and build domestic clean energy, but only if we keep fighting for it.
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Waging a Nonviolent Civil War Against Borders
What we choose to love fully and unconditionally is Planet Earth itself—a planet without borders—and all who live within it.
Feb 01, 2026
And here I am, an American, staring at the border again... and slowly coming to realize the paradox of it. Borders don’t actually exist. They’re invisible lies. They’re also virtually everywhere.
Consider the border Alex Pretti crossed on January 24, on a street in Minneapolis, as he stepped between some US Border Patrol agents and the woman they had just pushed down. He crossed the border that separates ordinary people from the federal Proud Boys (or whoever they are), the masked invaders who were occupying the city to enforce The Law. Pretti interfered with them! He dared to try to protect the fallen woman, who herself had just crossed the same border. In so doing, they both went from being ordinary citizens to “domestic terrorists.”
“Yet our greatest threat isn’t the outsiders among us, but those among us who never look within.”
The words are those of poet Amanda Gorman, who wrote a poem honoring Alex Pretti after the agents shot him, almost 10 times. Another killing! Oh my God! Another cut to the American soul—a cut, by the way, that comes with complete immunity, according to Team Trump. They’re waging civil war against those who cross the border that separates right from wrong. “Fear not those without papers,” Borman’s poem continues, “but those without conscience.”
Oh, let us evolve toward a trans-border world! This is the core of the American civil war that is now, seemingly, getting underway.
You know what? As terrifying as the idea of a new civil war sounds, I prefer it to something worse: a great national shrug and acquiescence to the Trump agenda. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as so many people have pointed out, is acting like the Trump Gestapo, as his administration rids sacred (white) America of the brown-skinned other, who may or may not be immigrants. What matters is that they’re different from “real” Americans. Right?
Regarding the whole concept of the border: It seems so real and viable until you start questioning it, which includes looking into its history.
As Elisa Wong and Raymond Wei write:
The way we think of borders today, as firm boundaries that are violently enforced, is a relatively new thing, and we would argue it doesn’t serve humanity’s best interests. While ‘strong borders’ are often argued as a necessity for our security, we think they limit humanity’s potential as a global community.
In ancient times, rivers, oceans, and mountains marked the boundaries of territory... As humans began building kingdoms and empires, more walls began to form, thus more firmly delineating borders.
And in Medieval times, from around 1000 to 1700 AD, European kingdoms started engaging with each other in a state of unending warfare, violently squabbling over the limits of their territory. And plunk! Global borders were created, and whole contents started getting divided almost randomly into European territorial possessions.
“At the Berlin Conference in 1884,” Wong and Wei write, “European leaders met to carve up Africa for themselves, which split local tribes across arbitrary lines and laid the groundwork for ethnic conflicts that still rage today’”
Oh, let us evolve toward a trans-border world! This is the core of the American civil war that is now, seemingly, getting underway. This is why protesters are flooding the streets in Minneapolis and across the country. This is why they’re enduring pepper spray and tear gas and flash bang grenades. This is why some people are being killed. But the rational—effective—response to violent aggression is not counterviolence.
“Anger and hatred are natural in response to such atrocities,” David Cortright writes, “but it is essential to avoid causing physical harm, to maintain a nonviolent intention and commitment despite increasing government provocation. A major outburst of protester violence would be disastrous, diverting attention from the message of support for victimized communities. That’s exactly what the White House is hoping for—to cover up ICE abuses, reinforce their lies about violent protesters, and justify additional domestic militarization.”
And he quotes—who else?—Martin Luther King: “Hatred multiples hate. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Violence multiplies violence.”
Yeah, that’s the world as we know it: endless war. But America’s new civil war must not—will not—go that way. “Loving ICE” doesn’t mean accepting their actions or their purpose, but rather, challenging it head on, courageously and nonviolently. What we choose to love fully and unconditionally is Planet Earth itself—a planet without borders—and all who live within it. Yes, that includes ICE agents. It includes Donald Trump. But loving them also means standing up to them—and handing them their conscience.
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A 'Terrifying Line Is Being Crossed,' Warns Minneapolis Mayor as More ICE Horror Stories Emerge
In an interview with the New York Times, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey described "marauding gangs of guys just walking down the street indiscriminately picking people up."
Jan 31, 2026
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is warning that the Trump administration has crossed a "terrifying line" with its use of federal immigration enforcement agents to brutalize and abduct people in his city.
In an interview with the New York Times published Saturday, Frey described operations that have taken place in his city as "marauding gangs of guys just walking down the street indiscriminately picking people up," likening it to a military "invasion."
During the interview, Frey was asked what he made of Attorney General Pam Bondi's recent offer to withdraw immigration enforcement forces from his city if Minnesota handed over its voter registration records to the federal government.
"That is wildly unconstitutional," Frey replied. "We should all be standing up and saying that’s not OK. Literally, listen to what they’re saying. Active threats like, Turn over the voter rolls or else, or we will continue to do what we’re doing. That’s something you can do in America now."
Frey was also asked about Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's comments from earlier in the week where he likened the administration's invasion of Minneapolis to the first battle that took place during the US Civil War in Fort Sumter.
"I don’t think he’s saying that the Civil War is going to happen," said Frey. "I think what he’s saying is that a significant and terrifying line is being crossed. And I would agree with that."
As Frey issued warnings about the federal government's actions in Minneapolis, more horror stories have emerged involving US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minnesota.
The Associated Press reported on Saturday that staff at the Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis have been raising red flags over ICE agents' claims about Alberto Castañeda Mondragón, a Mexican immigrant whom they treated after he suffered a shattered skull earlier this month.
ICE agents who brought Castañeda Mondragón to the hospital told staffers that he had injured himself after he "purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall" while trying to escape their custody.
Nurses who treated Castañeda Mondragón, however, said that there is no way that running headfirst into a wall could produce the sheer number of skull fractures he suffered, let alone the internal bleeding found throughout his brain.
“It was laughable, if there was something to laugh about," one nurse at the hospital told the Associated Press. “There was no way this person ran headfirst into a wall."
According to a Saturday report in the New York Times, concern over ICE's brutality has grown to such an extent that many Minnesota residents, including both documented immigrants and US citizens, have started wearing passports around their necks to avoid being potentially targeted.
Joua Tsu Thao, a 75-year-old US citizen who came to the country after aiding the American military during the Vietnam War, said the aggressive actions of immigration officers have left him with little choice but to display his passport whenever he walks outside his house.
"We need to be ready before they point a gun to us," Thao explained to the Times.
CNN on Friday reported that ICE has been rounding up refugees living in Minnesota who were allowed to enter the US after undergoing "a rigorous, years-long vetting process," and sending them to a facility in Texas where they are being prepared for deportation.
Lawyers representing the abducted refugees told CNN that their clients have been "forced to recount painful asylum claims with limited or no contact with family members or attorneys."
Some of the refugees taken to Texas have been released from custody. But instead of being flown back home, they were released in Texas "without money, identification, or phones," CNN reported.
Laurie Ball Cooper, vice president for US legal programs at the International Refugee Assistance Project, told CNN that government agents abducting refugees who had previously been allowed into the US is part of "a campaign of terror" that "is designed to scare people."
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'Scowling Void of Pure Nothingness': Critics Destroy $75 Million Melania Trump Documentary
"It’s one of those rare, unicorn films that doesn’t have a single redeeming quality," said one critic.
Jan 31, 2026
Critics have weighed in on Amazon MGM Studios' documentary about first lady Melania Trump, and their verdicts are overwhelmingly negative.
According to review aggregation website Metacritic, Melania—which Amazon paid $40 million to acquire and $35 million to market—so far has received a collective score of just 6 out of 100 from critics, which indicates "overwhelming dislike."
Similarly, Melania scores a mere 6% on Rotten Tomatoes' "Tomameter," indicating that 94% of reviews for the movie so far have been negative.
One particularly brutal review came from Nick Hilton, film critic for the Independent, who said that the first lady came off in the film as "a preening, scowling void of pure nothingness" who leads a "vulgar, gilded lifestyle."
Hilton added that the film is so terrible that it fails even at being effective propaganda and is likely to be remembered as "a striking artifact... of a time when Americans willingly subordinated themselves to a political and economic oligopoly."
The Guardian's Xan Brooks delivered a similarly scathing assessment, declaring the film "dispiriting, deadly and unrevealing."
"It’s one of those rare, unicorn films that doesn’t have a single redeeming quality," Brooks elaborated. "I’m not even sure it qualifies as a documentary, exactly, so much as an elaborate piece of designer taxidermy, horribly overpriced and ice-cold to the touch and proffered like a medieval tribute to placate the greedy king on his throne."
Donald Clarke of the Irish Times also discussed the film's failure as a piece of propaganda, and he compared it unfavorably to the work of Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl.
"Melania... appears keener on inducing narcolepsy in its viewers than energizing them into massed marching," he wrote. "Triumph of the Dull, perhaps."
Variety's Owen Gleiberman argued that the Melania documentary is utterly devoid of anything approaching dramatic stakes, which results in the film suffering from "staggering inertia."
"Mostly it’s inert," Gleiberman wrote of the film. "It feels like it’s been stitched together out of the most innocuous outtakes from a reality show. There’s no drama to it. It should have been called 'Day of the Living Tradwife.'"
Frank Scheck of the Hollywood Reporter found that the movie mostly exposes Melania Trump is an empty vessel without a single original thought or insight, instead deploying "an endless number of inspirational phrases seemingly cribbed from self-help books."
Kevin Fallon of the Daily Beast described Melania as "an unbelievable abomination of filmmaking" that reaches "a level of insipid propaganda that almost resists review."
"It's so expected," Fallon added, "and utterly pointless."
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