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At six o'clock on a freezing November morning, Hillary Clinton's famously rumpled and gruff top strategist, Mark Penn, was hailed by another giant of her campaign for the Democratic nomination at the departure gate of the shuttle to Washington DC.Terry McAuliffe, a notorious blowhard of the party, wanted to know what Mr Penn had made of the event they had both attended the previous night, when the candidates (there were nine Democrats in the race at that stage) each addressed a raucous crowd of sign-waving, feverishly excited supporters inside an echoing basketball arena.
After a series of earnest and dull addresses by Hillary Clinton and lesser lights of the presidential campaign, Barack Obama had sprinted on to the stage to deliver a mesmerising speech that brought the house down. It would prove to be a turning point in what until that point had been a faltering campaign that had shown more promise than substance.
The core of Mr Obama's message was a promise that if elected he not only intended to unite Republicans and Democrats, "Red States and Blue States" but that he would also clean out the Augean stables in Washington DC. He would end forever the excessive influence of lobbyists and venal politicians on the way America does business. To that end his campaign would have nothing to with lobbyists and accept none of their money. It was to be a people's movement, rather than a campaign waged under the old rules. The speech could have been written with Mark Penn in mind. As "Worldwide chief executive" of the British-owned lobbying firm Burson Marsteller and chief strategist to Mrs Clinton, he saw no conflict of interest in his two roles.
One minute he was representing the controversial mercenary company Blackwater, whose guards had killed numerous unarmed Iraqi civilians, and the next he was advising Hillary Clinton not to apologise for her Senate vote to go to war in Iraq, but to say instead that "the vote turned out to be a terrible decision for everyone". Another controversy flared over Mr Penn's role in representing Wal-Mart and its efforts to defeat union organising campaigns.
To many Democrats, Mr Penn is seen as a figure who represents for Bill and Hillary Clinton what Karl Rove was to George Bush: a cynical manipulator of numbers, who can magically steer a candidate through controversies and moral hazards by looking at the polling figures and advising them where to position themselves.
On that early morning flight from Iowa to DC, Mr Penn, a pollster by trade, expressed himself more than happy with Hillary's dry-as-a-stick address to the Democratic audience in Des Moines. What mattered, he confided, was the polling data which pointed to an easy win in Iowa. Reports that dyed-in-the-wool Iowa Republicans were openly expressing interest in Mr Obama's inspirational message of unity was just anecdotal fluff, he said. Hillary Clinton was going to win the first and most important contest in the primary race. The answer was in the polling numbers, Mr Penn said as he headed for the first-class section.
So confident was he in the inevitability of Mrs Clinton blowing away the precocious upstart, and wrapping the nomination up by 5 February, or Super Tuesday, that he predicted he would not have to do much travelling during the campaign. Instead he would hole up at Burson Marsteller's sleek DC headquarters. "I'll stay in Washington and monitor all the polling remotely," he said, changing the subject to one of his proudest achievements, his role advising Tony Blair and helping to steer him to his third electoral victory by getting him to focus on the small-bore issues that appeal to voters. But Mrs Clinton is increasingly struggling to secure the nomination with the numbers stacked up against her.
As one of the most influential political advisors of his generation, Mark Penn finally fell on his sword on Sunday. He resigned from the Clinton campaign after he was caught by the conflict of interest between his work as a Washington DC lobbyist and his role as her chief strategist.
In an act of extraordinary hubris, Mr Penn rolled up at the Colombian embassy in Washington last Monday to advise the ambassador on the best way to get a controversial free trade agreement through Congress. The compant, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the advertising company WPP, was billing $300,000 for a year's worth of advice on a trade deal that the Clinton campaign is specifically and publicly opposed to.
American trades unions oppose the trade deal because they fear the loss of jobs. Human rights groups oppose it because of the actions of death squads linked to the government of AfAlvaro Uribe. At first the Colombian embassy described the meeting as one of a series with Barack Obama's team and that of the Republican candidate, John McCain.
But when Mr Penn publicly apologised for what he said was "an error of judgement" in attending the meeting the Colombians were furious at the "insult" and promptly sacked him and his firm on Saturday. By Sunday, his position in the Clinton campaign was also untenable with Hillary Clinton reported to be "furious" with him for his indiscretion.
Even though Mr Penn has been among their most loyal backers since the darkest days of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, both Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed he should be cut adrift from the campaign on Sunday. Mr Penn will, however, continue to give discreet advice and his polling firm Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates will still be used to guide the campaign in the difficult weeks ahead.
Despite the terse statement from the campaign that "after the events of the last few days, Mark Penn has asked to give up his role as chief strategist of the Clinton campaign", the impression lingered that he will continue to whisper advice, but this time from more of a distance.
With a blizzard of polling data to back up his position, Mr Penn advised Mrs Clinton to go on the attack against Mr Obama. Other advisers cautioned that this was a fatal error and that the voters had responded better when they saw her human side. It was glimpses of her vulnerability after her loss in Iowa that enabled her to rebound they said.
For months top advisers to Hillary Clinton have been telling her to get rid of Mr Penn, whom they blamed for some of the most spectacular miscalculations of her once "inevitable" campaign for the nomination. One of Mr Penn's mistake, it appears, was to assume that Mrs Clinton could win the nomination by focusing solely on the big states in the primary season, all but ignoring the smaller states that typically vote Republican in a general election.
This gave an opening to Mr Obama who tapped into his cross-over appeal among Republicans and independents in these smaller states most of which he won handsomely ending up with more delegates than Mrs Clinton despite all her big state wins. By the time Super Tuesday rolled around, Mr Obama had built up enough momentum to halt the advance of the Clinton machine.
But the greatest error was Mr Penn's belief that he could win the election by running Hillary Clinton's strategy to take the White House in the way he advises his PR firm's clients: drilling down into the polling data to discover what his book, Microtrends, describes as "the small forces behind tomorrow's big changes".
Mr Penn's philosophy boils down to the belief that "Americans overwhelmingly favour small, reasonable ideas over big, grandiose schemes". He calls it "niching", writing that "there is no one America anymore" but "hundreds of Americas".
Mr Penn is Bill and Hillary Clinton's God of small things and his poll-driven approach to politics has worked wonders in the past. He gave her the confidence to launch her first Senate run, telling her that New Yorkers were open to her running. And despite the deep undercurrent of anti-Clinton sentiment in the country, Mr Penn's polling persuaded her that she could win the nomination and the White House by running as a hawkish no-nonsense candidate who was at ease with picking up the baton in George Bush's war on terror. Mr Penn's polling numbers had worked their magic for Hillary and Bill Clinton many times before.
But inside the Clinton campaign there was fury that Mr Penn's obsession with polls allowed Mr Obama to capture the public's imagination by declaring himself to be the agent of change, a theme that has come to define the 2008 election.
The tensions between Mr Penn and advisors occasionally burst into the open as when Clinton campaign operatives gathered in her headquarters in Arlington, Virginia to preview a TV commercial. "Your ad doesn't work," Mr Penn yelled at Mandy Grunwald, one of the Clinton's closest friends in the advertising business. "Oh, it's always the ad, never the message," Ms Grunwald fired back, in a clash that got so heated that the campaign's political director Guy Cecil left the room, saying, "I'm out of here."
The latest upheaval in the Clinton campaign comes at a time when she only has a narrow path to winning the nomination and that depends on her winning the Pennsylvania primary on 22 April in two weeks' time. When the race for the Democratic nomination is finally wrapped up, it will all come down to a contest between Mr Obama's inspiration and Mr Penn's divination.
Another Clinton adviser whispered this weekend as Mr Penn was being hung out to dry: "Nothing can stop Obama now."
--Leonard Doyle
(c) 2008 independent.co.uk
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At six o'clock on a freezing November morning, Hillary Clinton's famously rumpled and gruff top strategist, Mark Penn, was hailed by another giant of her campaign for the Democratic nomination at the departure gate of the shuttle to Washington DC.Terry McAuliffe, a notorious blowhard of the party, wanted to know what Mr Penn had made of the event they had both attended the previous night, when the candidates (there were nine Democrats in the race at that stage) each addressed a raucous crowd of sign-waving, feverishly excited supporters inside an echoing basketball arena.
After a series of earnest and dull addresses by Hillary Clinton and lesser lights of the presidential campaign, Barack Obama had sprinted on to the stage to deliver a mesmerising speech that brought the house down. It would prove to be a turning point in what until that point had been a faltering campaign that had shown more promise than substance.
The core of Mr Obama's message was a promise that if elected he not only intended to unite Republicans and Democrats, "Red States and Blue States" but that he would also clean out the Augean stables in Washington DC. He would end forever the excessive influence of lobbyists and venal politicians on the way America does business. To that end his campaign would have nothing to with lobbyists and accept none of their money. It was to be a people's movement, rather than a campaign waged under the old rules. The speech could have been written with Mark Penn in mind. As "Worldwide chief executive" of the British-owned lobbying firm Burson Marsteller and chief strategist to Mrs Clinton, he saw no conflict of interest in his two roles.
One minute he was representing the controversial mercenary company Blackwater, whose guards had killed numerous unarmed Iraqi civilians, and the next he was advising Hillary Clinton not to apologise for her Senate vote to go to war in Iraq, but to say instead that "the vote turned out to be a terrible decision for everyone". Another controversy flared over Mr Penn's role in representing Wal-Mart and its efforts to defeat union organising campaigns.
To many Democrats, Mr Penn is seen as a figure who represents for Bill and Hillary Clinton what Karl Rove was to George Bush: a cynical manipulator of numbers, who can magically steer a candidate through controversies and moral hazards by looking at the polling figures and advising them where to position themselves.
On that early morning flight from Iowa to DC, Mr Penn, a pollster by trade, expressed himself more than happy with Hillary's dry-as-a-stick address to the Democratic audience in Des Moines. What mattered, he confided, was the polling data which pointed to an easy win in Iowa. Reports that dyed-in-the-wool Iowa Republicans were openly expressing interest in Mr Obama's inspirational message of unity was just anecdotal fluff, he said. Hillary Clinton was going to win the first and most important contest in the primary race. The answer was in the polling numbers, Mr Penn said as he headed for the first-class section.
So confident was he in the inevitability of Mrs Clinton blowing away the precocious upstart, and wrapping the nomination up by 5 February, or Super Tuesday, that he predicted he would not have to do much travelling during the campaign. Instead he would hole up at Burson Marsteller's sleek DC headquarters. "I'll stay in Washington and monitor all the polling remotely," he said, changing the subject to one of his proudest achievements, his role advising Tony Blair and helping to steer him to his third electoral victory by getting him to focus on the small-bore issues that appeal to voters. But Mrs Clinton is increasingly struggling to secure the nomination with the numbers stacked up against her.
As one of the most influential political advisors of his generation, Mark Penn finally fell on his sword on Sunday. He resigned from the Clinton campaign after he was caught by the conflict of interest between his work as a Washington DC lobbyist and his role as her chief strategist.
In an act of extraordinary hubris, Mr Penn rolled up at the Colombian embassy in Washington last Monday to advise the ambassador on the best way to get a controversial free trade agreement through Congress. The compant, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the advertising company WPP, was billing $300,000 for a year's worth of advice on a trade deal that the Clinton campaign is specifically and publicly opposed to.
American trades unions oppose the trade deal because they fear the loss of jobs. Human rights groups oppose it because of the actions of death squads linked to the government of AfAlvaro Uribe. At first the Colombian embassy described the meeting as one of a series with Barack Obama's team and that of the Republican candidate, John McCain.
But when Mr Penn publicly apologised for what he said was "an error of judgement" in attending the meeting the Colombians were furious at the "insult" and promptly sacked him and his firm on Saturday. By Sunday, his position in the Clinton campaign was also untenable with Hillary Clinton reported to be "furious" with him for his indiscretion.
Even though Mr Penn has been among their most loyal backers since the darkest days of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, both Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed he should be cut adrift from the campaign on Sunday. Mr Penn will, however, continue to give discreet advice and his polling firm Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates will still be used to guide the campaign in the difficult weeks ahead.
Despite the terse statement from the campaign that "after the events of the last few days, Mark Penn has asked to give up his role as chief strategist of the Clinton campaign", the impression lingered that he will continue to whisper advice, but this time from more of a distance.
With a blizzard of polling data to back up his position, Mr Penn advised Mrs Clinton to go on the attack against Mr Obama. Other advisers cautioned that this was a fatal error and that the voters had responded better when they saw her human side. It was glimpses of her vulnerability after her loss in Iowa that enabled her to rebound they said.
For months top advisers to Hillary Clinton have been telling her to get rid of Mr Penn, whom they blamed for some of the most spectacular miscalculations of her once "inevitable" campaign for the nomination. One of Mr Penn's mistake, it appears, was to assume that Mrs Clinton could win the nomination by focusing solely on the big states in the primary season, all but ignoring the smaller states that typically vote Republican in a general election.
This gave an opening to Mr Obama who tapped into his cross-over appeal among Republicans and independents in these smaller states most of which he won handsomely ending up with more delegates than Mrs Clinton despite all her big state wins. By the time Super Tuesday rolled around, Mr Obama had built up enough momentum to halt the advance of the Clinton machine.
But the greatest error was Mr Penn's belief that he could win the election by running Hillary Clinton's strategy to take the White House in the way he advises his PR firm's clients: drilling down into the polling data to discover what his book, Microtrends, describes as "the small forces behind tomorrow's big changes".
Mr Penn's philosophy boils down to the belief that "Americans overwhelmingly favour small, reasonable ideas over big, grandiose schemes". He calls it "niching", writing that "there is no one America anymore" but "hundreds of Americas".
Mr Penn is Bill and Hillary Clinton's God of small things and his poll-driven approach to politics has worked wonders in the past. He gave her the confidence to launch her first Senate run, telling her that New Yorkers were open to her running. And despite the deep undercurrent of anti-Clinton sentiment in the country, Mr Penn's polling persuaded her that she could win the nomination and the White House by running as a hawkish no-nonsense candidate who was at ease with picking up the baton in George Bush's war on terror. Mr Penn's polling numbers had worked their magic for Hillary and Bill Clinton many times before.
But inside the Clinton campaign there was fury that Mr Penn's obsession with polls allowed Mr Obama to capture the public's imagination by declaring himself to be the agent of change, a theme that has come to define the 2008 election.
The tensions between Mr Penn and advisors occasionally burst into the open as when Clinton campaign operatives gathered in her headquarters in Arlington, Virginia to preview a TV commercial. "Your ad doesn't work," Mr Penn yelled at Mandy Grunwald, one of the Clinton's closest friends in the advertising business. "Oh, it's always the ad, never the message," Ms Grunwald fired back, in a clash that got so heated that the campaign's political director Guy Cecil left the room, saying, "I'm out of here."
The latest upheaval in the Clinton campaign comes at a time when she only has a narrow path to winning the nomination and that depends on her winning the Pennsylvania primary on 22 April in two weeks' time. When the race for the Democratic nomination is finally wrapped up, it will all come down to a contest between Mr Obama's inspiration and Mr Penn's divination.
Another Clinton adviser whispered this weekend as Mr Penn was being hung out to dry: "Nothing can stop Obama now."
--Leonard Doyle
(c) 2008 independent.co.uk
At six o'clock on a freezing November morning, Hillary Clinton's famously rumpled and gruff top strategist, Mark Penn, was hailed by another giant of her campaign for the Democratic nomination at the departure gate of the shuttle to Washington DC.Terry McAuliffe, a notorious blowhard of the party, wanted to know what Mr Penn had made of the event they had both attended the previous night, when the candidates (there were nine Democrats in the race at that stage) each addressed a raucous crowd of sign-waving, feverishly excited supporters inside an echoing basketball arena.
After a series of earnest and dull addresses by Hillary Clinton and lesser lights of the presidential campaign, Barack Obama had sprinted on to the stage to deliver a mesmerising speech that brought the house down. It would prove to be a turning point in what until that point had been a faltering campaign that had shown more promise than substance.
The core of Mr Obama's message was a promise that if elected he not only intended to unite Republicans and Democrats, "Red States and Blue States" but that he would also clean out the Augean stables in Washington DC. He would end forever the excessive influence of lobbyists and venal politicians on the way America does business. To that end his campaign would have nothing to with lobbyists and accept none of their money. It was to be a people's movement, rather than a campaign waged under the old rules. The speech could have been written with Mark Penn in mind. As "Worldwide chief executive" of the British-owned lobbying firm Burson Marsteller and chief strategist to Mrs Clinton, he saw no conflict of interest in his two roles.
One minute he was representing the controversial mercenary company Blackwater, whose guards had killed numerous unarmed Iraqi civilians, and the next he was advising Hillary Clinton not to apologise for her Senate vote to go to war in Iraq, but to say instead that "the vote turned out to be a terrible decision for everyone". Another controversy flared over Mr Penn's role in representing Wal-Mart and its efforts to defeat union organising campaigns.
To many Democrats, Mr Penn is seen as a figure who represents for Bill and Hillary Clinton what Karl Rove was to George Bush: a cynical manipulator of numbers, who can magically steer a candidate through controversies and moral hazards by looking at the polling figures and advising them where to position themselves.
On that early morning flight from Iowa to DC, Mr Penn, a pollster by trade, expressed himself more than happy with Hillary's dry-as-a-stick address to the Democratic audience in Des Moines. What mattered, he confided, was the polling data which pointed to an easy win in Iowa. Reports that dyed-in-the-wool Iowa Republicans were openly expressing interest in Mr Obama's inspirational message of unity was just anecdotal fluff, he said. Hillary Clinton was going to win the first and most important contest in the primary race. The answer was in the polling numbers, Mr Penn said as he headed for the first-class section.
So confident was he in the inevitability of Mrs Clinton blowing away the precocious upstart, and wrapping the nomination up by 5 February, or Super Tuesday, that he predicted he would not have to do much travelling during the campaign. Instead he would hole up at Burson Marsteller's sleek DC headquarters. "I'll stay in Washington and monitor all the polling remotely," he said, changing the subject to one of his proudest achievements, his role advising Tony Blair and helping to steer him to his third electoral victory by getting him to focus on the small-bore issues that appeal to voters. But Mrs Clinton is increasingly struggling to secure the nomination with the numbers stacked up against her.
As one of the most influential political advisors of his generation, Mark Penn finally fell on his sword on Sunday. He resigned from the Clinton campaign after he was caught by the conflict of interest between his work as a Washington DC lobbyist and his role as her chief strategist.
In an act of extraordinary hubris, Mr Penn rolled up at the Colombian embassy in Washington last Monday to advise the ambassador on the best way to get a controversial free trade agreement through Congress. The compant, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the advertising company WPP, was billing $300,000 for a year's worth of advice on a trade deal that the Clinton campaign is specifically and publicly opposed to.
American trades unions oppose the trade deal because they fear the loss of jobs. Human rights groups oppose it because of the actions of death squads linked to the government of AfAlvaro Uribe. At first the Colombian embassy described the meeting as one of a series with Barack Obama's team and that of the Republican candidate, John McCain.
But when Mr Penn publicly apologised for what he said was "an error of judgement" in attending the meeting the Colombians were furious at the "insult" and promptly sacked him and his firm on Saturday. By Sunday, his position in the Clinton campaign was also untenable with Hillary Clinton reported to be "furious" with him for his indiscretion.
Even though Mr Penn has been among their most loyal backers since the darkest days of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, both Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed he should be cut adrift from the campaign on Sunday. Mr Penn will, however, continue to give discreet advice and his polling firm Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates will still be used to guide the campaign in the difficult weeks ahead.
Despite the terse statement from the campaign that "after the events of the last few days, Mark Penn has asked to give up his role as chief strategist of the Clinton campaign", the impression lingered that he will continue to whisper advice, but this time from more of a distance.
With a blizzard of polling data to back up his position, Mr Penn advised Mrs Clinton to go on the attack against Mr Obama. Other advisers cautioned that this was a fatal error and that the voters had responded better when they saw her human side. It was glimpses of her vulnerability after her loss in Iowa that enabled her to rebound they said.
For months top advisers to Hillary Clinton have been telling her to get rid of Mr Penn, whom they blamed for some of the most spectacular miscalculations of her once "inevitable" campaign for the nomination. One of Mr Penn's mistake, it appears, was to assume that Mrs Clinton could win the nomination by focusing solely on the big states in the primary season, all but ignoring the smaller states that typically vote Republican in a general election.
This gave an opening to Mr Obama who tapped into his cross-over appeal among Republicans and independents in these smaller states most of which he won handsomely ending up with more delegates than Mrs Clinton despite all her big state wins. By the time Super Tuesday rolled around, Mr Obama had built up enough momentum to halt the advance of the Clinton machine.
But the greatest error was Mr Penn's belief that he could win the election by running Hillary Clinton's strategy to take the White House in the way he advises his PR firm's clients: drilling down into the polling data to discover what his book, Microtrends, describes as "the small forces behind tomorrow's big changes".
Mr Penn's philosophy boils down to the belief that "Americans overwhelmingly favour small, reasonable ideas over big, grandiose schemes". He calls it "niching", writing that "there is no one America anymore" but "hundreds of Americas".
Mr Penn is Bill and Hillary Clinton's God of small things and his poll-driven approach to politics has worked wonders in the past. He gave her the confidence to launch her first Senate run, telling her that New Yorkers were open to her running. And despite the deep undercurrent of anti-Clinton sentiment in the country, Mr Penn's polling persuaded her that she could win the nomination and the White House by running as a hawkish no-nonsense candidate who was at ease with picking up the baton in George Bush's war on terror. Mr Penn's polling numbers had worked their magic for Hillary and Bill Clinton many times before.
But inside the Clinton campaign there was fury that Mr Penn's obsession with polls allowed Mr Obama to capture the public's imagination by declaring himself to be the agent of change, a theme that has come to define the 2008 election.
The tensions between Mr Penn and advisors occasionally burst into the open as when Clinton campaign operatives gathered in her headquarters in Arlington, Virginia to preview a TV commercial. "Your ad doesn't work," Mr Penn yelled at Mandy Grunwald, one of the Clinton's closest friends in the advertising business. "Oh, it's always the ad, never the message," Ms Grunwald fired back, in a clash that got so heated that the campaign's political director Guy Cecil left the room, saying, "I'm out of here."
The latest upheaval in the Clinton campaign comes at a time when she only has a narrow path to winning the nomination and that depends on her winning the Pennsylvania primary on 22 April in two weeks' time. When the race for the Democratic nomination is finally wrapped up, it will all come down to a contest between Mr Obama's inspiration and Mr Penn's divination.
Another Clinton adviser whispered this weekend as Mr Penn was being hung out to dry: "Nothing can stop Obama now."
--Leonard Doyle
(c) 2008 independent.co.uk
"Zeldin's assertion that the EPA shouldn't address greenhouse gas emissions is like a fire chief claiming that they shouldn't fight fires," said one critic. "It is as malicious as it is absurd."
U.S. President Donald Trump's administration faced an onslaught of criticism on Tuesday for starting the process of repealing the 2009 legal opinion that greenhouse gases endanger public health and the welfare of the American people—which has enabled federal regulations aimed at the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency over the past 15 years.
Confirming reports from last week, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin unveiled the rule to rescind the 2009 "endangerment finding" at a truck dealership in Indiana. According to The New York Times, he said that "the proposal would, if finalized, amount to the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States."
If the administration succeeds in repealing the legal finding, the EPA would lack authority under the Clean Air Act to impose standards for greenhouse gas emissions—meaning the move would kill vehicle regulations. As with the reporting last week, the formal announcement was sharply condemned by climate and health advocates and experts.
"Greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and are the root cause of the climate crisis," said Deanna Noël with Public Citizen's Climate Program, ripping the administration's effort as "grossly misguided and exceptionally dangerous."
"This isn't just a denial of science and reality—it's a betrayal of public trust and yet another signal that this administration is working for corporate interests, and no one else."
"Stripping the EPA of its ability to regulate greenhouse gases is like throwing away the fire extinguisher while the house is already burning," she warned. "The administration is shamelessly handing Big Oil a hall pass to pollute unchecked and dodge accountability, leaving working families to bear the costs through worsening health outcomes, rising energy bills, more climate-fueled extreme weather, and an increasingly unstable future. This isn't just a denial of science and reality—it's a betrayal of public trust and yet another signal that this administration is working for corporate interests, and no one else."
Noël was far from alone in accusing the administration's leaders of serving the polluters who helped Trump return to power.
"Zeldin and Trump are concerned only with maximizing short-term profits for polluting corporations and the CEOs funneling millions of dollars to their campaign coffers," said Jim Walsh, policy director at Food & Water Watch. "Zeldin's assertion that the EPA shouldn't address greenhouse gas emissions is like a fire chief claiming that they shouldn't fight fires. It is as malicious as it is absurd."
Dan Becker, director of the Center for Biological Diversity's Safe Climate Transport Campaign, similarly said that the proposal is "purely a political bow to the oil industry" and "Trump is putting fealty to Big Oil over sound science and people's health."
Earthworks policy director Lauren Pagel also called the rule "a perverse gift to the fossil fuel industry that rejects yearslong efforts by the agency, scientists, NGOs, frontline communities, and industry to protect public health and our environment."
"Donald Trump and Lee Zeldin are playing with fire—and with floods and droughts and public health risks, too," she stressed, as about 168 million Americans on Tuesday faced advisories for extreme heat made more likely by the climate crisis.
🚨 The Trump administration just took its most extreme step yet in rolling back climate protections.
[image or embed]
— Sierra Club (@sierraclub.org) July 29, 2025 at 4:58 PM
Justin Chen, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, which represents over 8,000 EPA workers nationwide, said that the repeal plan "is reckless and will have far-reaching, disastrous consequences for the USA."
"EPA career professionals have worked for decades on the development of the science and policy of greenhouse gases to protect the American public," he continued, "and this policy decision completely disregards all of their work in service to the public."
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) highlighted that Chris Wright, head of the Department of Energy, joined Zeldin at the Tuesday press conference and "announced a DOE 'climate science study' alongside remarks that were rife with climate denial talking points and disinformation."
UCS president Gretchen Goldman said that "it's abundantly clear what's going on here. The Trump administration refuses to acknowledge robust climate science and is using the kitchen sink approach: making every specious argument it can to avoid complying with the law."
"But getting around the Clean Air Act won't be easy," she added. "The science establishing climate harms to human health was unequivocally clear back in 2009, and more than 15 years later, the evidence has only accumulated."
Today, Zeldin’s EPA plans to release a proposal to revoke the Endangerment Finding, which is the legal & scientific foundation of EPA’s responsibility to limit climate-heating greenhouse gas pollution from major sources.
[image or embed]
— Moms Clean Air Force (@momscleanairforce.org) July 29, 2025 at 12:58 PM
David Bookbinder, director of law and policy at the Environmental Integrity Project, was a lead attorney in the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court case Massachusetts vs. EPA, which affirmed the agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and ultimately led to the endangerment finding two years later.
Bookbinder said Tuesday that "because this approach has already been rejected by the courts—and doubtless will be again—this baseless effort to pretend that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses that cause climate change are not harmful pollutants is nothing more than a transparent attempt to delay and derail our efforts to control greenhouse pollution at the worst possible time, when deadly floods and heat waves are killing more people every day."
In a statement from the Environmental Protection Network, which is made up of ex-EPA staff, Joseph Goffman, former assistant administrator of the agency's Office of Air and Radiation, also cited the 2007 ruling.
"This decision is both legally indefensible and morally bankrupt," Goffman said of the Tuesday proposal. "The Supreme Court made clear that EPA cannot ignore science or evade its responsibilities under the Clean Air Act. By walking away from the endangerment finding, EPA has not only broken with precedent; it has broken with reality."
Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, responded to the EPA proposal with defiance, declaring that "Donald Trump and his Big Oil donors are lighting the world on fire and fueling their private jets with young people's lives. We refuse to be sacrifices for their greed. We're coming for them, and we're not backing down."
Israel has already summarily rejected the U.K. leader's ultimatum to take "substantive" steps to end the war on Gaza by September, agree to a two-state solution, and reject West Bank annexation.
United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer was accused of "political grandstanding" after he said Tuesday that his country would recognize Palestinian statehood if Israel did not take ambiguously defined steps to end its war on Gaza—conditions that were promptly dismissed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"Today, as part of this process towards peace, I can confirm the U.K. will recognize the state of Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly in September, unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a cease-fire, and commit to a long-term sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a two-state solution," Starmer said during a press conference.
"This includes allowing the U.N. to restart the supply of aid and making clear that there will be no annexations in the West Bank," the prime minister continued, adding that "the terrorists of Hamas... must immediately release all of the hostages, sign up to a cease-fire, disarm, and accept that they will play no part in the government of Gaza."
Member of Scottish Parliament Scott Greer (Scottish Greens-West Scotland) responded to Tuesday's announcement on social media, saying, "Starmer wouldn't threaten to withdraw U.K. recognition of Israel, but he's made recognition of Palestinian statehood conditional on the actions of their genocidal oppressor?"
"Another profoundly unjust act from a Labour government thoroughly complicit in Israel's crimes," Greer added.
British attorney and activist Shola Mos-Shogbamimu asserted that "Keir Starmer knows his time is up and pivots to save his career but it's too late."
"By placing a condition on recognizing Palestine this declaration is performative and disingenuous because before September he can claim Israel has substantively complied with the condition," she added.
Leftist politician and Accountability Archive co-founder Philip Proudfoot argued on social media that "decent" Members of Parliament "need to table a no-confidence motion in Starmer now."
"He has just used the recognition of Palestine as a bargaining chip in exchange for Israel following its BASIC LEGAL OBLIGATIONS," he added. "This is one of the lowest political acts in living memory."
Media critic Sana Saeed said on social media, "Using Palestinian life and future as a bargaining chip and threat to Israel—not a surprise from kid starver Keir Starmer."
Journalist Sangita Myska argued that "rather than threatening the gesture politics of recognizing a Palestinian state (that may never happen)," Starmer should expel Israel's ambassador to the U.K., impose "full trade sanctions" and a "full arms embargo," and end alleged Royal Air Force surveillance flights over Gaza.
Political analyst Bushra Shaikh accused Starmer of "political grandstanding" and "speaking from both sides of his mouth."
Starmer's announcement followed a Monday meeting in Turnberry, Scotland with U.S. President Donald Trump, who signaled that he would not object to U.K. recognition of Palestine.
However, U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce called Starmer's announcement "a slap in the face for the victims of October 7," a reference to the Hamas-led attack of 2023.
While the United States remains Israel's staunchest supporter and enabler—providing billions of dollars in annual armed aid and diplomatic cover—Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee have all expressed concerns over mounting starvation deaths in Gaza.
On Tuesday, the U.N.-affiliated Integrated Food Security Phase Classification warned that a "worst-case" famine scenario is developing in Gaza, where health officials say at least 147 Palestinians, including at least 88 children, have died from malnutrition since Israel launched its obliteration and siege of the enclave following the October 2023 attack.
Israel—which imposed a "complete siege" on Gaza following that attack—has severely limited the amount of humanitarian aid that can enter the strip. According to U.N. officials, Israel Defense Forces troops have killed more than 1,000 aid-seeking civilians at distribution points run by the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. IDF troops have said they were ordered to shoot live bullets and artillery shells at aid seekers.
Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza including murder and weaponized starvation—responded to the U.K. prime minister's ultimatum in a social media post stating, "Starmer rewards Hamas' monstrous terrorism and punishes its victims."
"A jihadist state on Israel's border TODAY will threaten Britain TOMORROW," Netanyahu said. "Appeasement towards jihadist terrorists always fails. It will fail you too. It will not happen."
The U.K. played a critical role in the foundation of the modern state of Israel, allowing Jewish colonization of what was then the British Mandate of Palestine under condition that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine," who made up more than 90% of the population.
Seeing that Jewish immigrants returning to their ancestral homeland were usurping the indigenous Arabs of Palestine, the British subsequently prohibited further Zionist colonization. This sparked a nearly decadelong wave of terrorism and other attacks against the British occupiers that ultimately resulted in the U.K. abandoning Palestine and the establishment of Israel under the authority of the United Nations—an outcome achieved by the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinian Arabs.
On the topic of annexing the West Bank, earlier this month, all 15 Israeli government ministers representing Netanyahu's Likud party recommended the move, citing support from Trump. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) found last year that Israel's occupation of Palestine, including the West Bank and Gaza, is an illegal form of apartheid.
Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron said his country would announce its formal recognition of Palestinian statehood during September's U.N. General Assembly in New York. France is set to become the first Group of Seven nation to recognize Palestine, which is currently officially acknowledged by approximately 150 of the 193 U.N. member states.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz subsequently threatened "severe consequences" for nations that recognize Palestine.
Starmer's announcement came on the same day that the Gaza Health Ministry said that the death toll from Israel's 662-day assault and siege on Gaza—which is the subject of a South Africa-led genocide case at the ICJ—topped 60,000. However, multiple peer-reviewed studies in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet have concluded that Gaza officials' casualty tallies are likely significant undercounts.
"Eric Adams is a complete non-factor in this race," remarked a founding partner of pollster Zenith Research.
A new poll of the New York City mayoral race found that Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani is very well positioned to win later this year and that former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is only competitive in the race if every other Mamdani opponent drops out.
The survey, which was conducted by polling firm Zenith Research, showed Mamdani holding what Zenith founding partner Adam Carlson described on X as a "commanding" lead of 28 points among likely voters in a five-way race featuring Cuomo, incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, Republican Curtis Sliwa, and independent candidate Jim Walden. Even in other scenarios where other candidates drop out of the race, Mamdani would still garner more than 50% of likely votes in each instance.
However, Mamdani's lead becomes much smaller when the poll is expanded to all registered voters, among whom he only holds a three-point advantage over Cuomo in a head-to-head matchup. This suggests that Cuomo has room to grow as long as he can convince Adams, Sliwa, and Walden to exit the race.
Even so, commented Carlson, Cuomo faces significant headwinds that could block his path to victory even if he succeeds somehow in making it a one-on-one race.
"Another thing that’s extremely tough for Cuomo is that 60% of likely voters (as well as 52% of registered voters) would not even consider voting for him," he explained. "Only 32% say they wouldn't consider voting for Mamdani. Cuomo will need to go scorched earth to bring that number up."
New Yorkers who oppose Mamdani will have to place their hopes in the disgraced former governor, given the dismal standing held by incumbent Adams.
"Eric Adams is a complete non-factor in this race," remarked Carlson. "He polls at 7% in the five-way race, 14% if Cuomo drops out, and 32% if Cuomo and Sliwa drop out. More than half of [likely voters] strongly disapprove of his performance and have a very unfavorable view of him. 68% won't consider voting for him."
The poll also found Mamdani with an overall lead among Jewish voters despite efforts by opponents to paint him as antisemitic given his opposition to Israel's war in Gaza and his past reluctance to criticize the slogan "globalize the intifada," which he told The Bulwark he viewed as "a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights." New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, a progressive Jewish ally of Mamdani's who has endorsed his mayoral bid, acknowledged before the election that some Jewish people view the phrase as a threat of violence.
Among likely Jewish voters, Mamdani leads Cuomo by 17 points in a five-way race. Although Cuomo holds a double-digit lead over Mamdani among likely Jewish voters over the age of 45, Mamdani dominates among young Jewish voters by pulling in more than two-thirds of likely Jewish voters between the ages of 18 and 44.