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Amy Sinclair pulls her all-electric vehicle up to a public charging station near Polk Street and Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco, California on Friday, August 30, 2019. (Photo: Jessica Christian/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
When Russia's invasion of Ukraine drove up gasoline prices, members of Congress from oil and gas producing states called for increased fossil fuel production. In his March 31 speech, President Biden also seemed to put most of his emphasis on increasing the oil supply. But a growing number of voices are saying that we should use this occasion to move away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible.
Reliance on fossil fuels tethers our economy to authoritarian regimes like those in Russia and Saudi Arabia. "Policymakers must prioritize strategic investments in clean energy alternatives," says Carmelita Miller, who recently joined the clean energy think tank RMI as director of energy equity strategies after working on energy equity policy at the Greenlining Institute since 2013.
Electric vehicles are "three to five times cheaper to drive per mile than gas-powered vehicles."
According to Miller, "Solutions like heat pumps for households, more electric vehicles and shared mobility options, and energy efficiency measures will not only slash our dependence on foreign oil and gas, they will stimulate regional economic investment, improve public health, and reduce prices in the long term."
Experts agree the federal government should take the lead, but, for now, that does not seem to be happening. Critical climate and clean energy provisions contained in the Build Back Better Act remain bottled up in the Senate, thanks to a solid wall of opposition from Senate Republicans and West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin.
Advocates are pushing for strong federal legislation while calling on state and local governments to take meaningful action to start cutting the fossil fuel umbilical cord. "States and cities need the investments proposed in the Biden Administration's Build Back Better framework to address the climate crisis in a just and equitable way," says Miller.
The first area where this energy transformation should occur is in transportation.
The gas and diesel fuel used to move people and goods around the United States accounted for about 29 percent of U.S. carbon emissions in 2019, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. But the technology to change this exists now.
For starters, we can become less car-dependent by expanding and improving public transit. And we can replace carbon- and particulate-belching diesel buses with clean, electric transit vehicles.
That's not a pipe dream. The semi-rural working and middle class community of Antelope Valley, California, located northeast of Los Angeles, has already done it. In February 2016, the Antelope Valley Transit Authority became the first U.S. transit agency to commit to converting to an all-electric fleet. It replaced its fleet of diesel vehicles with eighty-five electric buses, vans used for a local dial-a-ride service, and commuter coaches that carry long-distance riders to downtown Los Angeles.
As of last May, the conversion had already saved nearly 1.3 million gallons of diesel fuel and cut the transit authority's fuel costs by more than $1.6 million.
For those who need to drive, it's time to think about ditching the internal combustion engine and going electric. While electric vehicles hold a small share of the U.S. market overall, electric vehicle sales grew 83 percent last year, far outpacing the auto industry as a whole.
Noel Morin, president of Hawaii's Big Island Electric Vehicle Association, notes that electric vehicles have multiple advantages. "Internal combustion cars are notoriously inefficient," he explains. "Most of the fuel used, up to 80 percent, is wasted as heat. Electric cars, on the other hand, are up to 100 percent efficient." If that claim seems astounding, it's backed up by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The United States lags well behind Europe in its rate of electric vehicle adoption. Governments, Morin says, "must incentivize the adoption of clean transportation--electric vehicles, multi-modal transportation, and other measures that can reduce the need for transportation." This includes supporting the expansion of charging infrastructure, which is particularly important for renters, who often cannot charge their cars at home.
While new electric vehicles aren't yet price competitive with the cheapest gas-powered cars, affordable used electric vehicles are available now and will become more so as electric vehicle sales grow. Already, electric vehicles cost significantly less to maintain, the Energy Department notes, "because there are usually fewer fluids (like oil and transmission fluid) to change and far fewer moving parts."
Even before the recent increase in gas prices, the Energy Department noted that gasoline costs about 11 cents per mile for a car that gets thirty miles per gallon, compared to between three and six cents per mile to charge an electric vehicle. A March 2022 analysis by the Zero Emission Transportation Association found that electric vehicles are "three to five times cheaper to drive per mile than gas-powered vehicles."
The second main area where changes can help make a break with fossil fuels is in homes and other buildings. Americans use massive amounts of fossil fuels in their homes for things like heating and cooking, with natural gas alone accounting for 42 percent of residential users' energy consumption in 2020. Heating oil, propane, and other fossil fuels are used extensively in some regions.
Home use of fossil fuels presents significant health risks. A recent analysis by the Rocky Mountain Institute found that children living in homes with a gas stove "are 42 percent more likely to experience asthma symptoms and 24 percent more likely to be diagnosed with asthma by a doctor, compared with children living in homes with electric stoves." Cooking with gas has been tied to dangerous spikes in levels of nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide in homes and apartments.
Again, technological fixes exist, but the programs to implement them--in a way that protects low-income households that are often already struggling with utility bills--are just getting off the ground.
Electric induction stoves emit no pollutants and overcome the perceived disadvantages of conventional electric stoves. Electric heat pumps can provide quiet and efficient heating and cooling.
Multiple cities, including New York City and San Jose, California, have moved to end natural gas hookups in new construction. New York's ban, for example, kicks in for low-rise buildings at the end of 2023 and for taller buildings in 2027. But gas utilities continue to fight such bans, and the laws don't impact existing structures.
One way to get existing buildings off of fossil fuels is through performance standards for buildings, explains Jasmine Graham, Energy Justice Policy Manager at New York-based WE ACT for Environmental Justice. These can be based either on energy efficiency or on a building's total output of greenhouse gasses.
But not all housing is created equal. "Low-income communities and renters are more likely to live in older housing [units] that are inefficient and not designed in a way that would enable solar and other energy retrofits," says Alexis Sutterman, energy equity manager at the California Environmental Justice Alliance. This leads to increased costs and challenges, requiring specific attention from policymakers.
To keep costs down for low- and moderate-income renters, advocates back percentage-of-income payment plans, which cap electricity rates at a certain percentage of a person's income.
Miller says priority should go to those who are most burdened by rising energy costs and "any interventions in building decarbonization must also be paired with protections from utility shut-offs, eviction, displacement, gentrification, and other forms of housing injustice."
As the April 4 IPCC report makes clear, time is running out. This is the moment to hit the brakes on fossil fuels to chart a more sustainable, equitable, and liveable future for all.
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When Russia's invasion of Ukraine drove up gasoline prices, members of Congress from oil and gas producing states called for increased fossil fuel production. In his March 31 speech, President Biden also seemed to put most of his emphasis on increasing the oil supply. But a growing number of voices are saying that we should use this occasion to move away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible.
Reliance on fossil fuels tethers our economy to authoritarian regimes like those in Russia and Saudi Arabia. "Policymakers must prioritize strategic investments in clean energy alternatives," says Carmelita Miller, who recently joined the clean energy think tank RMI as director of energy equity strategies after working on energy equity policy at the Greenlining Institute since 2013.
Electric vehicles are "three to five times cheaper to drive per mile than gas-powered vehicles."
According to Miller, "Solutions like heat pumps for households, more electric vehicles and shared mobility options, and energy efficiency measures will not only slash our dependence on foreign oil and gas, they will stimulate regional economic investment, improve public health, and reduce prices in the long term."
Experts agree the federal government should take the lead, but, for now, that does not seem to be happening. Critical climate and clean energy provisions contained in the Build Back Better Act remain bottled up in the Senate, thanks to a solid wall of opposition from Senate Republicans and West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin.
Advocates are pushing for strong federal legislation while calling on state and local governments to take meaningful action to start cutting the fossil fuel umbilical cord. "States and cities need the investments proposed in the Biden Administration's Build Back Better framework to address the climate crisis in a just and equitable way," says Miller.
The first area where this energy transformation should occur is in transportation.
The gas and diesel fuel used to move people and goods around the United States accounted for about 29 percent of U.S. carbon emissions in 2019, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. But the technology to change this exists now.
For starters, we can become less car-dependent by expanding and improving public transit. And we can replace carbon- and particulate-belching diesel buses with clean, electric transit vehicles.
That's not a pipe dream. The semi-rural working and middle class community of Antelope Valley, California, located northeast of Los Angeles, has already done it. In February 2016, the Antelope Valley Transit Authority became the first U.S. transit agency to commit to converting to an all-electric fleet. It replaced its fleet of diesel vehicles with eighty-five electric buses, vans used for a local dial-a-ride service, and commuter coaches that carry long-distance riders to downtown Los Angeles.
As of last May, the conversion had already saved nearly 1.3 million gallons of diesel fuel and cut the transit authority's fuel costs by more than $1.6 million.
For those who need to drive, it's time to think about ditching the internal combustion engine and going electric. While electric vehicles hold a small share of the U.S. market overall, electric vehicle sales grew 83 percent last year, far outpacing the auto industry as a whole.
Noel Morin, president of Hawaii's Big Island Electric Vehicle Association, notes that electric vehicles have multiple advantages. "Internal combustion cars are notoriously inefficient," he explains. "Most of the fuel used, up to 80 percent, is wasted as heat. Electric cars, on the other hand, are up to 100 percent efficient." If that claim seems astounding, it's backed up by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The United States lags well behind Europe in its rate of electric vehicle adoption. Governments, Morin says, "must incentivize the adoption of clean transportation--electric vehicles, multi-modal transportation, and other measures that can reduce the need for transportation." This includes supporting the expansion of charging infrastructure, which is particularly important for renters, who often cannot charge their cars at home.
While new electric vehicles aren't yet price competitive with the cheapest gas-powered cars, affordable used electric vehicles are available now and will become more so as electric vehicle sales grow. Already, electric vehicles cost significantly less to maintain, the Energy Department notes, "because there are usually fewer fluids (like oil and transmission fluid) to change and far fewer moving parts."
Even before the recent increase in gas prices, the Energy Department noted that gasoline costs about 11 cents per mile for a car that gets thirty miles per gallon, compared to between three and six cents per mile to charge an electric vehicle. A March 2022 analysis by the Zero Emission Transportation Association found that electric vehicles are "three to five times cheaper to drive per mile than gas-powered vehicles."
The second main area where changes can help make a break with fossil fuels is in homes and other buildings. Americans use massive amounts of fossil fuels in their homes for things like heating and cooking, with natural gas alone accounting for 42 percent of residential users' energy consumption in 2020. Heating oil, propane, and other fossil fuels are used extensively in some regions.
Home use of fossil fuels presents significant health risks. A recent analysis by the Rocky Mountain Institute found that children living in homes with a gas stove "are 42 percent more likely to experience asthma symptoms and 24 percent more likely to be diagnosed with asthma by a doctor, compared with children living in homes with electric stoves." Cooking with gas has been tied to dangerous spikes in levels of nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide in homes and apartments.
Again, technological fixes exist, but the programs to implement them--in a way that protects low-income households that are often already struggling with utility bills--are just getting off the ground.
Electric induction stoves emit no pollutants and overcome the perceived disadvantages of conventional electric stoves. Electric heat pumps can provide quiet and efficient heating and cooling.
Multiple cities, including New York City and San Jose, California, have moved to end natural gas hookups in new construction. New York's ban, for example, kicks in for low-rise buildings at the end of 2023 and for taller buildings in 2027. But gas utilities continue to fight such bans, and the laws don't impact existing structures.
One way to get existing buildings off of fossil fuels is through performance standards for buildings, explains Jasmine Graham, Energy Justice Policy Manager at New York-based WE ACT for Environmental Justice. These can be based either on energy efficiency or on a building's total output of greenhouse gasses.
But not all housing is created equal. "Low-income communities and renters are more likely to live in older housing [units] that are inefficient and not designed in a way that would enable solar and other energy retrofits," says Alexis Sutterman, energy equity manager at the California Environmental Justice Alliance. This leads to increased costs and challenges, requiring specific attention from policymakers.
To keep costs down for low- and moderate-income renters, advocates back percentage-of-income payment plans, which cap electricity rates at a certain percentage of a person's income.
Miller says priority should go to those who are most burdened by rising energy costs and "any interventions in building decarbonization must also be paired with protections from utility shut-offs, eviction, displacement, gentrification, and other forms of housing injustice."
As the April 4 IPCC report makes clear, time is running out. This is the moment to hit the brakes on fossil fuels to chart a more sustainable, equitable, and liveable future for all.
When Russia's invasion of Ukraine drove up gasoline prices, members of Congress from oil and gas producing states called for increased fossil fuel production. In his March 31 speech, President Biden also seemed to put most of his emphasis on increasing the oil supply. But a growing number of voices are saying that we should use this occasion to move away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible.
Reliance on fossil fuels tethers our economy to authoritarian regimes like those in Russia and Saudi Arabia. "Policymakers must prioritize strategic investments in clean energy alternatives," says Carmelita Miller, who recently joined the clean energy think tank RMI as director of energy equity strategies after working on energy equity policy at the Greenlining Institute since 2013.
Electric vehicles are "three to five times cheaper to drive per mile than gas-powered vehicles."
According to Miller, "Solutions like heat pumps for households, more electric vehicles and shared mobility options, and energy efficiency measures will not only slash our dependence on foreign oil and gas, they will stimulate regional economic investment, improve public health, and reduce prices in the long term."
Experts agree the federal government should take the lead, but, for now, that does not seem to be happening. Critical climate and clean energy provisions contained in the Build Back Better Act remain bottled up in the Senate, thanks to a solid wall of opposition from Senate Republicans and West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin.
Advocates are pushing for strong federal legislation while calling on state and local governments to take meaningful action to start cutting the fossil fuel umbilical cord. "States and cities need the investments proposed in the Biden Administration's Build Back Better framework to address the climate crisis in a just and equitable way," says Miller.
The first area where this energy transformation should occur is in transportation.
The gas and diesel fuel used to move people and goods around the United States accounted for about 29 percent of U.S. carbon emissions in 2019, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. But the technology to change this exists now.
For starters, we can become less car-dependent by expanding and improving public transit. And we can replace carbon- and particulate-belching diesel buses with clean, electric transit vehicles.
That's not a pipe dream. The semi-rural working and middle class community of Antelope Valley, California, located northeast of Los Angeles, has already done it. In February 2016, the Antelope Valley Transit Authority became the first U.S. transit agency to commit to converting to an all-electric fleet. It replaced its fleet of diesel vehicles with eighty-five electric buses, vans used for a local dial-a-ride service, and commuter coaches that carry long-distance riders to downtown Los Angeles.
As of last May, the conversion had already saved nearly 1.3 million gallons of diesel fuel and cut the transit authority's fuel costs by more than $1.6 million.
For those who need to drive, it's time to think about ditching the internal combustion engine and going electric. While electric vehicles hold a small share of the U.S. market overall, electric vehicle sales grew 83 percent last year, far outpacing the auto industry as a whole.
Noel Morin, president of Hawaii's Big Island Electric Vehicle Association, notes that electric vehicles have multiple advantages. "Internal combustion cars are notoriously inefficient," he explains. "Most of the fuel used, up to 80 percent, is wasted as heat. Electric cars, on the other hand, are up to 100 percent efficient." If that claim seems astounding, it's backed up by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The United States lags well behind Europe in its rate of electric vehicle adoption. Governments, Morin says, "must incentivize the adoption of clean transportation--electric vehicles, multi-modal transportation, and other measures that can reduce the need for transportation." This includes supporting the expansion of charging infrastructure, which is particularly important for renters, who often cannot charge their cars at home.
While new electric vehicles aren't yet price competitive with the cheapest gas-powered cars, affordable used electric vehicles are available now and will become more so as electric vehicle sales grow. Already, electric vehicles cost significantly less to maintain, the Energy Department notes, "because there are usually fewer fluids (like oil and transmission fluid) to change and far fewer moving parts."
Even before the recent increase in gas prices, the Energy Department noted that gasoline costs about 11 cents per mile for a car that gets thirty miles per gallon, compared to between three and six cents per mile to charge an electric vehicle. A March 2022 analysis by the Zero Emission Transportation Association found that electric vehicles are "three to five times cheaper to drive per mile than gas-powered vehicles."
The second main area where changes can help make a break with fossil fuels is in homes and other buildings. Americans use massive amounts of fossil fuels in their homes for things like heating and cooking, with natural gas alone accounting for 42 percent of residential users' energy consumption in 2020. Heating oil, propane, and other fossil fuels are used extensively in some regions.
Home use of fossil fuels presents significant health risks. A recent analysis by the Rocky Mountain Institute found that children living in homes with a gas stove "are 42 percent more likely to experience asthma symptoms and 24 percent more likely to be diagnosed with asthma by a doctor, compared with children living in homes with electric stoves." Cooking with gas has been tied to dangerous spikes in levels of nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide in homes and apartments.
Again, technological fixes exist, but the programs to implement them--in a way that protects low-income households that are often already struggling with utility bills--are just getting off the ground.
Electric induction stoves emit no pollutants and overcome the perceived disadvantages of conventional electric stoves. Electric heat pumps can provide quiet and efficient heating and cooling.
Multiple cities, including New York City and San Jose, California, have moved to end natural gas hookups in new construction. New York's ban, for example, kicks in for low-rise buildings at the end of 2023 and for taller buildings in 2027. But gas utilities continue to fight such bans, and the laws don't impact existing structures.
One way to get existing buildings off of fossil fuels is through performance standards for buildings, explains Jasmine Graham, Energy Justice Policy Manager at New York-based WE ACT for Environmental Justice. These can be based either on energy efficiency or on a building's total output of greenhouse gasses.
But not all housing is created equal. "Low-income communities and renters are more likely to live in older housing [units] that are inefficient and not designed in a way that would enable solar and other energy retrofits," says Alexis Sutterman, energy equity manager at the California Environmental Justice Alliance. This leads to increased costs and challenges, requiring specific attention from policymakers.
To keep costs down for low- and moderate-income renters, advocates back percentage-of-income payment plans, which cap electricity rates at a certain percentage of a person's income.
Miller says priority should go to those who are most burdened by rising energy costs and "any interventions in building decarbonization must also be paired with protections from utility shut-offs, eviction, displacement, gentrification, and other forms of housing injustice."
As the April 4 IPCC report makes clear, time is running out. This is the moment to hit the brakes on fossil fuels to chart a more sustainable, equitable, and liveable future for all.
"We're supportive of what the president is trying to do. But the reality of it is our industry has to have the Hispanic immigrant-based workers in it," said the CEO of an Alabama construction firm.
After months of national protests over U.S. President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda, even some of his supporters—including an Alabama man who runs day-to-day operations at construction sites—have come to the conclusion that workplace raids aimed at rounding up undocumented immigrants are the wrong way to go.
In an interview with Reuters published Monday, construction site superintendent Robby Robertson expressed frustration at the way the Trump administration's hard-line immigration policies have impacted his business.
He said that trouble at his site began in late May shortly after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid on a construction site in Tallahassee, Florida, which he said scared off nearly his entire workforce for several days afterward. Even though nearly two months have passed since then, he said a little more than half of his workforce has come back.
This is negatively impacting his current project, which he said was projected to be finished already but which has been slow to complete now that his initial 22-person roofing team has dwindled down to just a dozen workers. As if that weren't enough, Reuters wrote that Robertson's company "is facing potentially $84,000 in extra costs for the delays under a 'liquidated damages' clause of $4,000 for every day the project runs beyond" its deadline.
"I'm a Trump supporter," Robertson told Reuters. "But I just don't think the raids are the answer."
Robertson added that the raids aren't just intimidating undocumented immigrant workers but also Latino workers who are in the country legally but who don't want to get swept up in raids "because of their skin color."
"They are scared they look the part," Robertson explained.
Tim Harrison, the CEO of the construction firm that is building the project being overseen by Robertson, told Reuters that finding native-born American workers to do the kind of work he needs is extremely difficult, especially since Alabama already has a low unemployment rate that makes trying to attract workers to a physically demanding industry difficult.
"The contractor world is full of Republicans," explained Harrison in an interview with Reuters. "I'm not anti-ICE. We're supportive of what the president is trying to do. But the reality of it is our industry has to have the Hispanic immigrant-based workers in it."
A report issued earlier this month by the progressive Economic Policy Institute (EPI) projected that the construction industry could take a severe hit from Trump's mass deportation plan given how many undocumented immigrants work in that industry.
"Employment in the construction sector will drop sharply: U.S.-born construction employment will fall by 861,000, and immigrant employment will fall by 1.4 million," wrote EPI senior economist Ben Zipperer, who added that the Trump administration's plans risked "squandering the full employment... inherited from the Biden administration and also causing immense pain to the millions of U.S.-born and immigrant workers who may lose their jobs."
"We're holding these members of Congress accountable for voting for the Republican tax law that strips health care away from millions of Texas families," said Unrig Our Economy campaign director Leor Tal.
The progressive advocacy group Unrig Our Economy launched a new $2 million advertising campaign Monday against four Texas Republicans who voted for the massive Medicaid cuts in this month's GOP megabill.
At the behest of President Donald Trump, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is mounting an unusual mid-decade effort to redraw Texas' congressional map to keep control of the U.S. House of Representatives come 2026.
The plan is expected to net the GOP five seats. But the flipside is that some seats that were once GOP locks may become more vulnerable to Democratic challengers.
Those include the ones held by Republican Reps. Lance Gooden (5), Monica De La Cruz (15), Beth Van Duyne (24), and Dan Crenshaw (2)—all of whom voted for the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act."
Put together, these four congresspeople alone represent around 450,000 Medicaid recipients, according to data from KFF.
The law remains dismally unpopular, with the majority of Americans believing that it benefits the rich, while providing little to ordinary Americans. According to a Navigator survey conducted last week, 7 in 10 Americans said they were concerned about its cuts to Medicaid.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that 10 million Americans will lose health insurance as a result of the law's Medicaid cuts.
Around 200,000 of them are in Texas according to KFF. In total, up to 1.7 million people in the state may lose their insurance as a result of other subsidies that were also cut.
Those are the people Unrig Our Economy hopes to reach with its new ad blitz.
One ad hits Crenshaw—whose district has nearly 92,000 Medicaid recipients—for making false promises to protect the program.
(Video: Unrig Our Economy)
It shows a video of the congressman from May 14 assuring Texans: "You have nothing to worry about. Your Medicaid is not going anywhere," less than two months before voting for "the largest Medicaid and healthcare cuts in history."
Another singles out De La Cruz—who represents over 181,000 Medicaid recipients—for her vote for the bill after warning that the cuts "would have serious consequences, particularly in rural and predominantly Hispanic communities where hospitals and nursing homes are already struggling to keep their doors open."
Among hundreds at risk across the country, 15 rural hospitals in Texas are in danger of closing because of the cuts, according to a study by the health services research arm of the University of North Carolina.
The ads targeting Gooden and Van Duyne, meanwhile, draw more attention to the effects of their cuts on Texan families: "Medicaid covers a third of all children, half of all pregnant women, the elderly in long-term care, and the disabled."
(Video: Unrig Our Economy)
Gooden's district contains more than 120,000 Medicaid recipients—over half of whom are children. In Van Duyne's district, children make up close to two-thirds of the more than 57,000 enrollees.
According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the bill cuts more than $930 billion in total from Medicaid over the next ten years. Over that same ten-year period, the wealthiest 1% of Americans will receive over $1 trillion worth of tax breaks.
All the ads hammer home the fact that these devastating cuts were passed "to fund tax breaks for billionaires."
Unrig Our Economy's ad blitz is the first salvo of a $20-million effort by the House Majority PAC—the largest national PAC supporting Democrats—to beat back the effects of the Republican gerrymandering effort.
"We're holding these members of Congress accountable for voting for the Republican tax law that strips healthcare away from millions of Texas families," said Unrig Our Economy campaign director Leor Tal.
Unrig Our Economy has launched similar ads against vulnerable Republicans across the country, such as first-term Rep. Rob Bresnahan, whose northeast Pennsylvania constituency is made up of more than one-fourth Medicaid recipients.
"These ads," Tal said, "are just the latest in our nationwide campaign to show the horrible impacts of this law, which benefits the superwealthy at working families' expense."
"I cannot defend the indefensible," said Sen. Angus King.
A longtime supporter of military aid to Israel in the U.S. Senate is drawing a red line amid the ongoing starvation crisis in Gaza.
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) on Monday released a statement saying he would not vote to support any more aid to Israel unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government drastically reversed course to allow more food and other life-saving supplies to enter Gaza.
In a statement flagged on X by Dylan Williams, the vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, King delivered a harsh rebuke to the Israeli government for its role in the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding under its watch.
"I cannot defend the indefensible," King's statement began. "Israel's actions in the conduct of the war in Gaza, especially its failure to address the unimaginable humanitarian crisis now unfolding, is an affront to human decency. What appears to be a deliberately-induced famine among a civilian population—including tens of thousands of starving children—can never be an acceptable military strategy."
King emphasized that he supported Israel's right to retaliate after the October 7, 2023 attacks on the country by Hamas, but then said "that tragic event cannot in turn justify the enormous toll on Palestinian civilians caused by Israel's relentless bombing campaign and its indifference to the current plight of those trapped in what's left of Gaza."
The Maine senator then vowed to back up his words with actions.
"I am through supporting the actions of the current Israeli government and will advocate—and vote—for an end to any United States support whatsoever until there is a demonstrable change in the direction of Israeli policy," he said. "My litmus test will be simple: No aid of any kind as long as there are starving children in Gaza due to the action or inaction of the Israeli government."
Israel has come under increased international pressure as images and video footage of starving children has been pouring out of Gaza in recent weeks. The Israeli government over the weekend announced a tactical "pause" in its Gaza military campaign to allow more humanitarian assistance into the area, although critics such as Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam policy lead for the occupied Palestinian territory, described the Israeli measures as woefully inadequate in the face of mass starvation.
"Deadly airdrops and a trickle of trucks won't undo months of engineered starvation in Gaza," said Khalidi on Sunday. "What's needed is the immediate opening of all crossings for full, unhindered, and safe aid delivery across all of Gaza and a permanent cease-fire. Anything less risks being little more than a tactical gesture."