A Republican candidate for Congress in California is openly running as a Holocaust denier, calling it a “complete fabrication” in an interview with The New York Times published Friday.
John Fitzgerald secured one of the top two spots in California’s “jungle” primary system last month, where the top two vote-getters regardless of party affiliation advance to the general election.
Fitzgerald is slated to face off against incumbent Democratic Rep. Mark DeSaulnierMark James DeSaulnierDozens of Democrats plan to vote remotely in a first for the House Rep. DeSaulnier leaves ICU after 3 weeks to continue treatment for pneumonia Rep. DeSaulnier in critical condition due to pneumonia MORE in November in the reliably blue district near San Francisco.
Fitzgerald included calls on his campaign website for people to note “Jewish supremacism” and said last week on a radio show hosted by an anti-Semitic commentator that “everything we’ve been told about the Holocaust is a lie,” according to The Times.
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The candidate told The Times this week that the Holocaust was a “complete fabrication” and placed blame for the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the Israeli government.
Fitzgerald said that he identifies more as an independent and has previously run for Congress as a Democrat.
He also denied that he is anti-Semitic, telling The Times that he has “friends that are Jewish.”
“I have no issue with any people. I have issues with people who lie. It’s the elitists who control it all,” Fitzgerald added.
The California Republican Party automatically endorsed Fitzgerald in the race but withdrew its support in May after learning about his anti-Semitic views, according to the newspaper.
“As always, California Republicans reject anti-Semitism, and all forms of religious bigotry, in the harshest terms possible,” party chairman Jim Brulte said in the statement withdrawing the endorsement. “We reject John Fitzgerald’s campaign and encourage all voters to do the same.”
Fitzgerald told The Times that the GOP’s condemnation of his bid wasn’t surprising because both parties are controlled by “Jewish elitists.”
DeSaulnier, Fitzgerald’s Democratic incumbent opponent, told The Times that he believes the candidate won 23 percent of the vote in last month’s primary because Americans “see ‘R’ and they see ‘D’ and that’s how they vote.”
This is at least the second time the California GOP has condemned a candidate from the party with anti-Semitic views: The party denounced Republican Senate candidate Patrick Little last month after he denied that the Holocaust took place and called for a U.S. “free from Jews.”
The warming of the Earth over the past several decades is throwing Mother Nature’s food chain out of whack and leaving many species struggling to survive, according to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study offers the latest evidence that the climate crisis that human activity has contributed to has had far-reaching effects throughout the planet.
A paper by ecologists at the University of Ottawa examined 88 species on four continents, and more than 50 relationships between predator and pray as well as herbivores and the plants they eat, and found that food chain events are taking place earlier in the year than they have in the past, because of the warming climate.
“Most of the examples were about food,” Heather Kharouba, lead author of the paper, told the National Observer. “Is it available or is it not?”
In the study’s findings, Kharouba added, “everything is consistent with the fact it’s getting warmer…All the changes we see are exactly what we would predict with warmer temperatures and how we would expect biology to respond.”
“It demonstrates that many species interactions from around the world are in a state of rapid flux,” Boston University biology professor Richard Primack told the Associated Press. “Prior to this study, studies of changing species interactions focused on one place or one group of species.”
“Most of the examples were about food. Is it available or is it not?”—Heather Kharouba, University of Ottawa
The scientists looked at research going back to 1951, which showed that in previous decades, birds would migrate, animals would mate and give birth, and plants would bloom later in the year, allowing the animals to find the food they needed at specific times.
These events have been occurring about four days earlier per decade since the 1980s, according to the National Observer. On average, the timing is now off by a full 21 days for the 88 species the researchers examined.
In Washington state’s Lake Washington, the very bottom of the food chain has been affected, according to the research, as plant plankton is now blooming 34 days earlier than the organisms that feed on them.
Even smaller changes can have a major impact on animal populations: plants in Greenland are now blossoming just three days earlier than baby caribou are born, throwing off the species that has survived on them and causing more of the animals to starve.
“It leads to a mismatch,” Kharouba said. “These events are out of synch.”
The “mismatch” could begin contributing to the endangerment of species that are unable to find food they’ve relied on, the researchers said.
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Building on the massive march against the expansion of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline that brought 10,000 people to the streets of British Columbia last weekend, Indigenous leaders and their allies staged a sit-in on Saturday at a pipeline construction site on Burnaby Mountain, kicking off a wave of civil disobedience that is set to continue through next week.
“I’m standing up for Indigenous rights, for clean water, and for a safe, liveable climate and look forward to doing so alongside the ever growing movement against this dangerous pipeline.” —Clayton Thomas-Muller, 350.org
Chants of “I believe that we will win” rang out as police began arresting demonstrators, who ignored a court injunction to stay away from Kinder Morgan’s construction activities and protested in front of a company site for over five hours.
As documented by Greenpeace Canada’s Mike Hudema, dozens of Indigenous leaders and their allies sat in a line in front of a company construction site gate, with some locking themselves to the fence.
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“Kinder Morgan and Justin Trudeau picked a fight with the wrong group of people,” said Clayton Thomas-Muller—a member of the Pukatawagan Nation and Stop It At The Source campaigner with 350.org—highlighting the Canadian Prime Minister’s support for a pipeline Indigenous groups say poses a serious threat to the water and the climate.
While Trudeau has promised to “ensure” the Kinder Morgan pipeline—which would carry tar sands 700 miles from Alberta to Burnaby, British Columbia—is completed, Indigenous leaders vowed to do everything in their power to ensure that the water-threatening project
“I’m standing up for Indigenous rights, for clean water, and for a safe, liveable climate and look forward to doing so alongside the ever growing movement against this dangerous pipeline,” Thomas-Muller said in a statement.
“We are all connected by the water. If the waters are poisoned here…that water will affect all of us,” said one demonstrator. “We must protect the water.”
Watch a video of the demonstration:
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In a move denounced by immigrant rights advocates and legal experts as an effort to “undercount communities of color” that could have an enormous impact on the drawing of congressional districts, the Trump administration announced late Monday that the 2020 Census will ask respondents whether or not they are U.S. citizens.
“A question about U.S. citizenship on the 2020 census will massively depress responses from immigrants and sabotage the entire census. This is huge crisis for democracy.” —Ari Berman, Mother Jones
“This is an attempt to racially rig the census,” argued Common Cause president Karen Hobert Flynn in a statement after the move was made public in a late-night press release by the Commerce Department. “An accurate census is essential in the redrawing of our congressional and legislative districts and budgeting decisions that impact our schools, hospitals, roads, and veterans.”
Shortly after the decision to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census was announced, California Attorney General Xavier Beccera joined civil rights advocates in condemning the move and filed suit against the Trump administration, arguing that inclusion of the question is “not just a bad idea—it is illegal.”
“The census numbers provide the backbone for planning how our communities can grow and thrive in the coming decade,” Becerra said in a statement on Monday. “What the Trump administration is requesting is not just alarming, it is an unconstitutional attempt to discourage an accurate census count.”
Becerra’s suit is expected to be just the first of many legal challenges to come.
As Common Dreams reported in January, census researchers have warned that there is already widespread fear among immigrants that any information they provide to the government will be used by the Trump administration to arrest and deport them.
While the Commerce Department insisted in its announcement that the citizenship question—which was removed from the census in 1950—is meant to “help enforce the Voting Rights Act (VRA),” experts quickly dismissed this justification as a “farce,” given the Trump administration’s systemic and ongoing attack on voting rights nationwide.
Trump’s Justice Department “hasn’t filed single lawsuit to enforce Voting Rights Act” and is backing efforts by states to impose racist voter ID laws, Ari Berman of Mother Jones noted in a series of tweets on Monday.
“A question about U.S. citizenship on [the] 2020 census will massively depress responses from immigrants and sabotage the entire census,” Berman concluded. “This is huge crisis for democracy.”
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In another signal that “the era of fossil fuels is coming to a close,” Europe’s biggest bank, HSBC, announced Friday that it will no longer fund oil or gas projects in the Arctic, tar sands projects, or most coal projects.
The move was cheered by climate campaigners on social media, who said, “This is huge,” and called it “incredible news.”
According to Daniel Klier, group head of strategy and global head of sustainable finance at the financial giant, the bank recognizes “the need to reduce emissions rapidly to achieve the target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global temperatures rises to well below 2°C and our responsibility to support the communities in which we operate.”
The changes are laid out in HSBC’s updated energy policy, which says it will no longer provide financial services for
a) New coal-fired power plant projects, subject to very targeted exceptions of Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam in order to appropriately balance local humanitarian needs with the need to transition to a low carbon economy. Consideration of any such exception is subject to: (i) independent analysis confirming the country has no reasonable alternative to coal; (ii) the plant’s carbon intensity being lower than 810g CO2/kWh; and (iii) financial close on the project being achieved by 31 December 2023
b) New offshore oil or gas projects in the Arctic
c) New greenfield oil sands projects
d) New large dams for hydro-electric projects inconsistent with the World Commission on Dams Framework
e) New nuclear projects inconsistent with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) standards
The announcement, said Kelly Martin, director of Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign, “is an important step forward for Europe’s largest bank, and yet another signal to Donald Trump and the rest of the world that, despite their worst laid plans, the era of fossil fuels is coming to a close. There is no future in Arctic fossil fuel operations. There is no future in tar sands. And there is no future in coal.”
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According to Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist at Greenpeace Canada, “Financial institutions around the world are seeing the reputational and material risks these pipelines pose in a post-Paris world where respecting Indigenous rights and the need to transition off of fossil fuels is smart business and not just good public relations.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who appears to be ready to subsidize the widely opposed Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline, should take note of the shift by HSBC, added Stewart.
“Before deciding to write a check to Kinder Morgan, Justin Trudeau should ask himself if he wants to rush in where HSBC fears to tread,” he said.
While HSBC’s announcement, as well as similar actions taken by other banks like BNP Paribas, should be lauded, the institutions need to go further, added Sierra Club’s Martin.
She said that “it cannot be overstated how critical it is that HSBC and the world’s other major banks immediately end financing for all fossil fuel projects around the world. Institutions should no longer continue financing any fossil fuel projects when cheaper, cleaner, more reliable energy solutions like wind and solar are readily available.”
The news come a month after a report showed that banks are continuing to bankroll the climate crisis by funneling $115 billion into tar sands, offshore oil drilling, and coal mining projects.
That report, entitled “Banking on Climate Change” and endorsed by dozens of environmental groups, ranked HSBC the seventh worst in the world for the financing of “extreme fossil fuels.” It also found that from 2016 to 2017—”Even as the impacts of climate change become increasingly apparent”—it made a $2.6 billion increase in such financing.
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After reporting a net income of $234.4 million last year, billionaire investor Carl Icahn—a former regulatory adviser to President Donald Trump—has received a “financial hardship” waiver from the EPA, exempting his oil company from complying with fuel regulations.
As Reuters reported, the waiver is meant for small oil refineries that can prove that compliance with the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program would cause them “disproportionate financial hardship.”
The RFS program requires large oil companies to mix biofuels like ethanol with oil and gas to cut down on air pollution, support corn farmers, and reduce gas imports. Companies are required to earn or purchase tradable credits for each gallon of blended fuel, to prove compliance.
Icahn’s company stands to save tens of millions of dollars per year thanks to the exemption, which had previously been denied by the Obama administration.
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In response to the news, the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen demanded an immediate investigation into the waiver:
Icahn has long fought for the elimination of the RFS program, sending former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy an 11-page letter in 2016 calling the credit market “rigged” and complaining that it could send refineries into bankruptcy.
Icahn was an early supporter of Trump and met with Scott Pruitt in late 2016, weeks before he was named EPA administrator, according to reports at the time.
“This one’s going to be hard for Pruitt to explain,” Brooke Coleman, head of the Advanced Biofuels Business Council industry group, told Reuters of the EPA’s decision to grant CVR Energy the RFS waiver.
The businessman stepped down from his position as Trump’s regulatory adviser last summer after lawmakers raised concerns that he was influencing biofuel policy and using his access to the president to benefit his financial investments. Icahn is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice.
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“This president will not serve out this term. I guarantee it,” declared Michael Avenatti on MSNBC‘s “Morning Joe” early Thursday, following damning remarks made by President Donald Trump’s recently hired attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
Avenatti is representing adult film star Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford and whom Trump’s longtime lawyer Michael Cohen paid $130,000 before the election to secure her silence regarding an alleged affair between her and the president. Daniels, who says she was also threatened with physical harm in 2011, is suing to end a nondisclosure agreement tied to the payment, though the suit is on hold while Cohen is under criminal investigation.
Avenatti’s prediction on Thursday came after Giuliani told Sean Hannity on Wednesday night that Trump knew about—and even reimbursed Cohen for—the hush money paid to Daniels, a disclosure that Giuliani claimed was strategic, but which both contradicted Trump’s previous claims and led legal experts to charge that the payment amounts to a violation of campaign finance rules—a federal crime.
Following Giuliani’s remarks, Avenatti also took to Twitter on Thursday morning and urged “Fox & Friends” to have Trump and his new lawyer on the show this week, to create an opportunity for them to make more troubling disclosures.
While Avenatti made jabs at the president’s favorite morning show Thursday, on Wednesday night he struck a more serious tone, tweeting, “Every American, regardless of their politics, should be outraged.”
Avenatti also appeared on CNN late Wednesday to address the development, calling the president’s apparent dishonesty “an absolute disgrace.”
“Every American regardless of their political persuasion,” he said, “should be disgusted by what has happened in connection with the lies that you have been told over the last three months about this payment. You should be disgusted by the fact that the president of the United States stood on Air Force One, on video and audio, and stated lies to you related to this $130,000 payment.”
“And there’s no way to dress this up,” Avenatti added. “You can try to put lipstick on the pig morning, noon, and night, and it’s still gonna be a pig.”
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As Iranians take to the streets to protest President Donald Trump—who ditched the Iran nuclear deal this week despite warnings that it could lead to “a potentially catastrophic military confrontation”—in a speech on Friday, Europe’s top diplomat vowed to work with the international community to save the agreement and railed against Trump’s style of politics.
“This impulse to destroy is not leading us anywhere good.” —Federica Mogherini, EU’s top diplomat
“We are determined to keep this deal in place,” declared Federica Mogherini, an Italian politician who serves as High Representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.
Although Mogherini did not name Trump in her State of the Union address, she certainly appeared to be referencing the president when she said, “It seems that screaming, shouting, insulting and bullying, systematically destroying and dismantling everything that is already in place, is the mood of our times.”
Emphasizing that world leaders must “move on from the ‘I win, you lose’ approach,” because “no country is big enough to face this world alone,” Mogherini warned that “this impulse to destroy is not leading us anywhere good.”
“It is not solving any of our problems,” she added. “The secret of change—and we need change—is to put all energies not in destroying the old, but rather in building the new.”
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Mogherini’s remarks on Friday echoed her comments that directly followed Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran deal—officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—earlier this week.
“The nuclear accord belongs to the whole of the international community,” she said. “To the Iranian people I say: do not let anyone dismantle this deal, one of the greatest achievements of the international community… the culmination of 12 years of diplomacy.”
Mogherini is scheduled to meet with representatives from Germany, France, and the United Kingdom in Brussels on Tuesday to discuss how to move forward with the nuclear deal without cooperation from the United States.
The European diplomats will also meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who, in a statement on Friday, reiterated his country’s commitment to salvaging the deal while condemning Trump’s “ignorance and folly.”
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After making the widely condemned and erroneous assertion that responsibility for Israel’s massacre of more than 50 Palestinians “rests squarely with Hamas,” the Trump administration on Monday unilaterally blocked a United Nations statement that expressed “outrage” at Israel’s killings and demanded “an independent and transparent” investigation.
“The rules on the use of force under international law have been repeated many times but appear to have been ignored again and again.” —Rupert Colville, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights
While the U.S. refused to even permit an investigation into Israel’s murderous behavior—let alone denounce it—during an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley took the further step of applauding Israel forces during her speech for showing admirable “restraint” as it mowed down dozens of peaceful demonstrators, and attempted to blame Iran for stoking “violence throughout the Middle East.”
In sharp contrast to Haley’s “disgusting” and fact-free speech, Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, directly condemned Israel’s actions in a statement on Tuesday, repeating the call for an independent probe and saying “enough is enough.”
“We condemn the appalling, deadly violence in Gaza yesterday during which 58 Palestinians were killed and almost 1,360 demonstrators were injured with live ammunition by Israeli security forces,” Colville said. “The rules on the use of force under international law have been repeated many times but appear to have been ignored again and again. It seems anyone is liable to be shot dead or injured: women, children, press personnel, first responders, bystanders, and at almost any point up to 700 meters from the fence.”
Spotlighting the terrible human impact of the nation’s continued reliance on coal, new research shows the most severe form of black lung disease, progressive massive fibrosis (PMF), is on the rise—big time.
“This is history going in the wrong direction,” said lead researcher Kirsten S. Almberg, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The findings are based on information from U.S. Department of Labor, which has the data on former miners seeking benefits from the Federal Black Lung Program.
From when that program began in 1970 until 2016, 4,679 miners were determined to have PMF. Yet half of those cases—2,318l—were identified since 2000.
The overall trend was not a shock to the researchers, given that National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), using surveillance data of active coal miners, found a similar upward trend in 2014.
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“We were, however, surprised by the magnitude of the problem and are astounded by the fact that this disease appears to be resurging despite modern dust control regulations,” Almberg stated.
The largest increase of the miners with PMF were in central Appalachian states. Virginia experienced the greatest increase in percentage of PMF cases over the past four decades, surging from 0 to 12 percent in 2015. West Virginia came in second place, increasing from 0 percent in 1972 to 11 percent in 2016.
The new research was presented at the American Thoracic Society’s International Conference, which ends Wednesday.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, continues to try to save the dying industry and boast that it’s “saving coal.” Coal workers, however are not being saved. As Newsweek reported earlier this year, “The president has been quick to celebrate the 771 net workers that were hired in 2017, but the administration’s push to support the dirtiest of fossil fuels has been accompanied by a surge in deaths of the workers who procure it. The 2017 death toll was the highest since 2014—when there were roughly 60,000 more miners at work in America.”
According to Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, “Whether coal will rebound or not (it won’t) isn’t the real issue. These are the questions we should be asking: What will replace it? And how will the transition affect the same coal-mining communities that received spurious promises from candidate Donald Trump that he could bring coal back from the brink? For the answers, we need only consider what most Americans agree on: Investing in clean, renewable energy makes more sense than going from one dirty fuel (coal) to another (gas).”
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