Yetta Stein
Western Values Project
yetta@westernvaluesproject.org
(406) 529-1682
Trump Releases Management Plan for Illegally Reduced Bears Ears National Monument, Ignoring Courts and Public Outcry
After Widespread Pushback, Trump Releases Management Plan After Historic and Illegal Reductions to Public Land Protections
The Trump administration released a management plan for the illegally reduced areas of Bears Ears National Monument in Utah today. With Congressional recess right around the corner, the timed release of the proposed management plans and Final Environmental Impact Statement has been called into question by members of the House Natural Resources Committee. Trump's illegal reduction of Bears Ears is still being challenged in federal court.
"The release of this management plan days before Congress leaves for a month is dubious at best and reckless at worst. The Trump administration continues to prove its utter disregard of our public lands and outdoor heritage through its strong-armed attempts to illegally shrink this sacred and culturally-critical place. There is a lack of respect for the law, the courts, and the mass public concern that illegally shrinking Bears Ears has evoked. Stealing land away from the public in order to reward their special interest allies seems to be the only priority of this administration," said Chris Saeger, the Executive Director of the Western Values Project.
On December 4, 2017, President Trump announced his plan to illegally reduce the size of Bears Ears National Monument, along with the Grand Staircase Escalante - the largest elimination of public land protections in American history. Since then, conservation groups and tribes have sued the administration, arguing that President Trump didn't have the authority to reduce the size of the monuments. Cases are still pending in federal court - making Trump's management plan announcement a move to undermine the court's decision-making authority.
Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, a former mega-lobbyist for extractive industries, strongly supported the illegal reduction of the two national monuments. Previous analysis by the New York Times found that oil was central in the decision to shrink Bears Ears, despite then-Secretary Ryan Zinke's repeated claims that it was not. Previous Western Values Project analysis has documented that many of the areas taken out of Bears Ears National Monument are rich in oil, gas and uranium reserves.
Western Values Project brings accountability to the national conversation about Western public lands and national parks conservation - a space too often dominated by industry lobbyists and their allies in government.
Independent Corbyn Wins Reelection as Labour Ends 14 Years of Destructive Tory Rule
The former Labour leader issued a warning to the incoming government of Keir Starmer: "Dissent cannot be crushed without consequences."
Former U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn won reelection as an Independent on Thursday against a candidate from his erstwhile party as Labour—despite its unpopularity under incoming Prime Minister Keir Starmer—ended 14 years of disastrous Conservative rule at the national level with a landslide victory.
Corbyn, who last year was banned by Labour's governing body from running as a party candidate in the 2024 elections, kept the Islington North seat he has held since 1983 with a 7,000-plus vote margin over local Labour councillor Praful Nargund.
Corbyn used his victory statement to send a message to Labour, calling his win "a warning to the incoming government that dissent cannot be crushed without consequences" and "that ideas of equality, justice, and peace are eternal."
"Tonight, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we organize," said Corbyn. "The energy we have unleashed will not go to waste. We are a movement made up of all ages, backgrounds, and faiths. A movement which can win with and for people all over the country."
In 2020, Corbyn was suspended from the Labour Party following the publication of a government watchdog report alleging that, under his leadership, the party failed to adequately handle antisemitism complaints. Corbyn apologized for the failures while defending himself from relentless attacks, saying at the time that "the scale of the problem was dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media."
"Labour has won by default because of the Tories' implosion, not because of enthusiasm for Starmer or his Tory-lite policies."
Starmer was elected Labour leader in April 2020, and he has since moved to stifle the party's left faction with what critics have described as "deeply anti-democratic" tactics.
Oliver Eagleton, an assistant editor at New Left Review, wrote in a New York Timesop-ed earlier this week that since the inception of his leadership, Starmer has engaged in a "merciless crackdown on the mildest forms of internal dissent."
"He expelled his predecessor, blocked left-wing candidates from standing for Parliament, proscribed various socialist groups, barred politicians from joining picket lines and introduced antidemocratic rules for leadership elections. He has also demanded a stifling level of ideological conformity," Eagleton wrote. "Lawmakers who criticize NATO face instant expulsion, and members who oppose Israel’s actions are cynically accused of antisemitism."
"This purge has turned Labour into a mirror image of the Conservatives: obsequious toward big business, advocating austerity at home and militarism abroad," he added. "It has also foreshadowed how Mr. Starmer would operate in Downing Street. He has said he intends to retain the Public Order Act, which places unprecedented restrictions on protests and makes it easier to lock up activists. He has described climate campaigners as 'contemptible' and 'pathetic,' pledging to impose harsh sentences on them. He has even backed a proposal to punish protesters who vandalize monuments with 10 years in prison."
Labour's landslide victory Thursday was a reflection of widespread discontent with nearly a decade and a half of Tory rule and the deep unpopularity of Conservative leader Rishi Sunak.
"Fourteen years, five prime ministers, four election cycles, two U.K.-wide referendums, and a global pandemic: a lot has happened since the Conservative Party entered coalition in 2010," The Guardiannoted Thursday. "But there are other, bigger figures on voters' minds: 7.6 million people on waiting lists for hospital treatment in England (three times the 2010 figure); 3% of Britons having to use a food bank, all while the cost of a weekly shop, household bills, and mortgage repayments is rising."
The advocacy group We Deserve Better said in a statement following Thursday's election that "this is a hollow victory for Labour, which is taking power as the most unpopular incoming government in U.K. political history, with the lowest vote share won by any single-party majority government."
"It's unprecedented for an opposition party entering government to have several of its leading politicians unseated, and to actively be losing votes across the country. Labour has won by default because of the Tories' implosion, not because of enthusiasm for Starmer or his Tory-lite policies," the group said. "Nationwide, Labour's vote share is lower under Starmer than it was under Jeremy in 2017 or even Blair in 2005. The Greens have triumphed by increasing their MPs from 1 to 4; Labour was trounced by Jeremy Corbyn in a historic victory; and several other independents have unseated Labour bigwigs or come close to doing so.
"Labour's heartlands are rebelling against them before they've even taken office," the statement continued. "Voters have sent them a clear message on Gaza, the climate, and austerity measures. Labour will continue to haemorrhage votes to pro-Palestine and socialist independent and Green candidates if they don't listen to their base."
'Insure Our Survival': XR Launches Campaign at British Insurance Industry Awards Night
"We left the leading lights of the industry in no doubt about what they need to do: Stop insuring new oil, gas, and coal and focus on underwriting renewable energy," one activist said.
Key industry players arriving at London's Royal Albert Hall Wednesday night for the British Insurance Awards were met with a warning: Stop underwriting new oil, gas, and coal projects or face direct action from Extinction Rebellion.
Climate activists greeted the insurers with signs, photographs of extreme U.K. flooding, protest music, performance art, and business cards announcing XR's new "Insure Our Survival" campaign to pressure the industry away from backing fossil fuels.
"This is just the beginning," Insure Our Survival spokesperson Alex Penson said in a statement. "Thousands of XR activists stand ready to focus their nonviolent direct action energy on the insurance firms who are greenlighting the climate crisis by providing fossil fuel crooks with the insurance they need to dig and drill for oil, gas, and coal."
"It's time for insurers to use their superpower or be held responsible when all of our children face a future like the children in the photographs we showed at our protest,"
The insurance industry has emerged as a target of the climate movement in recent years, as advocates point out that new fossil fuel projects would not be able to move forward without it.
"The insurance industry has a superpower," Penson said. "At a stroke, it could stop the fossil fuel crooks in their tracks and save the lives of billions of people threatened from the worst-case climate scenarios that scientists are saying are increasingly possible."
However, to date the industry has not chosen to use that power. According to the most recent report from the global Insure Our Future campaign, not one of the 30 major insurance firms it analyzed in 2023 had policies in line with limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. The insurers included in the U.K.-based Lloyd's market were the leading fossil fuel insurers, Insure Our Future found, earning $1.6-2.2 billion in premiums from oil, gas, and coal in 2022.
"It's time for insurers to use their superpower or be held responsible when all of our children face a future like the children in the photographs we showed at our protest," Penson continued, "struggling to survive in barely habitable countries haunted by crop failures, malnutrition, deadly storms, floods, and heatwaves."
At Wednesday's event, XR activists held up photos taken by photographer Gideon Mendell, showing massive flooding in the U.K. that has been made worse by the climate emergency. They also held up signs reading, "Stop Insuring New Fossil Fuels" and "Insure Our Survival."
(Photo: Extinction Rebellion)
At the sound of a violin, XR's Oil Slickers—activists draped in black cloth to resemble an oil spill—glided around the insurance luminaries as they approached the hall for the industry's annual awards ceremony.
(Photo: Extinction Rebellion)
A choir also sang a song to the tune of "Imagine," including the line, "Imagine all insurers, fighting for us all."
"Last night we challenged insurers having a good time and congratulating each other on their good work at the Royal Albert Hall to face up to some uncomfortable truths—that some of their work leads to flooded homes and wrecked lives for their customers facing more and more climate crisis-driven extreme weather events," Penson said.
The activists also distributed business cards to the attendees warning them that, if they continued to back new fossil fuel projects, XR would target them with direct action designed to hurt both their reputations and their bottom line.
Pension said: "We left the leading lights of the industry in no doubt about what they need to do: Stop insuring new oil, gas, and coal and focus on underwriting renewable energy to speed a just transition to a low or no-carbon economy."
XR's U.K.-based Insure Our Survival campaign emerged from the global Insure Our Future campaign, and in particular an international week of action it organized in late February and early March, including events in London and around the U.K.
About a month after the protests, Zurich Insurance announced that it would no longer underwrite new oil and gas projects.
Sierra Signorelli, Zurich's chief executive of commercial insurance, said at the time that Zurich took the action in keeping with its goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.
"Further exploration and development of fossil fuels isn't required for the transition," Signorelli said. "We think it's the right time to evolve our position."
Insure Our Survival campaigner Lucy Porter said that since the spring, many insurance employees, in both senior and junior positions, had spoken to XR saying they supported a move away from backing climate-polluting projects.
"We intend to work with them to make insurance part of the climate solution, not part of the problem, and we invite other people in the industry to contact us and work with us," Porter said.
Porter continued, "To those who continue to put their profits before a livable planet we say: We will hold you accountable through an escalating campaign of nonviolent direct action across the country."
'More Unhinged by the Minute': Senior Israeli Lawmaker Suggests Nuclear Attack on Iran
"It is not possible anymore to stop the Iranian nuclear program with conventional means," the hardline Knesset member and former Israeli defense minister said.
A longtime Israeli lawmaker and former defense minister took to the airwaves and social media on Wednesday to suggest his country should do whatever it takes to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
"It is not possible anymore to stop the Iranian nuclear program with conventional means," Avigdor Liberman of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party said during a Channel 12 interview. "And we will have to use all the means that are available to us."
"We will have to stop with the deliberate policy of ambiguity, and it needs to be clear what is at stake here," Liberman continued, apparently referring to Israel's refusal to say whether it has nuclear weapons. "What is at stake here is the future of this nation, the future of the state of Israel, and we will not take any risks."
Member of Knesset and former Minister of Defense, Avigdor Liberman, live on Channel 12, openly calls to use nuclear weapon against Iran, in order to prevent it from reaching weaponization of its nuclear program. What a fuckin' psycho. pic.twitter.com/NYGfQ1zqVp
— B.M. (@ireallyhateyou) July 4, 2024
When pressed on what he meant by stopping Iran with non-conventional means, Liberman said, "I said it very clearly."
"Right now there is no time to stop the Iranian nuclear program, their weaponization, by using conventional means," he added.
Liberman made similar comments on social media, where his remarks sparked alarm and condemnation. The lawmaker's hardline call comes amid powder keg tensions between Tel Aviv and Tehran, which warned last week that any Israeli invasion of Lebanon—from which Iranian ally Hezbollah is resisting Israel's annihilation of Gaza—would trigger an "obliterating war."
According to the Arms Control Association (ACA), a U.S.-based advocacy group, Iran is a "threshold state," meaning "it has developed the necessary capacities to build nuclear weapons."
However, a February 2024 threat assessment report authored by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence stated that "Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device."
"Since 2020, however, Tehran has stated that it is no longer constrained by any JCPOA limits," the report says, a reference to so-called Iran Nuclear Deal from which the U.S. unilaterally withdrew in 2018 under former President Donald Trump. "Iran has greatly expanded its nuclear program, reduced [International Atomic Energy Agency] monitoring, and undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so."
Iran maintains its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, although Kamal Kharazi, a foreign policy advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
told the Financial Times earlier this week that his country would "have to change our doctrine" if faced with an existential threat.
The ACA and others estimate that Israel has around 90 nuclear warheads and fissile material for approximately 200 more.
Liberman isn't the first Israeli lawmaker to suggest nuclear war against Iran. Far-right Deputy Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi—who sparked outrage by saying Israeli forces are "too humane" in Gaza and should "burn" the Palestinian territory—said in April that "in the event of a conflict with Iran, if we do not receive American ammunition, we will have to use everything we have."