June, 11 2021, 10:53am EDT
![Environment America](https://assets.rbl.ms/32012644/origin.jpg)
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Ellen Montgomery, Public Lands Campaign Director, Â 720-583-4024, lmontgomery@
Taran Volckhausen, Communications Associate, 720-212-9955, tvolckhausen@
AG Dept. To 'Repeal or Replace' Rollback of Tongass National Forest Protections
The USDA's reconsideration of Trump-era Alaska Roadless Rule is good news for America's "Climate Forest."
DENVER
The Biden administration announced Friday that the Department of Agriculture has reviewed and is proposing to "repeal or replace" the Trump administration's rollback of protections for the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. In October, the Trump administration stripped "Roadless Rule" safeguards from 9.2 million acres in the Tongass. The Roadless Rule, established in 2001, is intended to help keep wild spaces in our national forest system wild.
The largest forest in the U.S. Forest Service system, the Tongass provides critical habitat for wildlife and plays a significant role in absorbing and storing carbon, serving as a natural tool to help stop climate change.
Environment America Public Lands Campaign Director Ellen Montgomery issued the following statement:
"We applaud this first step in what we hope will be a swift process to restore full Roadless Rule protections to the Tongass National Forest. The Trump administration's rollbacks were an attack on the Tongass, which is a priceless treasure and a beacon of nature. Many trees in the Tongass are older than United States, and we must keep them standing tall because the forest serves as a vital bulwark against climate change. It also provides an irreplaceable home for our wildlife. This majestic wild space, which is home to species from the Prince of Wales flying squirrels and Sitka black-tailed deer to any of the thousands of migratory birds, would be forever changed for the worse if roads and logging equipment were allowed to disrupt it. "
With Environment America, you protect the places that all of us love and promote core environmental values, such as clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and clean energy to power our lives. We're a national network of 29 state environmental groups with members and supporters in every state. Together, we focus on timely, targeted action that wins tangible improvements in the quality of our environment and our lives.
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World's Richest Man, Other Billionaires Rally Around Trump After Assassination Attempt
Elon Musk, Bill Ackman, and David Sacks spoke out in support of the presumptive Republican nominee, who helped make billionaires $1 trillion richer during his first White House term.
Jul 15, 2024
Several prominent billionaires—including the richest man on Earth—took to social media over the weekend to endorse presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump shortly after a 20-year-old gunman attempted to assassinate the former president at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
One of the billionaires was Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who took to the social media platform that he owns to
declare, "I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery." The endorsement came days after reports that Musk donated to a pro-Trump super PAC and just ahead of the start of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
An analyst with the Atlantic Council
toldThe Washington Post that Musk's endorsement of Trump garnered "the most engagement of any post on X related to the attempted assassination."
Musk also
suggested that the Secret Service's failure to detect and stop the gunman before he opened fire may have been "deliberate"—a post that was viewed 87 million times.
Hours after Musk's endorsement post went live, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman
announced his decision to formally back Trump's bid for a second term in the White House, four years after the former president attempted to overturn President Joe Biden's 2020 victory and sparked a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Ackman, who has
historically supported Democrats, wrote in a lengthy X post that he had privately decided to endorse Trump "some time ago" and suggested he would offer a more thorough explanation of his decision in the near future.
"I just haven't had the time nor felt the urgency to write the post as we are still a few months from the election," Ackman wrote on Saturday, hours after a gunman later identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire with an AR-style rifle, hitting Trump's right ear and killing one rally attendee.
Another billionaire, venture capitalist David Sacks, reiterated his support for Trump over the weekend after formally endorsing the former president last month and hosting a $300,000-per-person fundraiser for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Sacks, who declared following the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection that Trump had "disqualified himself from being a candidate at the national level again," called the former president a "hero" on Sunday and gushed that he has "risked everything for this country."
The trio joins
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Billionaires got $1 trillion richer during Trump's first term and have seen their wealth soar by $2.2 trillion since the passage of the Trump-GOP tax cuts in 2017.
Between December 2017 and September 2023, according to a recent analysis by the progressive advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness, Musk saw his net worth rise from $20.4 billion to nearly $270 billion—a 1,222.8% increase.
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Responding to Axiosreporting in which the lawmaker, provided anonymity by the outlet, was quoted as saying, "We've all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency," Ocasio-Cortez said, "If you're a 'senior Democrat' that feels this way, you should absolutely retire and make space for true leadership that refuses to resign themselves to fascism."
"This kind of leadership is functionally useless to the American people," she added. "Retire."
Since the assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania on Saturday that bloodied the former president and left one event attendee dead, many political observers and pundits have said or suggested that the violent attack likely bolsters the GOP candidate's chances in the upcoming election—especially at a time that President Joe Biden appears politically weak following a disastrous debate performance last month.
Despite grave concerns among many Democratic and progressive voters about Biden's ability to defeat Trump, Ocasio-Cortez has been outspoken in her defense of Biden in recent weeks.
"What I think the president does need to do is continue to lean in and move further toward the working class, and be more assertive in providing an affirmative vision for this country," Ocasio-Cortez told Capitol Hill reporters last week.
"If we can actually provide and chart out a future that is more leaning into the needs of working people," she said, "then I think we can chart a path to win."
Following Saturday's shooting, Ocasio-Cortez condemned political violence broadly and called the incident "horrific."
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"The Israeli government continues to sabotage the peace process and the cease-fire in the Middle East," said the Brazilian president after a deadly weekend of bombings.
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Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva condemned the Israeli government on Sunday after bombings across the Gaza Strip killed more than 140 people and wounded hundreds more, adding to the gruesome death toll and worsening the enclave's humanitarian emergency as cease-fire talks continue.
Lula specifically decried Israel's Saturday attack on al-Mawasi, an overcrowded town on Gaza's southern coast to which Israeli forces previously ordered Palestinians to flee. Israel claimed to be targeting Hamas' military chief in the attack; Hamas said Sunday that the commander was not harmed in the strikes, which killed around 90 people—including children.
The New York Timesreported that one of the Israeli strikes "exploded directly in front of two vehicles clearly marked as belonging to Gaza Civil Defense, an emergency services agency, spraying them with shrapnel and apparently killing and injuring first responders."
Lula said Sunday that "the Israeli government continues to sabotage the peace process and the cease-fire [negotiations] in the Middle East" with its relentless bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip, which has been utterly decimated by Israel's assault—a military campaign fueled by billions of dollars of weaponry from the United States, Germany, and other major countries.
"It is appalling that they continue to collectively punish the Palestinian people," Brazil's president said. "There have already been tens of thousands of deaths in consecutive attacks since last year, many of them in delimited humanitarian zones that should be protected."
"We, the political leaders of the democratic world, cannot remain silent in the face of this endless massacre," he added. "The cease-fire and peace in the region need to be priorities on the international agenda. All our efforts must be focused on securing the release of the Israeli hostages and ending the attacks on the Gaza Strip."
Brazil under Lula's leadership has backed the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice and been a vocal supporter of a permanent cease-fire and an end to Israel's decadeslong occupation of Palestinian territory.
"I saw toddlers who are double amputees, children paralyzed and unable to receive treatment, and others separated from their parents."
Israel's weekend onslaught in Gaza came as "Hamas and Israel appear closer to some form of a Gaza cease-fire deal than at any time since the brief truce last November," as Drop Site's Jeremy Scahill put it late last week.
"Hamas is considering an approach that would not immediately require a commitment to a permanent cease-fire and complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza as a precondition to move forward in phased negotiations," Scahill reported. "This would mark a significant concession by Hamas, which has long insisted any agreement must include defined steps that end Israel's war. Instead, Hamas officials said, they would consider entering an initial six-week phase that would include a conditional cease-fire and an exchange of Israeli civilian and female soldiers held in Gaza in return for the release of hundreds of Palestinians."
The Associated Pressreported Sunday that Hamas—which led the deadly October 7 attack on Israel—intends to keep participating in cease-fire talks in the face of incessant Israeli airstrikes, though a spokesperson for the group said there is "no doubt that the horrific massacres will impact any efforts in the negotiations."
Scott Anderson, the United Nations' deputy humanitarian coordinator, described the appalling scene he witnessed over the weekend at Nasser Hospital, the overwhelmed medical facility in southern Gaza where many wounded Palestinians were taken following Israel's Saturday attack on al-Mawasi.
"With not enough beds, hygiene equipment, sheeting, or scrubs, many patients were treated on the ground without disinfectants," said Anderson. "Ventilation systems were switched off due to a lack of electricity and fuel, and the air was filled with the smell of blood. I saw toddlers who are double amputees, children paralyzed and unable to receive treatment, and others separated from their parents. I also saw mothers and fathers who were unsure if their children were alive. Parents told me in despair that they had moved into the 'so-called humanitarian zone' in the hope that their children would be safe there."
"Impediments to humanitarian operations prevent us from supporting people anywhere near the scale necessary," Anderson continued. "Civilians must be protected at all times. We urgently need a cease-fire, the release of all remaining hostages, respite for the people of Gaza, and a meaningful opportunity for healing to begin."
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