SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
March Wildfires Signal Risks of a Dangerous Spring
An early wildfire season in the U.S. that began in Los Angeles and is currently hitting the Carolinas and Georgia this week also poses risks to the Southern Plains states of Texas and New Mexico, according to a new outlook issued by the National Interagency Fire Center.
Dr. Rachel Cleetus, the policy director with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, writes in a new blog that hotter, drier conditions, coupled with gusty winds, are contributing to these winter fires. She notes that state and federal policymakers should ensure that adequate funding and resources are available to deal with wildfires so fire-damaged communities can recover.
“The Trump administration’s mass layoffs of thousands of forest service employees, combined with federal funding freezes that affect wildfire mitigation and prevention projects, are their own red flag warnings going into this year’s fire season,” writes Cleetus. “Across the board, indiscriminately cutting staff and budgets at agencies such as NOAA, USDA and FEMA that contribute to predictive data and wildfire risk mapping, firefighting, and disaster response and recovery will only make things more unsafe for everyone.”
The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world. UCS combines independent scientific research and citizen action to develop innovative, practical solutions and to secure responsible changes in government policy, corporate practices, and consumer choices.
LATEST NEWS
Tim Walz Offers to Meet With Voters Whose GOP Reps Refuse to Hold Town Halls
"Canceling town halls to avoid voter backlash is the thing you do, right before you lose the majority," said one Democratic strategist.
Mar 04, 2025
Voters in Republican districts may see considerably less of their members of Congress in the coming months following a directive from the chair of the U.S. House GOP's campaign arm on Tuesday, but Democratic leaders including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz offered to fill in for lawmakers who don't want to face constituents who have questions about the Trump-Republican agenda.
"If your Republican representative won't meet with you because their agenda is so unpopular, maybe a Democrat will," said Walz, who was former Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate in the 2024 election. "Hell, maybe I will."
Walz's offer followed reports that Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), said in a private meeting that members of the right-wing caucus should no longer meet in person with constituents at town halls to avoid the outcry that has garnered media attention at many recent meetings.
As the party has pushed for $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid and federal food assistance in the budget proposal that the House passed last month—to help fund a tax cut for the richest Americans—and as President Donald Trump's billionaire ally, Elon Musk, has spearheaded massive cuts to federal agencies, Republicans at town halls have faced angry voters from across the political spectrum.
In Kansas on Saturday, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) stood up and left his own town hall after a voter asked how the GOP can support mass firings that have impacted thousands of veterans.
Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) was booed last month at a town hall as voters denounced the Republican Party's support for cuts to federal health agencies, and lawmakers in Alaska, Wisconsin, and Oregon faced similar reactions.
Right-wing commentators quickly dismissed the outcry about cuts to crucial public services as the result of Democrats mobilizing their voters—in apparent disbelief that constituents, without being prompted, would express anger about cuts to a healthcare program that serves nearly 80 million people.
On Monday, Trump dismissed people who have spoken out at town halls as paid "troublemakers," and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Tuesday that those who have demanded answers from lawmakers about Musk's activities and the budget proposal are "Democrat activists who don't live in the district."
"They're professional protesters," he told reporters. "So why would we give them a forum to do that right now?"
Republicans have not presented any evidence that people speaking out about Musk's Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) and the party's economic agenda are being paid to do so.
U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) went as far as to compare people who object to public spending cuts to Neo-Nazis and threatening to arrest people who are "disruptive" at town halls and charge them with a misdemeanor.
"I'm not going to put up with these agitators," said Van Orden. "We're not doing it. Republicans are too nice."
Dan Pfeiffer, co-host of the podcast "Pod Save America" and a former Obama administration official, said that "canceling town halls to avoid voter backlash is the thing you do, right before you lose the majority."
At the GOP meeting, Hudson reportedly told lawmakers that "the paid resistance people are out there like in 2017," leading Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) to ask whether the Republican Party also blames the "paid resistance" for their loss of more than 40 House seats in the 2018 elections, which followed the party's attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act and its passage of the 2017 tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy.
Walz suggested Republicans' refusal to engage with their constituents could present an opportunity for Democrats to win more support in GOP districts.
"If your congressman refuses to meet, I'll come host an event in their district to help local Democrats beat 'em," said the governor.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) wrote in a column at The American Prospect Tuesday that he already has plans to meet with voters in Republican voters, just as GOP lawmakers retreat.
"Starting March 24th, I will be going to three red districts in California to speak out against DOGE's mass firings and the Republicans' Medicaid cuts. This is a moment for progressives to speak directly to people across the country, especially in places that have been hollowed out by the offshoring of jobs and failed policies that have put billionaires over the working class," wrote Khanna, noting that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) spoke in Nebraska and Iowa districts last month where GOP members face competitive elections in 2026.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) added that she hosts "a town hall every single month because it gives me an opportunity to hear from my constituents and not hide from them."
"But I am not surprised Republicans are cowards," she said, "and will now be hiding from their constituents."
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Real Reason for Soaring Egg Prices? Gouging by the 'Rotten Egg Oligarchy'
A new Food & Water Watch report details how "corporations use the worsening bird flu crisis to jack up egg prices, even as their own factory farms fuel the spread of disease."
Mar 04, 2025
The nation's largest egg producers would have American consumers believe that avian flu and inflation are behind soaring prices, but a report published Tuesday shows corporate price gouging is the real culprit driving the record cost of the dietary staple.
The fourth installment of Food & Water Watch's (FWW) Economic Cost of Food Monopolies series—titled The Rotten Egg Oligarchy—reports that the average price of a dozen eggs in the United States hit an all-time high of $4.95 in January 2025. That's more than two-and-a-half times the average price from three years ago.
"While egg prices spiral out of reach, making eggs a luxury item, Big Ag is profiting hand over fist," FWW research director Amanda Starbuck said in a statement. "But make no mistake—today's high prices are built on a foundation of corporate price gouging. Our research shows how corporations use the worsening bird flu crisis to jack up egg prices, even as their own factory farms fuel the spread of disease."
FWW found that "egg prices were already rising before the current [avian flu] outbreak hit U.S. commercial poultry flocks in February 2022, and have never returned to pre-outbreak levels."
Furthermore, "egg price spikes hit regions that were bird flu-free until recently," the report states. "The U.S. Southeast remained free of bird flu in its table egg flocks until January 2025, and actually increased egg production in 2022 and 2023 over 2021 levels. Nevertheless, retail egg prices in the Southeast rose alongside January 2023's national price spikes."
"The corporate food system is to blame for exacerbating the scale of the outbreak as well as the high cost of eggs," the publication continues. "Factory farms are virus incubators, with the movement of animals, machines, and workers between operations helping to spread the virus."
"Meanwhile, just a handful of companies produce the majority of our eggs, giving them outsized control over the prices paid by retailers, who often pass on rising costs to consumers," the paper adds. "This highly consolidated food system also enables companies to leverage a temporary shortage in one region to raise prices across the entire country."
Cal-Maine, the nation's top egg producer, enjoyed a more than 600% increase in gross profits between fiscal years 2021-23, according to FWW. The Mississippi-based company did not suffer any avian flu outbreaks in fiscal year 2023, during which it sold more eggs than during the previous two years. Yet it still sold conventional eggs at nearly three times the price as in 2021, amounting to over $1 billion in windfall profits. Meanwhile Cal-Maine paid shareholders dividends totaling $250 million in 2023, 40 times more during the previous fiscal year.
The report highlights how factory farming creates ideal conditions for the spread of avian flu, a single case of which requires the extermination of the entire flock at the affected facility, under federal regulations.
"These impacts cannot be understated," FWW stressed. "Today's average factory egg farm confines over 800,000 birds, with some operations confining several million. This magnifies the scale of animal suffering and death, as well as the enormous environmental and safety burden of disposing of a million or more infected bird carcasses."
Citing U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) figures, The Guardianreported Tuesday that more than 54 million birds have been affected in the past three months alone.
Egg producers know precisely how the supply-and-demand implications of these outbreaks and subsequent culls can boost their bottom lines. Meanwhile, they play a dangerous game as epidemiologists widely view a potential avian flu mutation that can be transmitted from birds to humans as the next major pandemic threat—one that's exacerbated by the Trump administration's withdrawal from the World Health Organization and cuts to federal agencies focused on averting the next pandemic.
"We cannot afford to place our food system in the hands of a few corporations that put corporate profit above all else."
So far, 70 avian flu cases—one of them fatal—have been reported in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, under Trump, the CDC has stopped publishing regular reports on its avian flu response plans and activities. The USDA, meanwhile, said it "accidentally" terminated staffers working on avian flu response during the firing flurry under Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. The agency is scrambling to reverse the move.
"We cannot afford to place our food system in the hands of a few corporations that put corporate profit above all else," the FWW report argues. "Nor can we allow the factory farm system to continue polluting our environment and serving as the breeding ground for the next human pandemic."
"We need to enforce our nation's antitrust laws to go after corporate price fixing and collusion," the publication adds. "We also need a national ban on new and expanding factory farms, while transitioning to smaller, regional food systems that are more resilient to disruptions."
That is highly unlikely under Trump, whose policies—from taxation to regulation and beyond—have overwhelmingly favored the ultrawealthy and corporations over working Americans. Meanwhile, one of the president's signature campaign promises, to lower food prices "on day one," has evaporated amid ever-rising consumer costs.
According to the USDA's latest Food Price Outlook, overall food prices are projected to rise 3.4% in 2025. Eggs, however, are forecast to soar a staggering 41.1% this year—and possibly by as much as 74.9%.
"If President Trump has any interest in fulfilling his campaign pledge to lower food prices," Starbuck stressed, "he must begin by taking on the food monopolies exploiting pandemic threat for profit."
Keep ReadingShow Less
As Economic Warnings Flash Red, Trump Plows Forward With Massive Tax Hike on Ordinary Americans
After a monthlong delay, Trump administration tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports went into effect Tuesday.
Mar 04, 2025
As the Trump administration's purge of federal workers continues and tariffs imposed on key U.S. trade partners Mexico and Canada take effect Tuesday, multiple economic indicators are warning of potential pain ahead.
On Monday, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta released an estimate for GDP performance in the first quarter of 2025, which showed an economic contraction of 2.8%. The "GDPNow" estimate is a model-based projection that is not an official forecast from the Atlanta Fed, but it does paint a different economic picture from just a few weeks ago, when the same model-based projection estimated growth of almost 3% in early February.
"Basically unprecedented for a new administration to inherit a strong economy and immediately tank it as both businesses and consumers internalize its agenda," wrote Bharat Ramamurti, a former deputy director at the National Economic Council, in response to the prediction from the Atlanta Fed.
Stocks also tumbled Monday after Trump announced that 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico would go into effect the next day. Trump also reiterated that the U.S. would impose an additional 10% tariff on China, on top of 10% tariffs that were already in effect.
Meanwhile there are also signs that consumer confidence is declining. The research group the Conference Board released its Consumer Confidence Index for February on Tuesday, which showed the largest monthly decline in consumer confidence since August 2021. "Respondents to the board's survey expressed concern over inflation with a significant increase in mentions of trade and tariffs, the board said," according to The Associated Press. The retail giant Target said Tuesday that consumer confidence is waning, according to CNN.
In a video discussing the Atlanta Fed's "GDPNow" estimate, journalist Krystal Ball reminded listeners that billionaire Elon Musk, the man Trump has deputized to help oversee cuts to the federal spending and bureaucracy, said that the work of his Department of Government Efficiency would cause pain. Musk in October 2024 said that then yet-to-be-created body's work would "necessarily involve some temporary hardship," according to Vox.
The Trump administration has so far already cut tens of thousands of workers, but even if Trump successfully carried out his proposed mass firings of probationary workers (which a judge recently said were likely illegal), possibly impacting 200,000 people, that "on its own, is not recessionary," according to economist Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Yale University Budget Lab, who was interviewed by CNBC.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' February employment situation report will be released on Friday, and economist Dean Baker, who works for the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote Tuesday that the numbers "are not not likely to pick up much of the effect of the DOGE cuts." That's partly because the data will not capture the time period when many of the cuts went into effect, according to Baker.
The impact of tariffs, however, is more certain. China, Mexico, and Canada account for over 40% of U.S. imports, and key goods imported from the three countries include crude petroleum, cars, computers, telephones, and car parts and accessories, according to the The New York Times.
Tariffs are essentially a tax on imported goods that economists say are largely passed on to consumers.
According to analysis released in early February, the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that the tariffs that were previously announced but went into effect on Tuesday constitute the "the largest tax increase in at least a generation."
Taking into account the 25% tariffs on goods from Canada (aside from the lower rate for Canadian energy) and Mexico, and the 10% increase in tariffs on imports from China, "the direct cost of these actions to the typical, or median, U.S. household would be a tax increase of more than $1,200 a year."
After the Trump administration announced the tariffs on Mexico and China, which the White House said were being implemented to pressure the three countries into halting the flow of fentanyl and immigrants, Trump agreed in February to delay their imposition on Canada and Mexico for a month after those countries announced concessions.
The left-leaning economist Paul Krugman called the tariffs on Mexico and Canada, two countries with whom Trump once helped negotiate a free trade deal, "a profoundly self-destructive move."
"It will impose huge, possibly devastating costs on U.S. manufacturing, while significantly raising the cost of living—without any visible justification," he wrote.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular