United States | News & Politics

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34840185

Shortly after President Donald Trump took office last January, employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture were reportedly instructed to flag and delete any webpages that mentioned climate change — including resources used by farmers to prepare for extreme weather. In response, a group of environmental and agricultural nonprofits sued the agency over the loss of critical information. In May, just days before a scheduled hearing, the USDA announced it would restore its climate webpages. At that point, “we had essentially won,” said Peter Lehner, managing attorney at Earthjustice, the nonprofit law firm representing the plaintiffs. But the negotiations over a legal settlement continued on.

Last week, the ag department finally settled the lawsuit, agreeing to share the datasets used to power its climate risk viewer and other tools. Even though most of the webpages in question had already been restored, Lehner added, the plaintiffs wanted to ensure access remains public — a priority that prolonged the negotiations.

As part of the settlement, the department of agriculture agreed to keep its climate risk viewer — which contains over 140 layers and includes maps on wildfire risk — online at least until the plaintiffs receive the underlying raw data. That way, Lehner told Grist, if these webpages are taken down at some point in the future, the plaintiffs — such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental nonprofit — would be able to recreate the climate risk maps.

That’s important because the settlement does not guarantee that the USDA will maintain these digital resources indefinitely. “The government should be able to change their website,” Lehner said. “But they have to do it in certain ways. And if it’s important information, they have to give the public notice and they have to do it carefully.” (The Department of Justice, which represented the USDA in the lawsuit, declined to comment on the settlement.)

In the initial complaint, Earthjustice alleged that the USDA’s purge of webpages that mentioned climate change violated multiple federal laws — including the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, which requires federal agencies to give adequate notice before changing the public’s access to informational tools, and the Freedom of Information Act.

Of particular interest to one of the plaintiffs — the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, or NOFA — were webpages related to loans for climate-smart conservation practices. Wes Gillingham, head of the NOFA board, told Grist that the organization directs many growers to these resources to help with the financial cost of implementing more sustainable growing practices.

However, the settlement doesn’t mean that farmers are getting all that they need from the USDA. Gillingham, a farmer himself, added that he is still unsure which loan programs for farmers are available under the second Trump administration. “What loan programs are live and not is a huge question,” he said.

This predicament highlights the financial precarity for many agricultural producers in the U.S., at a time when the federal government has slashed funding programs for farmers. And it illustrates the work that farming groups have left to do to protect their livelihoods. Gillingham noted that he’s currently worried about a future farm bill that could gut funding for conservation practices, like those that can help farmers protect soil health.

Lehner agreed that farmers are struggling under the Trump administration, and that, in a way, gave their lawsuit leverage.

“To be frank, I think the fact that we were representing farmers and others who were saying, ‘Look, this is hurting us. We’re trying to deal with climate change. We’re trying to deal with extreme weather and you’re cutting the legs out from under us,’ that didn’t make them look very good,” he said. “It just made them, in my view, look stupid and mean.”

Editor’s note: Earthjustice and the Natural Resources Defense Council are advertisers with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

Operation Epstein Distraction is already a five-alarm shit-show.

here’s a huge mistake the worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled press are making right now, as they cover Dear Leader’s Splendid Iran Adventure™: they’re treating Donny as if he were a rational actor who knows what he’s doing.

spoiler alert: he’s not. he’s bugfuck nuts, in steep cognitive decline, and there is no plan. he’s making it all up as he goes along.

apparently, Mad King Donny spent all of yesterday afternoon phoning random reporters, and giving each one a different explanation for what the hell is going on. The Economist’s Gregg Carlstrom sums it up nicely.

perfectly normal stuff.

but even Carlstrom fails to recognize what’s obvious: these are the actions of a gibbering loon. Donny’s brain has gone fuckity-bye, and he’s flailing, calling up reporters one by one and telling them what he thinks they want to hear — and he sure as shit probably can’t even remember what he told the last reporter he spoke to five minutes earlier.

**I mean, look at Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants. he’s a deteriorating mess. the lights are on, but nobody’s home. no, strike that — **the lights aren’t even on.

oh yeah, this is exactly the guy who you want in charge of a nuclear arsenal.

all you reporters who savaged Joe Biden because he was icky and old and smelled bad and probably didn’t even know he was already dead, but are staying silent as Donny’s handlers prop him up like a moldering cadaver — you should be fucking ashamed of yourselves.

---

and what is this insanity? apparently, none of the shitwits running Operation Epstein Distraction expected Iran to fight back, and now we’re running out of munitions.

When the U.S. military’s top general laid out the risks to President Trump of launching a major and extended attack on Iran, one of the issues he flagged was America’s stockpile of munitions.

Now that is being put to the test, as the U.S. races to destroy Iran’s missile and drone force before it runs out of interceptors to fend off Tehran’s retaliation, current and former officials and analysts say.

this has the hubristic hand of Piss-Drunk Pete Kegstand all over it. you can well imagine him telling Donny, ‘don’t worry, sir, my warfighters are going to warfight the shit out of this thing. it’ll be over in fifteen minutes.’

ha fucking ha.

this is why you don’t appoint a Fox News dunk-tank clown with masculinity issues to be your Secretary of Whatever The Fuck He’s Calling Himself Today. Piss-Drunk Pete is in way over his head.

. . . but the clear winner of the Four Seasons Total Landscaping Callous Piece of Shit Prize goes to Preznit Fuckwit, who issued a taped statement in which he was a slurring mess who could barely read the words off the teleprompter that was right in front of him.

“sadly, there will likely be more before it ends. that’s the way it is. likely be more.”

no emotion, no feeling — Donny’s just distractedly reading words that someone else wrote for him, with all the conviction of a teenager forced to apologize for leaving a flaming bag of dog shit on his neighbor’s porch.

https://archive.ph/kzeOM

Several top state and federal offices are up for grabs amid a period of crisis with few if any precedents in the state’s history.

Insane that ICE decided to lead a congressional candidate with a NYT photographer in his car to the candidate's home.

A rash spotted on President Donald Trump's neck is trending across social media and now his personal doctor is explaining what's behind it.

On Monday, President Trump made an appearance at a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House, where the rash, which could be seen on the right side of his neck, was first spotted. The reddish spot on his neck was photographed extending above his collar.

Dr. Sean Barbabella, Trump's physician, told CNN in a statement that the rash is because of a cream he is using as a "preventative skin treatment."

Within hours on Friday, the Pentagon blacklisted one AI company for refusing to drop its safety commitments on surveillance and autonomous weapons, then turned around and praised a competitor for signing a deal that supposedly preserved those exact same commitments.

The Associated Press announced Monday that it's teaming with prediction market Kalshi to make U.S. election results available via the platform.

The machine that all but made the decision itself

Today, DDoSecrets published data about ICE contracts hacked from DHS's Office of Industry Partnership. The hacker group, Department of Peace, published a statement that included:

https://archive.is/GsZEm

Last week, the US Department of Agriculture proposed a strikingly cruel policy, even for this administration: speeding up the kill lines at America’s chicken, turkey, and pig slaughterhouses. The plan will make one of the country’s most dangerous jobs — working in a meat processing plant — even more unsafe, labor advocates argue.

[...]

Chicken slaughterhouses would be able to increase kill line speeds from 140 birds per minute to 175 — a 25 percent increase. Turkey slaughterhouses would be able to accelerate from 55 birds per minute to 60. Pig slaughterhouses currently have a maximum line speed limit of 1,106 pigs per hour, but under the new rule, there will be no speed limit.

[...]

The proposed rules are all but certain to increase injury rates for these workers, who already have some of the highest in the nation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (and which, according to numerous federal government sources, are likely severe underestimates).

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34795641

• A nationwide analysis finds most U.S. national parks are highly vulnerable to climate change, with many facing risks of irreversible ecological transformation rather than gradual decline. Wildfire, drought, pests, and sea-level rise are converging to reshape landscapes the parks were created to preserve.
• Vulnerability is uneven: parks in the Midwest and eastern United States tend to face the greatest cumulative risk due to fragmented habitats, pollution, invasive species, and limited capacity for ecosystems to adapt. Many western parks appear more resilient but are exposed to multiple severe disturbances at once.
• Coastal parks are threatened by rising seas and storm surge, while inland forests face compound stresses that can trigger long-term shifts from forest to shrubland or grassland. Once such transitions occur, returning to previous ecological conditions may be impossible.
• As climate pressures intensify and policy responses weaken, park managers are shifting from preserving historical conditions to managing ongoing transformation. America’s parks may increasingly serve less as static sanctuaries and more as living records of how nature reorganizes under accelerating change.

The United States and Israel tend to avoid flying over Iranian airspace so as not to expose themselves to antiaircraft fire, because Iran’s capabilities have been bolstered by Russia since the June war. The US and Israel prefer to fire missiles from jets hovering in neighboring air spaces. The United States claims that the jets were shot down by friendly fire. Either way, two days into the war it appears the US has lost more air assets than they have since its war against Vietnam, fifty years ago. Iran has launched waves of ballistic missiles at Israel. While Israeli military censorship is effective at obscuring the damage caused by the strikes, there have been more reports of casualties than Tel Aviv claims.

The document numbers EFTA01211336–EFTA01211343 are in the published archive.

oh look, Sundowning Grandpa Bloodthirst made a boom-boom — only this time, it wasn’t in his pants.

I swear, every day it’s just one goddamned thing after another.

Texas Senator John Cornyn: “I don’t know what the— what’s, uh— we’re all— I’m learning like you are, as the news unfolds, exactly what's happening.”

oh geez. seriously, John? once again, Donny does whatever the fuck he wants, shits all over the Constitution, and launches an illegal and unprovoked war in the middle of the night, without consulting Congress — because fuck you, that’s why — and all Republicans can do is scratch their asses and go ‘well, I guess so.’

fucking cowards.

Cornyn doesn’t know shit, because this war is being prosecuted from a partitioned-off dining room in Donny’s Florida golf motel.

Christ on a corroded crumb cake, not this rinky-dink clownfuckishness again. this is the exact same ahem ‘secure location’ they used when they kidnapped Maduro from Venezuela. because god forbid Dear Leader interrupt his weekend golf plans for, y’know, a war.

imagine just for a moment that Joe Biden had launched ginormous airstrikes while hanging out at his Delaware beach house. Republicans would have shit a massive, collective brick. but when Dear Leader does it, nary a peep.

once again, perfectly normal stuff, am I right?

Donny’s Totally Awesome War Room™ sure looks secure as fuck, doesn’t it?

“excuse me, is the omelette bar? oops, sorry.”

Donny Demento looks totally in charge, doesn’t he?

pro Commander-in-Chief tip: when going to war, don’t forget to slather twice the usual load of makeup all over your decomposing face, because, y’know, gravitas.