How Britain Tried To Rig the Trial of a Genocide Opponent – and Lost

by Richard Edain | Sep 7, 2026 | 

The jury took just two hours. Tony Greenstein – Jewish socialist, anti-Zionist – had faced fourteen years under the Terrorism Act for three social media posts and a blog article opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The Crown called it “inviting support for Hamas.” The jury called it something else.

Section 12 of the Terrorism Act makes it an offense to invite support for a proscribed organization. Greenstein’s reference to a “Gaza ghetto uprising”, it argued, amounted to support for Hamas. Three social media posts and a blog article. The bill the State was demanding for those words – fourteen years.

Judge Sarah Plaschkes repeatedly objected when Greenstein brought the wider historical-political context of Palestine/Israel into the courtroom – warning him against treating the proceedings as a political forum. When the closing speech came, Greenstein was by now so concerned about what might happen to his barrister that he decided to address the jury himself (no doubt considering what had happened to Barrister Rajiv Menon KC – more of whom later). For thirty minutes he examined the prosecution case and the context in which his posts had been written. The jury wasn’t asked to lay aside the offending words; instead, he guided the jurors in an articulate reading (see his address to the jury, here) in which the world in which they’d been written was made clear (full trial coverage at the Canary, here).

But this court was rigged and thus determined to keep all context out of the courtroom. Nevertheless, despite Judge Plaschkes’ hostile interruptions, Greenstein’s speech laid bare the realities the prosecution had no interest in facing: his opposition to Hamas evident in dozens of articles he’d penned and published on his platform over the years; and Israel’s genocide in Gaza after October 2023. He spelled out the difference between supporting Hamas and defending the right of Palestinians to resist Israeli oppression, and the obvious point that the posts in contention clearly did not express support for Hamas.

Greenstein recounted to the jury how his grandparents fled Poland before the War, and most of those left behind perished in Treblinka. To him, Greenstein told the jury, the Holocaust was not history, but inheritance. He invoked the story of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising as a parallel of Gaza: young Jewish men and women rising up against the SS with smuggled pistols against tanks, knowing it was hopeless yet choosing resistance anyway. October 7th was Gaza’s uprising. The judge objected.

Once Greenstein had finished speaking (to a round of applause from the public gallery), Judge Plaschkes addressed the court to say that she had considered referring Greenstein for contempt of court. She then dismissed his address as a “rambling speech delivered by an old man”. An extraordinary turn of phrase in a criminal trial in which Greenstein was about to find out whether he was to be sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper added Palestine Action to the UK’s list of proscribed organizations in July 2025, under section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000. But proscription criminalizes more than membership. Up to fourteen years in prison can follow under section 12, which makes it an offence to “invite support for a proscribed organization” or to “express an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization…” That was the provision the Crown used to prosecute Tony Greenstein, and it applies right now to public expressions of support for Palestine Action. Serious concerns over freedom of expression and peaceful assembly were raised by a group of five UN Special Rapporteurs over proscribing a group for property destruction.

On 6 August 2024 activists from Palestine Action staged a break-in at Elbit Systems, in Filton, near Bristol.  It’s an Israeli defense company with British operations supplying equipment to the IDF. They entered facilities, sabotaged machinery and hindered production they regarded as part of Israel’s war-making infrastructure. During the parliamentary debate on the proscription order, it was argued that Palestine Action had targeted only industrial facilities, and not civilians. The government went ahead with proscription anyway.

Rajiv Menon KC represented one of the six defendants in the February 2026 Filton Trial. All six were acquitted of aggravated burglary but the jury failed to agree on criminal damage. At the May retrial, four were convicted. Menon’s closing speech was a masterclass and invoked the 1670 Bushell case – a landmark ruling on jury independence from judicial interference, arguing that the judge could not direct a conviction. Judge Jeremy Johnson then referred Menon for contempt, a referral the Court of Appeal overturned on procedural grounds in May before Johnson referred to it correctly in June.

The Filton defendants were acquitted of the most serious charge – the barrister who defended them is now facing contempt proceedings for the way he did it.

So what lies behind all this courtroom drama is a routine machinery. Proscription – the government’s designation of an organization as terrorist – takes effect by order of the Home Secretary. It falls to the barrister to gauge how far a closing speech can go before crossing the line into contempt, while the judge cautions against political argument. Indeed, the evidence shows that judges are increasingly directing what juries are allowed to hear before threatening barristers with contempt. To an outside observer there is little sign of a conflict – yet behind these routine procedures is something damning: what the jury doesn’t get to hear – could mean years in prison.

And, of course, the elephant in the room is that Britain is directly implicated in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In September 2024, as the government suspended thirty arms export licenses to Israel, Foreign Secretary David Lammy told Parliament that “there exists a clear risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law”. Thirty licenses suspended out of three hundred and fifty. Britain would also continue to supply F-35 components through the global parts pool serving Israel, with the government arguing that withdrawal would undermine allied security. British weapons armed a state committing a genocide despite their supposed withdrawal.

The state that arms Israel prosecutes those who oppose it.

The Crown had brought three posts, a blog article and an accusation of terrorism before the jury. But Greenstein stood on that essential context – despite the hostile judge’s interjections. And a mere two hours after retiring – the jurors returned with a unanimous verdict of not guilty.

Richard Edain is a teacher and writer based in the UK and Vietnam. Opposed to imperialism, his work focuses on tracing today’s global headlines back to their historical roots. His work appears on Substack as the Ulysses Files. Contact: edainrichard@gmail.com

Remains At Home – OpEd

August 24, 2026

THE CONVERSATION

By Sabina Cveček, Timothy Earle, Carol R. Ember, Gary M. Feinman and William A. Parkinson

Key Takeaways

:Residential burial (interring the dead in or near houses and settlements) keeps ancestors as ongoing participants in daily life, reinforcing kinship, memory, inheritance, and claims to place; yet systematic comparison shows this practice is far more common in archaeological samples than in ethnographic ones.
Ethnographic records, drawn mainly from the 20th century, under-represent residential burial because many societies shifted away from it—often under the influence of monotheistic religions or colonial policies that mandated cemeteries—while the archaeological record preserves a wider historical range of the practice.
Rather than relying solely on ethnographic analogy to interpret past mortuary behavior, archaeological patterns of residential burial can be used alongside ethnography to refine theories of permanent residence, kinship-making, and social organization, revealing a long-term global decline in burying the dead at home.
Why Residential Burial?

Through burial practice, it is believed that the living create, affirm, and transform social relationships with those who have passed. Interring the dead in settlements, sometimes even below house floors, makes ancestors enduring participants in daily life. Residential burial practices establish continuity between generations, anchor memory in place, and inscribe kinship, power, inheritance, and ritual within spaces where the living are situated. Residential burials do not mark biological death as an end to social bonds but indicate their reconfiguration, tying households and communities to both histories and futures in the making. Why, then, do some people bury their dead in or near residences and others do not? How can ethnography guide or obscure our interpretation of these intimate contexts in the archaeological record? These questions formed the starting point for our inquiry into residential burial on a global scale, in the ethnographic and archaeological records.

To address these questions, we used information from 60 ethnographically documented cultures in the Probability Sample Files in the electronic Human Relations Area Files (eHRAF) World Cultures database. The aim was to examine residential burial practices across these cases. However, given the limited occurrence of residential burial in the 60 case studies, we soon realized that the ethnographic record did not mirror patterns familiar to archaeologists. Ethnographic descriptions tend to highlight changes in burial practice, often linked with the spread of monotheistic religions. As a result, our questions and interests shifted to how a systematic cross-cultural study of residential burial based on the ethnographic record compared to the archaeological record.

We then asked whether an archaeological sample would differ significantly from the ethnographic sample. The coding of residential burial in 49 cultures formed part of a simple random sample from eHRAF Archaeology. A comparison of these two datasets revealed that residential burials were more prevalent in archaeological than in ethnographic contexts. These findings have important implications for using ethnographic analogy when the aim is to understand mortuary (or other related) practices in the archaeological record.


While ethnographic descriptions can help us understand reasons for change in mortuary placement, the ethnographic record does not fully capture the more frequent occurrence of residential burial, which is apparent in the archaeological record. Therefore, instead of the more conventional use of ethnographic analogy for archaeological interpretation (i.e., formulating hypotheses), our study illustrates how archaeological insights can be used in conjunction with ethnography to develop and test sociocultural theories of permanent residence, kinship, and social structure. The ethnographic studies in our dataset, which derive mainly from the 20th century, have only a small percentage of cases with residential burials. The more frequent occurrence of this practice in archaeological samples indicates that the archaeological record represents a broader array of different burial behavior than those represented in the ethnographic record. While contemporary people rarely bury ancestors at home, in the past, houses, huts, and settlements were much more often spaces where both the living and the dead coexisted—and felt at home.

As we reported in American Antiquity, from which this article is excerpted, we first discuss how traditions of funerary placement can be used to model social organization and reflect diachronic changes. Then, we discuss the role of ethnographic analogy in archaeological explanation and present results from the two datasets on residential burial, based on 60 ethnographic and 49 archaeological cases. These cases suggest a decline in residential burial at different points in the past while also highlighting a more recent global shift away from this practice. These findings underscore the value of archaeological evidence, which can illuminate a diversity of burial practices that have decreased significantly in the ethnographic present but not fully disappeared. Our results have implications not only for our understanding of cross-cultural burial patterns and how they changed in response to other societal changes but also (more generally) for how archaeologists employ ethnographic data and analogy when interpreting the archaeological record.

Why Are Burials So Important?

Funerary practice is ideal for cross-cultural, anthropological studies that combine ethnographic and archaeological data. It is visible and broadly recorded in both research databases. These ritual practices document how social organizations are created and materialized. Burial is a socially and emotionally dramatic moment in individual life cycles—a moment of making, showing, and reaffirming relationships. Arguably, funerary rituals establish kinship between the living and the dead and the memory of the event, while the spatial placement of the dead and the physical markers (memorials) help those kinship relationships to endure. A combination of emotion, social ceremony, and reaffirmation, funerary practices are critical to institutional formation.

Moreover, the relationship between settlement continuity and intramural interments aligns with the view of other scholars who suggest that residential burial does not merely tie the living to their ancestors but also links them to a dwelling and the land it sits on. In many contexts, connections were affirmed and reaffirmed through the sequential reuse of mortuary contexts and ritual activities conducted adjacent to them.

Necrogeography

The use of the dead to structure, mark, and reinforce the taskscapes of the living has been an integral aspect of both prehuman and human practices for thousands of years. The spatial relationship between the living and the dead can, however, also become a matter of political intervention. In the late 19th-century Ghanaian Gold Coast, colonial British law was revised six times to mandate and enforce the transition from residential interments to community cemeteries. Moving the resting place for ancestors to locations outside the house has implications beyond the spiritual: “the colonial state enforced cemetery burial because they realized Gold Coast people would never sell their land if it contained the remains of their elders; cemeteries were therefore a crucial tool in the transformation of land into private property for state dispossession,” stated a 2022 article published in the Journal of Social History. Consequentially, the movement of the deceased to community cemeteries led to changes in interpersonal networks and community relationships with the supernatural, their ancestors, and property. Even after some converted to Christianity, colonial-era Ghanaians initially resisted moving burial locations. Funerary customs can be a core extension of personal identity and connection to places, so they are not easy to change. Although the factors and circumstances that prompted householders to shift their funerary practices and reposition their ancestors outside their houses varied from one historical case to another, the behavioral ramifications in most contexts likely extended well beyond the spiritual to social networks and material possessions.


This connection between burial location and broader social organization has long been explored in anthropological and archaeological studies of kinship and descent groups. In particular, cross-cultural research suggests that formal cemeteries frequently emerge where corporate groups use burial places to legitimize claims to land and resources. However, kinship studies have a long history in anthropology with particular salience for British social anthropologists who examined variability in structural forms governing broader social practices. Implicit in understanding kinship is that the organization it implies is essential to group and individual operations and survival. The British social anthropology approach was fundamentally that of social science, looking for systematic patterning affecting group reproduction. Although criticized for the functionalist logic of the social body, the approach can and should be reconceptualized as social networks in which active participants form kinship through blood or other means as well as break kinship ties for historical and strategic goals. This is captured by the concept of kinship-making that recognizes dynamic ways in which different individuals, households, and larger social networks can coexist and evolve.

Using the HRAF Collection of Ethnography, substantial comparative studies seek to understand variation in kinship patterns, and we hope that by looking at funerary practice, we can document dynamic moments when kinship is formed, given degrees of permanence, or reconstituted through memories and material marking. This is the basis of our comparative study, where we look for regular patterns with implied causal relationships between burial practice and the degree of permanent residence. While cross-cultural comparison in this article focuses exclusively on the link between residence permanence and residential burial, a follow-up study could explore the link between kinship and residential burial practices.

Caring for the Dead

Why do the living care deeply about the dead and choose to place the dead systematically according to specific cultural practices? In some cases, they appear not to; in others, it is highly variable, and often follows specific cultural rules. Humans deal with the dead in ways that vary across time and space, and reasonably, this important moment in the life cycle engages both continuity and change in social relations, especially manifest in kinship reflected in the funerary placement of the dead. Thinking materially (which is so basic to social science reasoning), people care about the dead, especially because of inheritance—the social roles that the living take from the dead and the access it gives them to particular resources, including land and its productive potential.


Credit Line: 

Excerpted from “Funerary Placement in the Past and Present: Uses of Ethnographic Analogy for Archaeological Interpretation” by Sabina Cveček, Timothy Earle, Carol R. Ember, Gary M. Feinman, and William A. Parkinson. Copyright © The Authors 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Society for American Archaeology. 

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). This article was distributed by Human Bridges, a project of the Independent Media Institute.


About Sabina Cveček

Sabina Cveček is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellow at the Field Museum of Natural History and a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research focuses on prehistoric kinship, households, and social organization in the eastern Mediterranean and southeastern Europe.

View all posts by Sabina Cveček →



About Timothy Earle

Timothy Earle is professor emeritus and former chair of anthropology at Northwestern University, known for comparative research on political economy, leadership, chiefdoms, and the development of social complexity.

View all posts by Timothy Earle →



About Carol R. Ember

Carol R. Ember is a cultural anthropologist and the president of the Human Relations Area Files at Yale University whose work uses cross-cultural research to examine human societies, including warfare, kinship, gender, and cultural evolution.

View all posts by Carol R. Ember →



About Gary M. Feinman

Gary M. Feinman is the MacArthur curator of Mesoamerican, Central American, and East Asian anthropology, at the Negaunee Integrative Research Center.

View all posts by Gary M. Feinman →



About William A. Parkinson

William A. Parkinson is a curator and associate director of anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History, as well as a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His work focuses on European prehistory, particularly social organization, migration, interaction, and the emergence of complex societies.

 

Parasitic plants act like genetic engineers by stealing and remodeling useful genes

How foreign genes become permanent in parasitic plants

Osaka Metropolitan University

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A dodder parasitizes a sesame plant, stealing nutrients and genetic material from its host. 

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Credit: Osaka Metropolitan University

Many plant species parasitize other plants by latching on and taking the nutrition their host needs to survive.

But sometimes, plants steal more than nutrients; they take genes. 

A new study shows how one such “stolen” gene was not simply preserved after entering the genome of the parasitic dodder (Cuscuta spp.). Instead, the parasite remodeled the gene over millions of years while keeping its original function intact. 

The gene is taken by a process known as horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Unlike ordinary inheritance, in which genes pass from parent to offspring, HGT allows genetic material to move between unrelated organisms. 

A research team led by Professor Koh Aoki of the Graduate School of Agriculture, Osaka Metropolitan University, investigated what happens to these foreign genes after they arrive in the parasitic plant. Working with researchers from Suntory Global Innovation Center Ltd., the National Institute for Basic Biology and other institutions, the team traced the evolutionary history of the CYP81Q gene. 

They found evidence that CYP81Q originally belonged to another flowering plant in the order Lamiales—which includes many medical and culinary herbs—before being transferred to the dodder lineage in the distant past. 

The gene gave dodders something useful, as CYP81Q is involved in producing sesamin, a lignan compound with antioxidant properties. After acquiring the gene, dodders gained the ability to produce sesamin themselves. 

Over time, the foreign gene was changed in the dodder genome by pieces of transposable elements called “jumping DNA,” which inserted dodder DNA into CYP81Q. 

One of these inserted sequences eventually became part of a newly formed intron, a section of a gene that is removed from its RNA before the genetic instructions are used to make a protein. 

Despite undergoing these changes, the gene continued to work. The remodeled CYP81Q still produced a functional enzyme capable of synthesizing sesamin. 

“This demonstrated that the gene had retained its biological function despite substantial structural changes,” Professor Aoki summarized. 

The finding suggests that HGT is not necessarily the end of the evolutionary story of the gene, instead it can continue to evolve inside the parasite, becoming structurally integrated into its new surroundings while retaining its original function. 

“Usually HGT is a process of bacteria,” Professor Aoki said. “Our findings are further evidence that it is found in plants too.” 

For parasitic plants, this process may be especially important. Their direct connections with other plants create unusual opportunities for genes to cross species boundaries. Once transferred, those genes may become raw material for further evolutionary change. 

The story of CYP81Q goes beyond dodders simply “stealing” a useful gene to the plant making the borrowed genetic material its own. 

The findings were published in Plant Physiology.  

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About OMU  

Established in Osaka as one of the largest public universities in Japan, Osaka Metropolitan University is committed to shaping the future of society through the “Convergence of Knowledge” and the promotion of world-class research. For more research news, visit https://www.omu.ac.jp/en/ and follow us on social media: X, Instagram, LinkedIn. 

 

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Journal

PLANT PHYSIOLOGY

DOI

10.1093/plphys/kiag335 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Transposon-colonized intron gain follows parasitism-mediated horizontal transfer of a cytochrome P450 gene

How plants use scoop-shaped pores to distribute their pollen efficiently

New findings are particularly important in light of climate change, declines in bee abundance, and diversity

University of Vienna

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Fig. 1: Bee buzzing poricidal stamens of Pleroma (Melastomataceae), pollen grains are visible as white dust on the pink petals below the bee.

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Credit: César Arvelos

Approximately 30,000 species of flowering plants have "poricidal anthers" from which pollen can only be released when bees apply mechanical vibrations to them. In a new study recently published in Nature Communications, a research team at the Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research at the University of Vienna found that the shape of the plant's anther pore determines how pollen is released. The scientists discovered that anthers bearing scoops around their pores expel their pollen in narrower, more targeted jets than anthers lacking such scoops, which normally scatter pollen in broad clouds. Furthermore, scoop-bearing anthers release pollen at faster speeds. The team further learned that scoop-shaped pores are sensitive in their functionality to the exact nature of the vibration applied. Findings such as these are particularly important in light of more frequent temperature extremes altering flower vibrational properties, and declines in bee abundance and diversity.

Bees are the most important pollinators of flowering plants and approximately 10% of flowering plants are functionally specialized on "buzz-pollination". Buzz-pollination is a mechanism where pollen can only be extracted from flowers through the application of mechanical vibrations. Many important crops such as tomatoes, eggplants or blueberries are buzz-pollinated because they conceal their pollen in so-called poricidal anthers – floral structures which only have a minute pore as opening, and pollen can only be released from this pore when mechanical vibrations are applied.

In a new study recently published in Nature Communications, a research team at the Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research at the University of Vienna found that how the pore is shaped determines how pollen is released. Specifically, comparing more than 500 plant species, the researchers found that pores either carry a spathulate structure termed a "scoop", or lack such a scoop. Tomatoes lack such scoops, but anthers of the large tropical plant family Melastomataceae, for example, commonly bear scoops.

Plants bearing scoops at their anthers expel their pollen in narrower, more targeted jets

PhD candidate Benjamin Lazarus from the University of Vienna went ahead to test experimentally whether the "scoop" has a specific function – and found that it does. Lazarus applied mechanical vibrations to single anthers mimicking the vibrations of bees by placing stamens into a specifically constructed artificial vibration setup. He then used high-speed videos to film the pollen clouds expelled from the different anthers and analysed the scattering angle of pollen clouds as well as the velocity with which pollen clouds moved in the air. Lazarus found that anthers bearing scoops expel their pollen in narrower, more targeted jets than anthers lacking such scoop, which normally scatter pollen in broad clouds. Furthermore, scoop-bearing anthers release pollen at faster speeds.

"Our new findings have important implications for the functionality of buzz-pollination", says study lead Agnes Dellinger from the University of Vienna. Releasing pollen in narrow jets may allow plants to target specific areas on the bee's body and place pollen in a more controlled manner. "Accuracy in pollen placement is important for plants because it can improve pollination success and at the same time enables plants to place pollen in 'safe spots' where bees can't groom and collect it off their bodies. At the same time, faster pollen release may allow plants to eject pollen across larger distances and implant it more deeply in the fur of bees, thereby again reducing pollen loss", explains Dellinger.

The functionality of the scoop-shaped pore is dependent on vibration frequency

The team further found that scoop-shaped pores are sensitive in their functionality to the exact nature of the vibration applied – while targeted pollen release showed a cyclical pattern perfectly in line with vibrations at 300 Hz and 400 Hz, pollen release became "messy" and chaotic at low frequency vibrations of around 200 Hz. Finding that the functionality of the scoop-shaped pore is dependent on vibration frequency is important because different bee species vibrate flowers at different frequencies, meaning that some bees may remove higher amounts of pollen from flowers than others.

Furthermore, recent studies from other research teams indicate that vibration frequency may be temperature-dependent, with bees vibrating flowers at higher frequencies when temperatures are high. Finding that how pollen is released from buzz-pollinated flowers is sensitive to vibrational properties is particularly important in light of more frequent temperature extremes and declines in bee abundance and diversity.

Summary:

• A research team from the University of Vienna found that the shape of a plant's anther pore determines how pollen is released.
• The team looked into the mechanism of so called "buzz-pollination". Many important crops such as tomatoes, eggplants or blueberries are buzz-pollinated.
• Plants bearing scoops around their anther pores expel their pollen in narrower, more targeted jets.
• While targeted pollen release showed a cyclical pattern perfectly in line with vibrations at 300 Hz and 400 Hz, pollen release became "messy" and chaotic at low frequency vibrations of around 200 Hz also in scoop-bearing species.
• These new findings are particularly important in light of more frequent temperature extremes potentially altering flower biomechanical properties and declines in bee abundance.

About the University of Vienna:

For over 650 years the University of Vienna has stood for education, research and innovation. Today, it is ranked among the top 100 and thus the top four per cent of all universities worldwide and is globally connected. With degree programmes covering 188 disciplines, and approximately 11,000 employees, we are one of the largest academic institutions in Europe. Here, people from a broad spectrum of disciplines come together to carry out research at the highest level and develop solutions for current and future challenges. Its students and graduates develop reflected and sustainable solutions to complex challenges using innovative spirit and curiosity.

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Journal

Nature Communications

Article Title

Scoop-shaped pores change how pollen is released from poricidal flowers

Article Publication Date

20-Aug-2026

Fig. 2: Flower of Pleroma (Melastomataceae) with the scoop-bearing poricidal stamens in the center, visible as elongated white-purple structures. Scoop-bearing stamens are common in Melastomataceae, the largest group of plants specialized on buzz-pollination.

Credit

César Arvelos

Fig. 3: Experimental setup for the application of artificially synthesized bee vibrations to single stamens to test the functionality of the scoop-shaped pore. The handheld particle counter allows for immediately counting the released pollen grains.

Credit

Benjamin Lazarus

 

Fig. 4: PhD students Benjamin Lazarus (ri) and Johan Urrea (le) bagging flowers of Melastomataceae in the field for later pollination experiments.

Credit

Cristina Vargas

‘Devastating to Watch’: Texas Democrats Condemn Destruction of Big Bend for Trump Border Wall

“State leadership should be stopping this purely political stunt destroying Big Bend,” said one lawmaker of Republican officials. “They don’t have the courage to stand up to Trump.”

A bulldozer is seen in Big Bend National Park in Texas on August 6, 2026.
(Photo by Natalie Newman/Center for Biological Diversity)

Julia Conley
Aug 10, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The arrival of bulldozers at Big Bend National Park along the US-Mexico border in Texas to clear native vegetation for an access road for President Donald Trump’s border wall was more than enough to send outrage through the state Democratic Party and advocacy groups last week—but on Monday one lawmaker directed her ire at Republican officials who have done nothing to stop the destruction of one of Texas’ most prized landmarks.

“This is devastating to watch. State leadership should be stopping this purely political stunt destroying Big Bend. They don’t have the courage to stand up to Trump,” said state Rep. Vikki Goodwin (D-47), who is running for lieutenant governor.

She demanded to know whether Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and his government are “fine” with the plan to build 175 miles of the border wall across Big Bend and the Black Gap Wildlife Management Area as well as over 200 miles of patrol roads in the region, following the US Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) unprecedented waiving of dozens of environmental laws earlier this year.

“If not, stop it from continuing,” said Goodwin.

The state representative was joined by US Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) in calling out Republicans in the state who have taken no action to stop the bulldozing of a national park which supports thousands of jobs, generated $63.7 million in total economic output in 2024, and is not even a region where a border wall would fulfill Trump’s stated goal: stopping unauthorized crossings from Mexico.

“Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, could sue the federal government to stop this,” said Escobar on Sunday. “Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, could fight the federal government to stop this. But neither one is truly willing to fight for the people of Texas.”

The state AG is running for US Senate, while the governor is seeking another term. Escobar said that Paxton and Abbott’s Democratic opponents in the November elections—state Reps. James Talarico (D-50) and Gina Hinojosa (D-49)—would take action to stop the construction of the border wall.

“When I’m governor, I will defend our sovereignty, our land, and our inheritance,” said Hinojosa last week. “Gov. Abbott is either too weak to defend Texas and stop this, or he just doesn’t care.”

As the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) noted last week, the Big Bend Sector covers more than a quarter of the US-Mexico border, but no unauthorized vehicle crossings have ever been documented in the mountainous region. In 2025, 1.3% of all border apprehensions took place in the area, and in the national park itself, apprehensions accounted for 0.045% of the national total.

“This absurd project is despised by everyone in West Texas,” said Laiken Jordahl, a southwest conservation advocate for CBD, on Saturday. “When will Texas leadership step in?”



All five sheriffs in the Big Bend border region oppose the building of the border well, while county judges in all 14 of the state’s border counties have spoken out against the project and seven former superintendents of the national park wrote to DHS in June, asking them reject waivers of laws including the National Park Service Organic Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

As Common Dreams reported in June, the environmental laws were waived as planning documents showed miles of planned barriers to stop vehicles from crossing the border at Big Bend, as well as patrol roads cutting through the park. For some of the construction, such as in remote areas like Mariscal Mountain, extensive dynamite blasting will be required, according to CBD.

In May, DHS awarded a $1.7 billion contract to Southwest Valley Constructors, a subsidiary of Kiewit, as well as contracts to North Dakota-based Fisher Sand & Gravel and Montana-based Barnard Construction.

The chairman of the latter company, Tim Barnard, has contributed millions of dollars to Republican candidates, including $1 million to Trump, High Country News reported in June. Barnard’s largest contract was awarded without competitive bidding.

“We don’t need to give billions of our tax dollars to out-of-state vendors,” said Talarico on Sunday. “We don’t need to desecrate this sacred land. We don’t need this useless, disgraceful, corrupt Big Bend border wall.”