America is on the cusp of irreversible terror — sleepwalking into danger

Sabrina Haake
March 22, 2025 

ALERNET

Elon Musk’s attacks on the federal government are so unpopular that Tesla stock and sales are tanking, and anti-Tesla demonstrations have erupted all over the world.

Trump is clearly triggered. Calling demonstrators ‘domestic terrorists’ and ‘sick terrorist thugs,’ he is threatening “20 year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla,” while suggesting demonstrators could be sent to “prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!"

It isn’t a joke, but it is sick. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a statement promising to pursue investigations that “impose severe consequences on those involved in these (Tesla) attacks, including those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes,” and added that the DOJ had already charged several people with crimes involving five-year mandatory sentences.


Most Tesla demonstrators, like most Gaza protestors, are not violent and have no violent intentions. Intimidating peaceful protest organizers who neither engage in nor encourage physical violence violates the 1st Amendment and chills the free speech of every American watching.

Clearly that is Trump’s intention.

In the past ten days, Trump has attacked protestors, declared a false ‘national invasion,’ invoked war powers in time of peace, ignored federal court orders, and sent people to an El Salvador labor prison without due process, a hearing, or review. These are the hallmarks of tyranny.


Trump’s use of wartime powers

By now, anyone outside the Fox News bubble knows that Trump has openly disregarded federal court orders. Trump recently invoked war powers during time of peace to remove Venezuelan immigrants without due process, in direct defiance of a federal court order not to.

Hearings on the removal have not yet reached the merits of the case, but the facts are alarming. Trump used the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely invoked wartime law from 1798, to send Venezuelan immigrants to a forced labor prison in El Salvador. In 230 years, the Act has only been invoked three times: during the War of 1812, during WWI, and after Pearl Harbor was bombed in WWII. The Act can only be used under “a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion.” We are not at war with Venezuela, and there has been no “invasion” as that term is rationally understood


Trump called forth these rare war powers to send people to an El Salvador prison, unilaterally claiming they were members of the dangerous drug trafficking gang Tren de Aragua without evidence, hearings, or independent review. For these reasons, Judge James Boasberg issued an order to block the removal flights until he could review the ancient statute, a review that has still not occurred because Trump flouted the non-removal order, setting up a Constitutional crisis with potentially disastrous consequences.

Trump expands his authoritarian rule

Trump officials knew about the court’s order and charged ahead anyway, commanding the flights to leave the country while the hearing was still underway. After Judge Boasberg demanded answers, Justice Department attorneys tried to game him. They tried to get the hearing he scheduled canceled, then refusedto answer his questions, then tried to get him removed from the case.


At hearing, Justice Department lawyers argued outrageously that because the judge did not put his verbal command to return the planes to the U.S. in his written minute order, the government did not have to follow it.The judge was incredulous: “Your first argument is when I said those things, because I didn't say it in a minute order that the plaintiffs didn't have to turn around, you didn't have to comply? You're saying that you felt you could disregard it because it wasn't in a written order?" Yes, and yes.

When El Salvador’s self-described dictator president mocked the judge’s order on X, with, a sarcastic “Oopsie . . . too late,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio retweeted the slam.Tom Homan, Trump’s chief border official, piled on, telling Fox viewers, “We’re not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think — I don’t care what the left thinks. We’re coming.” AG Pam Bondi also attacked Judge Boasberg, accusing him, outrageously, of “supporting Tren de Aragua terrorists over the safety of Americans.”

Trump and his unqualified hacks are deliberately fomenting public hatred toward federal judges who are now, as a result, experiencing threats of violence. These actions will cause such irreparable harm to the rule of law that in any functioning democracy, where legislators honor their Constitutional oaths, they would result in Trump’s impeachment and removal from office.


Trump’s continuing tyranny

Trump openly manufactured an invasion to imprison people. His ‘invasion’ declaration was as lawless as it is dangerous. After calling Tesla protest organizers ‘domestic terrorists and thugs,’ it’s only a matter of time before anyone who criticizes Trump becomes an ‘enemy of the state’ targeted for imprisonment.

None of this is hyperbole. We are on the cusp of irreversible terror, sleepwalking into danger.


Americans who value freedom must urgently speak up now. Support the judiciary on your social media- while imperfect, there is no better legal system in the world. Take to the streets, go to as many protests as you can. Go to Telsa protests. Paint those signs, call your representatives and senators on the daily- calls are counted. Demand, and attend, town halls.

Speak up peacefully and forcefully, but speak up now. Trump can only turn America into Russia if we let him.


Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense.Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

We are not going to survive this unless we start punching back hard

D. Earl Stephens
March 24, 2025 
RAW STORY

REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt
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I am mad, I am scared — and right now, I am looking for people who will fight with me against the most dangerous attack on our rights, benefits, and Democracy in my lifetime.

Unless we start punching back hard, and right now, we are not going to survive this, good people.

At a time we’ve never needed leaders in the Democratic Party more, we are literally getting less.


And yes, yes, I get it: Republicans are completely reprehensible. I have written about this exhaustively. To repeat: I blame the voters. If not for them, there is no him. Our country is littered with the morally dead.

That is a terrible reality, which makes our situation even more dire. Maybe losing their benefits will change some minds, and owning the Libs will become just too damn expensive, but I am done trying to get in the heads of members of a vindictive, racist cult.

We need fighters, and right now we have two for sure, one of whom is the future of America, and not just some damn political party.


Along with Independent Bernie Sanders, New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) has more power than anybody in the Democratic Party right now because she’s an old-school Democrat.

That’s called irony.

At a time we have never needed our political leaders to fight for us more, she is on the road hitting all the right notes.


AOC is known as a “progressive” Democrat, but I’ll make a friendly wager with you that before long she will change her political affiliation to Independent. And I will give her a standing ovation when she does.

And that goes for any other Democrat who does the same.

The Democratic Party has no sense of itself right now, or the terror people are going through. I don’t know about you, but we are furious in my house right now.


We are also scared to death.

We are scared of what the Republican fascists are doing, sure, but we are really scared that we don’t have a party fighting for us that understands this.

We have a complete madman attacking us right now, and too many Democrats would rather we focus on elections that are almost two years away, instead of what is menacingly at our doors RIGHT NOW.


Many of you will know, I am an Independent. And if you didn't, you probably should. As a longtime print journalist, I couldn’t be bothered with political affiliations. I saw both parties as flawed, and politicians as people to be scrutinized, not worshipped.

(As an aside: I have been guilty of worshipping a few politicians lately, and am ashamed of myself, but that’s another column for another time.)

I have voted for Republicans and Democrats during my lifetime, and if you’ve read me even for a bit that shouldn’t be news, either. I haven’t pulled the lever for anybody on Right in a long time, though, and doubt I ever will again.


That doesn’t mean I haven’t smelled trouble for Democrats for years now.

This boomeranged at me on my Facebook page earlier this week. I guess I typed it 10 years ago Tuesday:
“You are Hillary Clinton. Literally 117 million Americans hate your guts. Another 90 million say, meh. There are 27 million who love, love, love you. About 100 million don't vote (they are Americans, after all). You are the front-running Democrat. Your party is in trouble.

That’s harsh, sure. It was also 100 percent correct.


I have been writing about this time in history a lot lately, not because I was right — I would have paid almost anything to be wrong — but because we are back in almost exactly the same place we were then, and simply cannot afford to make the same mistakes going forward.

I supported Sanders in 2016, because it was clear to me that the millionaires and billionaires had acquired too much power. Republicans’ Citizens United was a wrecking ball, and unless everybody understood this, it was going to bury us in the rubble.

I am not going to rehash that damn 2016 election, because it is a massive waste of time, but I am going to say we better start listening to this man right now, because along with AOC, Sanders is one of the only people who has correctly taken the pulse of the American people at this crucial juncture in our history.

We are mad.


We are scared.

We HATE these f------ billionaires.

THEY understand this.


Instead, we have monumental weaklings like Chuck Schumer leading the party. It has gone a million miles past pathetic, and the dude needs to go. I am telling you — HE NEEDS TO GO.

In Wisconsin, we have a make-or-break election coming up on April 1st. Everything we have fought our tails off for in this state the past decade, could be incinerated — including fair maps and a woman’s right to choose — if Judge Susan Crawford doesn't prevail over Elon Musk’s lapdog, Brad Schimel in this State Supreme Court Election.

The grotesque Musk is literally buying votes in this state right now. Not enough of this atrocity can be made.


This Supreme Court race here in Wisconsin is a classic bellwether election. If it is seen as a race between a candidate who is representing the people of this state vs. a candidate who is bought and paid for and representing the despicable billionaires like Musk, the left-leaning Crawford will win.

If this election is seen as just another rock fight between a Democrat and a Republican, she will lose.

The issues are on the side of the Left, if only they (we) would just get out of their (our) own damn way and shout them out — LOUDLY.

Which is exactly what AOC and Sanders are doing right now.

Lately, they have been here in Wisconsin and other places rallying tens of thousands of people around the country to “Fight The Oligarchy.”

Their rallies are high-energy and enormous, because their message addresses our anger and our very real fears. There is so much good and common sense being spread in them it is a wonder, that every-damn-Democrat isn’t every-damn-where ringing the same bells loudly.

Instead, too many of these Democrats are capitulating, and treating this assault on their voters as just another breezy political season.

Is it any wonder the party has never been less popular? Just 27 percent of registered voters have a positive view of the party.

Read that again. This is a five-alarm fire.

Look, I didn't write this piece today to insult Democrats. I have worked my a-- off with them to beat back this relentless evil. I wrote this piece because I am angry and scared, and have absolutely no confidence in the party to lead us out of this mess.

I am a fighter, and I am looking for people like AOC and Bernie Sanders who will fight alongside me.

I don’t give a damn if you are a Democrat or not …

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

'False teacher': Conservative Christians turn on Trump's spiritual adviser

Travis Gettys
March 24, 2025 
RAWW STORY

The Rev. Paula White in Grapevine, Texas on June 11, 2021 (Gage Skidmore)

Some conservative Christians are unhappy with the leadership of Donald Trump's new White House Faith Office, which was established through the same executive order directing the Department of Justice to prosecute alleged cases of "anti-Christian bias."

The president put his longtime spiritual adviser Paula White-Cain in charge of the Faith Office to assist Attorney General Pam Bondi in pursuing those cases and protecting religious liberties, but some conservative Christians say the administration has failed to protect religious charity groups from its government funding cuts, reported NOTUS.

“The most significant distinction here is that under both Republican and Democratic administrations, the Faith Office, what’s now being called the Faith Office, has thought well of religious charity in this country,” said Michael Wear, a writer and founder of a Christian nonprofit who worked in Barack Obama’s faith-based partnerships office. “This might be the first administration that has set out to disparage faith-based charity in this country."




White-Cain, president of the National Faith Advisory Board and pastor of a church in Florida, has been the president's spiritual adviser since 2002, but she has long faced criticism for her prosperity gospel theology and for being a female pastor, which some Christian denominations don't permit.

“Anybody that you know holds true to strong biblical conviction and discernment wouldn’t be involved with Paula White,” said conservative influencer Jon Root. “She’s 100 percent a false teacher.”

Franklin Graham, founder and CEO of Samaritan’s Purse, said he supports the president's actions, including the DOGE freeze to foreign aid and refugee settlements that some charities say had cut into their mission.

“The Faith Office is a good thing,” Graham said. “It gives groups across the country, churches, denominations, a person in the White House that they can take their concerns to.”

But many faith-based organizations say they still haven't seen funds flowing back to their international and domestic charity work despite court orders to spend the congressionally approved funding.

“It feels like an attack on the faith-based nonprofit providers,” one senior leader at a network of Christian charities told NOTUS. “Our question is: Are we going to see more of this challenge to faith-based social ministry, health and human service organizations? We’re wondering where this goes, and that’s our concern.”

The new guy in charge of USAID doesn't believe in foreign aid

REUTERS/Brian Snyder

The new deputy director of foreign aid at the U.S. State Department who is effectively overseeing what’s left of the USAID is a staunch supporter of restrictionist immigration policy who also takes a dim view of foreign aid.

The appointment of John A. Zadrozny to lead the State Department office responsible for supervising and setting the strategic direction of foreign assistance program has attracted little notice, with no formal announcement or White House press release heralding his arrival.

The new role was revealed in an FAQ document approved by Pete Marocco, the deputy director of USAID stating that effective Feb. 24, Zadrozny was on the job. The FAQ stated that all requests for exceptions to the pause in foreign aid spending should be addressed to Zadrozny. The document was filed in federal court by the government on Feb. 26 in response to a request for a temporary restraining order filed by humanitarian groups that had relied on funds from USAID to carry out their missions.


Zadrozny is a longtime ally of Stephen Miller, who was the architect of President Trump’s hardline immigration policies in his first term and now serves as White House deputy chief of staff. Zadrozny previously served on the White House Domestic Policy Council, where he reported to Miller.

Zadrozny declined a request for an interview for this story through a State Department spokesperson.

Following his stint at the Domestic Policy Council in 2017, Zadrozny moved on to the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, where he worked closely with Miller to implement Trump’s restrictionist immigration policy. During the first Trump administration, Zadrozny pushed for policy changes to severely curtail the number of refugees accepted by the United States at the State Department and later U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Department of Homeland Security.


Following Trump’s electoral loss to Joe Biden in 2020, Zadrozny served as director of the Center for Homeland Security and Immigration at the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit founded by Miller. Zadrozny was a contributor to the State Department chapter of Project 2025, and served on the Department of Homeland Security landing team for Trump’s second term.

During his time at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during the first Trump administration, Zadrozny’s argued for keeping the number of refugees low because of security concerns, according to a 2019 report by Politico. The push by Zadrozny and others in the Miller camp ran into resistance from others in the administration such as former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who argued in a memo to Trump that “a failure to honor our commitments to those who have supported the U.S. in combat would undermine our diplomatic and military efforts to protect the Homeland and support key aspects of the president’s national security strategy by making it more difficult to sustain the support of partners elsewhere.”

Mattis also argued that “the U.S. military also reaps a higher enlistment level from immigrant families than native-born,” adding that “there is also a positive second-order effect” of allowing up to 45,000 refugees per year to settle in the United States.


Zadrozny expressed opposition to the Biden administration’s resettlement of Afghan refugees following the U.S. military withdrawal from the country in September 2021.

“The reality is a lot of dangerous people are fleeing the Taliban,” he told the far-right news network Newsmax at the time. “And this administration is putting them all on planes and sending them to a community near you.”

At the same time that he favored a restrictionist immigration policy, Zadrozny’s public comments in 2021 suggested he was also not a fan of foreign assistance, which has been traditionally seen as a force for stabilization that helps reduce migration pressures.


In June 2021, as migration from the so-called Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador was surging, Zadrozny told another far-right network, One American News: “There’s probably a way to help them that doesn’t involve slathering foreign aid on them.”

Without providing specifics, Zadrozny said he would recommend helping the countries “develop 21st century economies on their own.” But the Biden administration, he charged, just wanted to “drop millions and millions of Americans’ hard-earned dollars on these three countries, and it won’t have any result.”

Even as the FAQ directed USAID and State Department employees to address requests for exceptions to Zadrozny, Marocco said in a declaration filed in court on Wednesday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had already completed a review of USAID financial awards and had determined which to terminate and which to retain. Marocco said termination letters would be processed in the next 24 to 48 hours, with final notifications sent out by the end of the week. The administration wound up terminating almost 5,800 awards, Marocco said, keeping only about 500.

“In ordinary times, the government recognizes the importance of foreign-assistance funding to our national interests,” the humanitarian groups wrote in a filing in federal court on Feb. 27. “In ordinary times, the government would not gleefully try to dismantle a government agency overnight, fire American workers without cause or notice, or jeopardize the very existence of businesses and nonprofits that have for decades provided programming aimed at preventing starvation, disease and death, and employ thousands of Americans.”

Early on the morning of Feb. 27, according to the filing, the skeleton staff that remained at USAID received an email from the acting senior procurement executive.

“As you are aware, today USAID issued termination notices for a large number of awards,” the email read. “These awards were identified by the Front Office after a full review of USAID obligations and programs that were personally reviewed and approved for termination by Secretary Rubio and PTDO Deputy Administrator Marocco. We will be sharing a full list of awards terminated with additional details soon.


“We understand that some of these awards may have been for essential services, which the Front Office would like to turn back on,” the email continued. “We need your immediate input on any awards that may have been terminated that contain essential services related to the safety, security and operations of USAID staff.”

Jordan Green is a North Carolina-based investigative reporter at Raw Story, covering domestic extremism, efforts to undermine U.S. elections and democracy, hate crimes and terrorism. Prior to joining the staff of Raw Story in March 2021, Green spent 16 years covering housing, policing, nonprofits and music as a reporter and editor at Triad City Beat in North Carolina and Yes Weekly. He can be reached at jordan@rawstory.com. More about Jordan Green.

THERE IS NO FUTURE

NIH ends future funding to study health effects of climate change

FILE PHOTO: The patient's entrance at the National Institutes of Health is shown in Bethesda, Maryland October 16, 2014. REUTERS/Gary Cameron/File Photo


by Annie Waldman and Sharon Lerner
ProPublica
March 24, 2025 
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. 

The National Institutes of Health will no longer be funding work on the health effects of climate change, according to internal records reviewed by ProPublica.

The guidance, which was distributed to several staffers last week, comes on the back of multiple new directives to cut off NIH funding to grants that are focused on subjects that are viewed as conflicting with the Trump administration’s priorities, such as gender identity, LGBTQ+ issues, vaccine hesitancy, and diversity, equity and inclusion.

ALSO READ:The new guy in charge of USAID doesn't believe in foreign aid

While it’s unclear whether the climate guidance will impact active grants and lead to funding terminations, the directive appears to halt opportunities for future funding of studies or academic programs focused on the health effects of climate change.

“This is an administration where industry voices rule and prevail,” said Dr. Lisa Patel, executive director of The Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, a coalition of medical professionals that raises awareness about the health effects of climate change. “This is an agenda item for the fossil fuel industry, and this administration is doing what the fossil fuel industry wants.”

She called the new guidance “catastrophic” and said it would have a “devastating” impact on much-needed research.

As extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, heat waves, wildfires and floods, continue to intensify and become more frequent, researchers are increasingly examining the impact climate change has on public health. The NIH, which provides billions of dollars annually for biomedical research across the country, has funded hundreds of grants and programs in recent years devoted to researching this issue.

In 2021, under President Joe Biden, the agency launched the Climate Change and Health Initiative to further coordinate and encourage greater research and training. The initiative received $40 million in congressional appropriations for research in both 2023 and 2024. However, last month, the initiative and two other similar NIH programs devoted to climate change and health were dismantled, according to reporting from Mother Jones.

The latest directive cuts all future climate change and health funding across the agency, regardless of its connection to the previously canceled initiative.

In response to ProPublica’s questions about the directive, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said the agency “is taking action to terminate research funding that is not aligned with NIH and HHS priorities.”

“At HHS, we are dedicated to restoring our agencies to their tradition of upholding gold-standard, evidence-based science,” the spokesperson said. “As we begin to Make America Healthy Again, it’s important to prioritize research that directly affects the health of Americans. We will leave no stone unturned in identifying the root causes of the chronic disease epidemic as part of our mission to Make America Healthy Again.”

Climate and health researchers faced hostility during President Donald Trump’s first administration but were able to continue their work, according to Linda Birnbaum, a former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences who served as a federal scientist for four decades.

“Under Trump One, we scratched the word ‘change’ from our work and talked about ‘climate’ and ‘health,’ and that was acceptable,” she said. “If NIH doesn’t study the health impacts of climate, we are not going to be able to prevent some of those health impacts, and we aren’t going to be able to find ways to deal with them.”

In a report from December, the NIH listed numerous ongoing climate change and health projects that it was funding, including research to examine the health impacts of the Maui wildfires in Hawaii, develop models to predict dengue virus transmission by mosquitos, and study the effect of heat on fertility and reproductive functions. The Trump administration has since pulled the report offline.

“We can see with our own eyes how extreme heat and extreme weather are harming people’s health,” said Veena Singla, an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

The new NIH directive follows the Trump administration’s broader agenda to gut efforts to document and address climate change. Trump has paused billions of dollars of spending on climate-related causes. He has also issued executive orders aimed at increasing the production of fossil fuels and scaling back the government’s efforts to address climate change.

His administration is also considering a plan to eliminate the scientific research office of the Environmental Protection Agency, which could result in the firing of more than 1,000 scientists, according to The New York Times. Some scientists in that office have also been researching the health effects of climate change, investigating such questions as how rising temperatures might change the body’s response to air pollution and how climate change impacts the amount of toxic chemicals in air and water.

The NIH and White House did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment. The EPA did not answer questions about whether research on climate change and health will continue at the agency. In an emailed response to questions from ProPublica, the EPA press office wrote that “The Trump EPA is dedicated to being led by our commitment to the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment, unlike Biden EPA appointees with major ethical issues that were beholden to radical stakeholder groups.”

Trump’s perspective on climate change appears to be at odds with that of his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who spent decades as an environmental attorney. “I believe the climate crisis is real, that humans are causing it, that it’s existential,” he said in an interview last year. HHS did not respond to ProPublica’s questions on the secretary’s views.

However, Patel told ProPublica that she did not expect the new health secretary, whose mandate oversees the NIH, to support views that were at odds with the administration’s agenda.

“What we can readily see, from the things that RFK Jr. is allowing to happen and unwilling to weigh in on, he is not going to be an anti-industry voice,” she said. “He is not there to follow the best science

The doublespeak of Energy Secretary Chris Wright

ProPublica
March 24, 2025

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum speak with members of the media outside of the West Wing of the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 19, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura


by Abrahm Lustgarten
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.

For Chris Wright, there may be no simple truths. At his Senate confirmation hearing on Jan. 15, the man poised to take control of the U.S. Department of Energy and its vast apparatus of technological research and development sat behind a walnut desk wearing a gray suit and a crisply knotted red tie. Wright, the founder and CEO of Liberty Energy, a $3 billion natural gas fracking company, harkened back to his days as a solar energy researcher and offered lawmakers a vision of open-mindedness and innovation. Climate change is an urgent challenge, he reassured them, and he would address it.

ALSO READ: 'The Hard Reset': Here's how the U.S. is exporting terrorism around the world

“It is a global issue. It is a real issue. It’s a challenging issue. And the solution to climate change is to evolve our energy system,” he told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. “I am for improving all energy technologies that can better human lives and reduce emissions.”

Since his confirmation as the secretary of energy on Feb. 3, though, Wright has outlined an anti-climate agenda. Speaking to conservative audiences, he is charismatic, animated and far more zealous. Wright dismissed the transition to renewable energy as nonexistent in a Feb. 18 speech at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference, a gathering associated with the podcast host Jordan Peterson, and called global efforts to boost the use of renewables, which he said drive up the price of energy, “lunacy.”

“The world simply runs on hydrocarbons,” he told the group, “and for most of their uses, we don’t have replacements.”

Before Congress, he pledged to listen and learn and then chart his course. Before Peterson’s group, he announced he already had “a nine-point plan” that would more than double the world’s consumption of the very fuels causing the planet to overheat. “Number one is, get out of the way of the production, export and enhancement of our volumes of coal, oil and gas,” he said. Yes, they cause climate change, he has repeatedly acknowledged, but it amounts to an inconvenient complication.

Over the past several weeks, Wright has delivered speeches not just at Peterson’s conference but also at the Conservative Political Action Conference and at CERAWeek, widely seen as the oil industry’s most influential business event, during which he continued to assert that the world’s economy is primarily dependent on the expansion of hydrocarbons and that alternatives like solar and wind have proved both costly and a failure — characterizations that ignore the swiftly falling costs and rapid adoption of both technologies. “I think the agenda might be different here than climate change,” he mused at Peterson’s forum, referring to “the climate-obsessed people” he’s spoken with. Then he hit on a theme that he emphasized again in the weeks that followed: “It’s certainly been a powerful tool used to grow government power, top-down control and shrink human freedom. This is sinister.”

As Wright’s views have become more public, it suggests that he and the rest of Trump’s cabinet will embrace the premise of climate change but downplay its threat, even building a case that it is a benefit to society. The White House is seeking to reverse the legal definition of carbon dioxide as a climate pollutant and undo scores of rules addressing the economic costs of the extreme warming it causes. “Recently I’ve been called a climate denier or climate skeptic,” Wright told attendees at CERAWeek. “This is simply wrong. I am a climate realist.”

“The Trump administration will treat climate change for what it is, a global physical phenomenon that is a side effect of building the modern world,” he continued. Global life expectancy has soared. Poverty has sharply declined. Modern medicine and telecommunications and airplanes have all resulted. And in the process, “We have indeed raised global atmospheric CO2 concentration by 50%.”

“Everything in life involves trade-offs,” he added. “Everything.”

Such a jarring claim amounts to more than a philosophical difference about the priorities of the world. It is unambiguously dismissive of a climate crisis that the vast majority of global scientists warn will prove devastatingly disruptive. It has given some of the people he addressed in Congress whiplash. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., who sits on the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, wrote through a spokesperson in response to questions from ProPublica that Wright stated a willingness to “support all energy sources,” but now that he is prioritizing a fossil fuel agenda, it is “deeply disappointing.”

The one thing it is not, however, is new.

In 2024, Liberty Energy published a little-noticed, 180-page manifesto called “Bettering Human Lives,” connected to the similarly named poverty-alleviation foundation his company created that year to bring cooking fuels to Africa. The document amounts to a spirited moral argument for how energy produced from oil and gas has advanced the developed world and how essential it will be to raise undeveloped countries out of poverty. Wright’s premise is that communities that lack electricity or modern fuels should get the immediate benefit from the cheapest existing energy source available to them. He says that recent climate policies prohibiting U.S. investment in infrastructure that could provide that energy using oil and gas does enormous human harm. But the “Bettering Human Lives” report goes further, suggesting that there is little role for non-hydrocarbon technologies and arguing that if oil and gas production are not expanded globally, billions of people will be held in poverty.

At his senate confirmation, Wright was asked several times to explain his embrace of “all sources” of energy. During one exchange, in which Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., pushed him to expand on what he meant, Wright listed them: wind, nuclear, geothermal, hydropower. “And if I didn’t say solar, it was an oversight.”

The statement is a sharp contrast to what Wright has told his investors in Liberty Energy’s earnings calls, where he has blamed many of those renewables for rising poverty and declining growth and has criticized “the incessant repeating of the simply false term,” referring to “the so-called energy transition.” He argues that for all the years and dollars invested in lowering carbon and subsidizing a transition to cleaner energy, hydrocarbons still fuel roughly the same 85% of global energy supply that they have for decades. Renewables, he says, still account for less than 3%. (The remainder being nuclear and hydroelectric energy, among other sources.)

According to the Energy Institute’s “Statistical Review of World Energy,” the energy industry’s trusted source for global market trends, though, hydrocarbons have dropped to 81.5% of global energy consumption, and renewables now account for roughly 8% of global energy use — more than twice what Wright claims — and are projected to grow sharply over the next few years. Moreover, the report states that solar and wind capacity grew by 67% in 2023, adding more wind and solar capacity than ever before and driving the vast majority of the world’s increase in electricity generation for the year.

Wright, whose office did not respond to a detailed list of questions, has said he rejects similar calculations on methodological grounds.

He also ignores the ways in which the energy transition in the U.S. is already well underway. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the government’s primary energy data office, wind and solar are responsible for substantial growth in American electricity generation while generation from natural gas is forecast to decrease. South Dakota, for example, gets 80% of its electricity from renewables, and Vermont relies on them nearly 100%.

Facts aside, Wright, in his recent remarks, has begun to present his agenda in ideological terms, drawing a straight line between fossil fuel use and conservative fears that Americans’ freedom is under assault. At CPAC, liberated from the necktie he said he’d been compelled to wear since his confirmation hearing, roaming the brightly lit stage with his arms outstretched, he reframed oil and gas not as the cause of climate change the way he’d previously conceded but as a fuel that is patriotic and moral. “Not everyone in the world has access to the liberty and energy we have,” he told the audience. “But in our own country, both of those concepts have been under great threat in the last four years. Maybe that’s why my political career started. Liberty under threat, energy resources under threat.”

It was a whole different message from the one Wright delivered before the Senate.


Amy Westervelt of Drilled contributed research.

 

TRUMP TERRORISM; 

MIGRANTS, REGARDLESS OF STATUS, 

DEPORTED IN ILLEGAL ICE RAIDS


By AFP

March 23, 2025


US Army Sergeant Ayssac Correa's wife Shirly Guardado was at work in Houston when immigration agents took her away - Copyright AFP RONALDO SCHEMIDT

Moisés ÁVILA

Franco Caraballo was arrested while at a US immigration center for an appointment. Shirly Guardado was detained while at work. Camila Munoz was taken into custody on her way home from her honeymoon.

US President Donald Trump’s hunt for migrants to expel from the country is sparing no one. And while the government claims only criminals are being targeted, many of those in the crosshairs tell a different story.

At a checkpoint in Texas, immigration agents stopped an undocumented Mexican couple on their way to a Houston hospital for their 10-year-old daughter’s cancer treatment.

The family was deported, separating the parents from their children, five of whom are US citizens, rights group Texas Civil Rights Project said.

“We had to decide between being separated from our children or being deported together,” the children’s mother told the rights group.

“Now we are in Mexico without access to the urgent medical care our daughter needs,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

According to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), the Trump administration detained 32,809 migrants in its first 50 days in office, almost half of whom were convicted criminals.

Last weekend it deported more than 200 to a prison in El Salvador, invoking the rarely used 1798 Alien Enemies Act and accusing most of the deportees of belonging to the Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua gang.



– Deported over tattoos –



Not all who were deported appear to be gang members, however.

Franco Caraballo, a 26-year-old Venezuelan barber who has been in asylum proceedings since 2023, went to an appointment at the ICE office in Dallas, Texas, in February.

He did not come out.

“I haven’t done anything, I’m a good person,” he told his wife Johanny Sanchez over the phone.

Caraballo told her that officers put him in a red uniform meant to identify migrants classified as “dangerous.”

Lacking resources in his absence, she has had to sleep in her car.

“My lawyer spoke with ICE and they told him that Franco was deported (to El Salvador), that he had no criminal record but that they suspect he was a member of Tren de Aragua because of his tattoos,” Johanny Sanchez said.

Caraballo, she said, has two tattoos: one of a clock showing his first daughter’s birth time, and one of a rose.

Venezuelan Mervin Yamarte, 29, was recognized by family members in Dallas in a video released by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele showing the arrival of deportees from the United States.

Arrested a week earlier, Yamarte worked as a mechanic and played soccer with jersey number 99. That number, his family said, was tattooed on his hand.

Jhon Chacin, a 35-year-old Venezuelan tattoo artist, formally surrendered upon his arrival at the border in October 2024, during former president Joe Biden’s tenure.

He was detained because of his tattoos.

Now, the Trump administration has sent him to El Salvador, despite having presented no evidence against him, his sister Yuliana told AFP.



– ‘In shock’ –



Camila Munoz, a 26-year-old Peruvian, was stopped in February at an airport in Puerto Rico, a US territory, while returning to Wisconsin after her honeymoon.

Although her visa had expired, she had already initiated residency procedures. Munoz is being held in Louisiana, according to her husband Bradley Bartell, who voted for Trump.

“I’m still kind of in shock,” he said.

“I wouldn’t say I have any regrets (voting for Trump), I think the regrets are with the system,” he added.

“I’d ask him to sort out the judicial system and fix the problem.”

For immigration lawyer David Rozas, who is advising Bartell, the current crackdown is “the scariest” of his 21-year career.

He described migrants as “the backbone of this country,” doing jobs no one else wants.

“People feel extremely betrayed,” Rozas said. “And we are going to end up with a huge labor shortage unless something changes.”



– ‘By the book’ –



Shirly Guardado, a 27-year-old Honduran, was at her job near Houston when immigration agents took her away.

“She’s not a criminal. She’s my wife. She’s the mother of my son,” said Ayssac Correa, 25, a sergeant in the US Army.

“She’s always done everything by the book,” he added. “She’s always been a law-abiding citizen.”

Guardado entered the country undocumented a decade ago, but had begun the paperwork to get legal residency.

In her absence, he has been caring for their 10-month-old son, who is “not sleeping as well” without his mother, Correa said.

He fears that his wife may be deported, and that securing her return could be a prolonged process.

“That’s three to five years my son would not have his mom,” he said.

'Nazis got better treatment,' judge says of Trump admin deportations

Agence France-Presse
March 24, 2025 


This handout picture from El Salvador's presidency shows the arrival of alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua at a prison in Tecoluca. (AFP)

by Chris Lefkow

A federal judge on Monday sharply criticized the Trump administration's summary deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members, saying "Nazis got better treatment" from the United States during World War II.

President Donald Trump sent two planeloads of Venezuelan migrants to a prison in El Salvador on March 15 after invoking an obscure wartime law known as the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA).

James Boasberg, chief judge of the US District Court in Washington, issued a restraining order that same day temporarily barring the Trump administration from carrying out any further deportation flights under the AEA.

The Justice Department is seeking to have the order lifted and a three-judge US Court of Appeals panel heard oral arguments in the closely watched case on Monday.


Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign said the judge's order "represents an unprecedented and enormous intrusion upon the powers of the executive branch" and "enjoins the president's exercise of his war and foreign affairs powers."

Judge Patricia Millett appeared unconvinced and said the lower court judge was not disputing Trump's presidential authority only the denial of individual court hearings to the deportees.

Attorneys for several of the deported Venezuelans have said that their clients were not members of the Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang, had committed no crimes and were targeted largely on the basis of their tattoos.


"Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act," said Millett, an appointee of former Democratic president Barack Obama. "They had hearing boards before people were removed."

"People on those planes on that Saturday had no opportunity to challenge their removal under the AEA," she said. "Y'all could have picked me up on Saturday and thrown me on a plane thinking I'm a member of Tren de Aragua and given me no chance to protest it.

"Somehow it's a violation of presidential war powers for me to say, 'Excuse me, no, I'm not. I'd like a hearing?'"


Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee, also suggested that court hearings were warranted but appeared more receptive to the arguments that the judge's order impinged on presidential powers.

The third judge on the panel is an appointee of former Republican president George H.W. Bush.

The AEA, which has previously only been used during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II, gives the government vast powers to round up citizens of a "hostile nation" during wartime.

- 'Disappeared' -

Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed suit against the deportations, told the appeals court panel that the Trump administration was using the AEA "to try and short circuit immigration proceedings."

The government would likely immediately resume AEA deportations if the temporary restraining order was lifted, Gelernt said.


"We are talking about people being sent to El Salvador, to one of the worst prisons in the world, incommunicado," he said. "They're essentially being disappeared."

In a 37-page opinion issued on Monday, Boasberg, the district court judge, said that migrants subject to potential deportation under the AEA should be "entitled to individualized hearings to determine whether the Act applies to them at all."

Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Boasberg, even going so far as to call for his impeachment, a remark that drew a rare public rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

The contentious case has raised concerns among legal experts that the Trump administration would potentially ignore the court order, triggering a constitutional crisis.

Ahead of the hearing, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced plans to send three alleged TdA members facing extortion and kidnapping charges to Chile under the AEA.

Blanche said the Justice Department "is taking every step within the bounds of the law to ensure these individuals are promptly sent to Chile to face justice."

Venezuela-hired lawyers ask Salvadoran court for migrants' freedom

Agence France-Presse
March 24, 2025

Salvadoran demonstrators demanded the release of Venezuelan prisoners. (AFP)

A law firm hired by Caracas filed a petition in El Salvador's Supreme Court Monday for the liberation of dozens of the 238 Venezuelans deported from the United States to a notoriously harsh prison in the Central American country.

US President Donald Trump invoked rarely-used wartime legislation to fly the men to El Salvador on March 16, alleging they were members of the violent Tren de Aragua gang, which their families and lawyers deny.

The deportations took place despite a US federal judge granting a temporary suspension of the expulsion order, and the men were taken in chains, their heads freshly shorn, to El Salvador's maximum security "Terrorism Confinement Center" (CECOT).

On Monday, lawyer Jaime Ortega filed a habeas corpus petition, demanding justification be provided for the migrants' continued detention.

"They have not committed any crimes in our country," Ortega said at the court, while elsewhere in San Salvador, hundreds of protesters clamored for the Venezuelans' freedom.

Ortega said he was hired by the Venezuelan government and a committee of relatives of detained Venezuelans.

He added he had a mandate from families of 30 of the prisoners, but would eventually work for the release of the group in its "totality."
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador is hailed at home for his crackdown on violent crime -- with tens of thousands of suspected gangsters sent to the CECOT, which he had specially built.

Human rights groups have criticized the drive for a wide range of alleged abuses.

Bukele replaced senior judges and the attorney general, and a new-look Supreme Court, friendly to the president, allowed him to seek reelection last year despite a constitutional single-term limit. He won.

"Bukele already violates the human rights of thousands of Salvadorans... and now he is preparing to violate the rights of these people from Venezuela who have not been proven guilty of a crime," protester Antonio Medrano, 47, said in the capital Monday.

'DMs are open!' Trump DOJ mocked over 'state secrets' legal claim — as state secrets leak

Daniel Hampton
March 24, 2025 
RAW STORY

Venezuelan migrants walk following their arrival on a flight after being deported from the United States, in Caracas, Venezuela, March 24, 2025. REUTERS/Leonardo Fernandez Viloria

The Trump administration was subjected to a healthy amount of criticism and mockery on social media as it invoked the state secrets privilege Monday in response to a federal judge's order to provide further information about the deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador.

The Justice Department's action came after several days of heated back-and-forth with U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who ordered the Trump administration to turn around a plane of Venezuelan migrants, whom officials have said were gang members.

The Justice Department argued that the court "has all of the facts it needs to address the compliance issues" and that further details would threaten national security and foreign relations, Newsweek reported.

"Further intrusions on the Executive Branch would present dangerous and wholly unwarranted separation-of-powers harms with respect to diplomatic and national security concerns that the Court lacks competence to address," the filing said. "Accordingly, the states secrets privilege forecloses further demands for details that have no place in this matter, and the government will address the Court's order to show cause tomorrow by demonstrating that there is no basis for the suggestion of noncompliance with any binding order."

Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche endorsed the filing.

But social media critics noted late Monday that the Trump administration has a rocky history with state secrets — particularly given reporting that earlier in the day, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth inadvertently shared top-secret bombing plans with the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.

Attorney and Rewire journalist Imani Gandy wrote on Blusky, "Invoking the state secrets privilege is pretty ironic since apparently all the state secrets are on WhatsApp and Snapchat."

"The Justice Department instructing Judge Boasberg to yield to 'the mandate of the electorate' and stop asking questions about defiance of his court order is honestly one of the most demented and disturbing things I’ve ever seen in a legal filing. It comes pretty close to a claim of divine right," remarked Mark Joseph Stern, senior writer at Slate.

"'[W]inning an election makes you sovereign' is definitely a claim of dictatorial authority," added New York Times Columnist Jamelle Bouie. He added: "[S]tate secrets doctrine" seems straightforwardly incompatible with any notion of the executive as one of limited authority."

"This is so preposterous. When the flight took off is not a state secret. They are invoking the state secrets privilege because they violated the court's order and they can't admit it. That's it," wrote business litigator Josh Stokes on Bluesky.

"State Secrets did you say - no problem, my DMs are open," chided Philip Gourevitch, staff writer at The New Yorker.

"The team that accidentally adds a prominent journalist to a text chain where they are improperly discussing classified information on an insecure text thread can probably be trusted to deport people with no due process without actually sweeping up any citizens," a sarcastic Matthew Yglesias, columnist at Bloomberg, wrote on X.

National security attorney Mark S. Zaid added: "I've litigated multiple State Secrets cases & I'm one of select few attorneys in 75 years who defeated govt invocation. SCOTUS made it clear when creating privilege that invocation does not require judges to abdicate their responsibility to question Executive Branch assertion."

Hijacking news: Fake media sites sow Ukraine disinformation

TRUST MEDUZA


By AFP
March 23, 2025


Researchers have warned that several Russia-linked fake news websites are pushing disinformation about Ukraine - Copyright AFP Sergei SUPINSKY
Anuj Chopra with Johanna Lehn in Berlin and Bozhidar Angueloff in Sofia

A fake news website falsely claimed that Ukraine’s president is paying Western reporters to tarnish US President Donald Trump — part of a series of deceptive reports spread by Russian-linked portals mimicking media outlets.

The disinformation tactic, amid heightened international efforts to halt the three-year war with Russia, seeks to undermine both Ukraine and public trust in mainstream media, researchers say.

This adds to the increasingly troubling trend of attributing false information to established media brands, illustrating how the news medium is being actively hijacked to advance Ukraine-related disinformation.

Earlier this month, Clear Story News falsely reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was using US taxpayer dollars to pay Western media journalists to target Trump.

The article was accompanied with an image of a letter purportedly sent by Zelensky’s office to the leader of Ukraine’s parliament, demanding that a “plan” be developed to “create a negative image” of Trump.

The letter appeared fabricated, with the seal and signature digitally altered and the formatting inconsistent with official letters from Zelensky’s office, disinformation watchdog NewsGuard said, citing analysis from the media verification platform InVID.

NewsGuard called Clear Story News a Russian influence site linked to John Mark Dougan, a US fugitive turned Kremlin propagandist.

The article and purported letter were published a week later on USATimes.news, which researchers said was another apparently Russian-backed site.

– ‘Piggybacking on credibility’ –

The fake sites seek to make false information appear more credible and believable by exploiting public trust in legitimate media.

“These sites are often designed to mimic the tone, layout, and branding of traditional local news in order to launder false narratives through seemingly trustworthy, independent sources,” NewsGuard researcher McKenzie Sadeghi told AFP.

“It’s less about directly attacking the media and more about piggybacking on its credibility to reach audiences who might otherwise be skeptical of state-backed propaganda sources.”

NewsGuard has identified 1,265 sites that present themselves as neutral news outlets but are backed by or tied to partisan groups or hostile governments, including Russia and Iran.

Last month, AFP’s fact-checkers debunked a false claim that Zelensky had bought Adolf Hitler’s former retreat, the Eagle’s Nest, in the German state of Bavaria.

The claim was shared by aktuell-nachricht.de, a German-language site that purports to be a media outlet, without a publication date or the author’s name. The site listed a company name and an address on its about page, but AFP was unable to locate either.

The site is linked to a Russian influence network dubbed Storm-1516, according to the German nonprofit Correctiv.

Western intelligence officials and disinformation researchers have associated the network with Dougan, a former Florida deputy sheriff, who fled to Russia while facing a slew of charges including extortion.

– ‘Irony’ –

“The irony is that the bad actors behind these operations are often dismissive and even downright hostile to mainstream news outlets yet go to great lengths to imitate it,” Sadeghi said.

The blizzard of falsehoods promoted by such sites reflects a new normal in the age of information chaos, which researchers say is stoking distrust in the mainstream press.

Propaganda-spewing websites have typically relied on armies of writers, but generative artificial intelligence tools now offer a significantly cheaper and faster way to fabricate content that is often hard to decipher from authentic information.

Adding to the trend is the growing tactic of attributing false information to legitimate media organizations.

These include a video styled as a Wall Street Journal report promoting the false claim that US Vice President JD Vance rebuffed a top Ukrainian official.

Another was a fake Economist magazine cover that warned of an “apocalypse” and World War III over US military support for Ukraine.

“Disinformation actors are deliberately mimicking the names, logos, and formatting of trusted news organizations, including by using AI, to make their false claims appear legitimate,” a separate NewsGuard report warned.

“They exploit the credibility of these organizations and aim to increase the chances that the false narrative will spread widely and be believed despite being baseless.”

burs-ac/des

France’s Dassault says upping Rafale warplane output


By AFP
March 23, 2025


President Emmanuel Macron has said France was going to 'increase and accelerate Rafale orders' - Copyright AFP Lionel BONAVENTURE

France’s Dassault Aviation is looking to ramp up production of its Rafale combat planes, its CEO said on Sunday, after President Emmanuel Macron said the country would increase orders.

European countries including France have been seeking to boost defence spending and increase weapons production in the face of possible US security disengagement and Russian aggression linked to the war in Ukraine.

Macron said on Tuesday that France was going to “increase and accelerate Rafale orders”.

Dassault Aviation chief executive Eric Trappier said the company had increased output from one war plane a month in 2020 to more than two per month this year, and was working with suppliers to be able to produce combat planes even faster.

“We are planning to deliver three per month next year, and four from 2028-2029,” he told Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper.

“We have heard the president’s call and are studying the possibility of ramping up to five Rafale per month. There are no concrete orders yet, but we want to be ready,” he said.

However, he did not say when this might be possible.

Trappier said that, if the French government approved, the company would also be “ready to provide its services” to any country reviewing its orders for US-made F-35 combat planes since President Donald Trump took office.

Germany on Friday said it was committed to buying F-35 fighter jets despite reports that it was reconsidering due to worries about an over-reliance on US defence supplies.

But Canada said last week it was reviewing a major purchase of F-35s amid serious tensions over tariffs and Trump threatening to annex the country.

That announcement came two days after Portugal said it, too, was re-examining a possible purchase of F-35 fighter jets.

Trappier said that Portugal had not yet reached out to his company.

Last year, France’s air force had 108 Rafale jets, and the navy had 41. France was due to receive 56 additional aircraft before Macron’s announcement.

The defence minister last month said the air force needed 20 to 30 more Rafales to face a crisis scenario.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY

Indigenous leaders end world voyage with prayer for nature

FIRST NATIONS RESISTANCE TO GLOBALIZATION

By AFP
March 23, 2025


Mapuche Indigenous leaders conducted an ancestral ceremony of the Anasazi culture - Copyright AFP William WEST

The leaders of 22 Indigenous peoples from five continents held prayers for nature in Chile on Sunday at the end of a 46-day pilgrimage around the world.

The “Indigenous sages” carried out an ancestral ceremony of the Anasazi people, who lived in the Chaco Canyon before European settlement in what was to become the US state of New Mexico.

It was a ritual that, for the first time, brought together peoples from all over the planet — travelling together on a journey that began in Italy and passed through India, Australia, and Zimbabwe before concluding in Chile.

During their closing ceremony, representatives of peoples such as the Khalkha of Mongolia, the Noke Koi of Brazil, and the Kallawaya of Bolivia sang, danced, and prayed to the rhythm of drums, around an altar where they lit a sacred fire.

“The feathers represent the continents, and today, for the first time, we have the five continents,” said Heriberto Villasenor, director of Raices de la Tierra, an NGO dedicated to the preservation of Indigenous cultures.

At the end of the event, the leaders embraced and shared a message, urging greater care for the environment.

“We are part of nature. We are not separate from it. We are at a critical moment when so much destruction has taken place, much of it at human hands,” Rutendo Ngara, 49, a representative of the South African group Oba Umbuntu, told AFP.

The leaders also shared their concerns about what is happening in their own home regions.

“Unfortunately, they are trying to extract uranium in Mongolia. It is an important element that is supposed to remain underground,” Tsegi Batmunkh said.

In January 2025, the French nuclear group Orano signed an agreement with Mongolia to exploit a large uranium deposit in the southwest of the country.

The leader of Brazil’s Noke Koi people, Yama Nomanawa, called for an end to the “destruction of the Earth” — particularly in the Amazon basin.

According to a 2024 study published in the journal Nature, scientists estimated that between 10 and 47 percent of the Amazon region will be exposed to forest loss by 2050, which could lead to widespread ecosystem change.

“The Earth is crying out very loudly, but no one is listening. The jungle is screaming; it is not being respected by humans. Let’s protect life, save life here on the planet,” the 37-year-old Brazilian Indigenous leader said.