CRAWFORD, TX—Lashing out at the overbearing former vice president seated motionless in a rocking chair by the attic window, a distraught George W. Bush shouted, “Shut up, Mother! Shut up!” at the skeleton of Dick Cheney dressed in a suit, sources confirmed Friday. “I’m not your little boy anymore, Mother, so why must you constantly criticize me?” said the trembling 43rd president of the United States, accusing Cheney’s remains of cruelly mocking his paintings as “girlish” and “unbecoming of a boy his age.” “Don’t look at me that way, Mother! You always look at me that way! Go ahead and laugh, laugh that shrill old laugh of yours, but I can make my own decisions now because you don’t control me! Fine Mother, bring up bin Laden, just like you always do. You’ve spent your whole life trying to make me feel small, but I’m grown now. I’m a man, Mother, a man ! Hush now, I didn’t mean to raise my voice, Mother, honest. Let Georgie come and give you a kiss.” At press time, the former president was reportedly guiding Laura Bush toward the attic while murmuring, “Mother’s finally ready to meet you.”
Far-right podcaster and former top presidential advisor Steve Bannon told a crowd of aspiring conservative staffers on Capitol Hill this week that the job of Republicans between now and the midterm election next year is to seize complete control of government institutions and turn as many of President Donald Trump’s executive orders as possible into law as a way to avoid politic defeat in the coming years and, ultimately, keep MAGA loyalists from being tried and sent to jail.
“I’ll tell you right, as God as my witness, if we lose the midterms and we lose 2028, some in this room are going to prison,” Bannon told the crowd Wednesday at an awards event hosted by the Conservative Partnership Academy. This group offers training and certifications to aspiring right-wing ideologues working in politics and government.
Bannon, who has already served time in prison for refusing to submit to a congressional subpoena related to his role as a top aide to Trump during his first term, included himself among those who might be targeted if Republicans lost power.
In his remarks, Bannon said Tuesday’s election results in New York City, Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere—where Democrats swept the GOP—should be seen as a warning to Trump’s MAGA base, but called for an intensification of the agenda, not a retreat.
Steve Bannon: If we lose the midterms and we lose 2028, some in this room are going to prison, myself included. pic.twitter.com/O1iyPipz0n
“They’re not gonna stop,” Bannon said of Democrats and progressives aligned against Trump’s authoritarian push and Republican economic policies that have focused on lavishing ever-larger tax cuts for corporations and the rich while gutting government programs, including cuts to Medicaid, food assistance for the poor, devastating environmental policies, and dismantling of healthcare subsidies leading to a surge in monthly premiums for millions of families.
Trump’s opponents, warned Bannon, are “getting more and more and more radical, and we have to counter that.”
His advice to Republicans in power and the right-wing movement that supports them is to counter “with more intense action” and more “urgency” before it’s too late. “We’re burning daylight,” Bannon said. “We have to codify what Trump has done by executive order.”
In what seemed like a reference to Trump’s recent talk of going “nuclear” on the filibuster in the US Senate and other efforts, Bannon said, “We have to get beyond these structural barriers” in Washington, DC, that he believes are hindering the president from consolidating his power even further.
Speaking about discussions behind the scenes, Bannon said he has been in touch with Republicans in the Senate who he says are asking him to go through for them what he means and that in the coming days people may be surprised by who “in the conservative movement” are coming around to his thinking, mentioning “institutionalists” like Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, as those he’s been speaking with.
“These are what I would call heavy-hitters on the limited-government constitutionalists, in our movement,” Bannon said of other unnamed individuals, “and they’re about to come out in the next couple of days and make this argument because I said, ‘Look, we have to understand that if we don’t this to the maximum—the maximalist strategy—now, with a sense of urgency, and in doing this, seize the institutions… if we don’t do this now, we’re going to lose this chance forever, because you’re never going to have another Trump.”
In an interview with Politico following Tuesday’s elections, Bannon said the win by democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani to become New York City’s next mayor “should be a wakeup call” to Trump’s right-wing nationalist movement. “These are very serious people,” Bannon said of Mamdani and others who support his affordability agenda that focuses on the needs of working people, “and they need to be addressed seriously.”
As such, Bannon called for the Justice Department, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security to target Mamdani specifically by going after his US citizenship and calling for him to be deported. Mamdani is a naturalized US citizen who came to the United States with his parents when he was seven years old.
As the video clip of Bannon’s remarks about jail time if the Republicans lose in the upcoming elections made the rounds online Thursday, reactions were predictable along partisan lines.
“Steve Bannon motivating Democratic voters,” said Aviel Roshwald, a Georgetown University professor of history with a focus on nationalist movements.
Bannon’s call for “seizing the institutions” has been a mainstay on his popular War Room podcast for months, but critics warn that his open embrace of the demand should not make it any less shocking or worrisome.
“He’s preparing his audience to see violence and institutional takeover as ‘necessary.’ And he’s counting on Democrats and independents being too divided or too polite to call it what it is,” warned Christopher Webb, a left-leaning political writer on his Substack page last month.
Bannon and his allies, continued Webb, “do not give a damn about the law, the Constitution, or democracy. They only care about control. And if we keep treating their words as ‘just talk,’ it will be too late when it stops being talk.”
He concluded: “This isn’t going to end well.”
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Supporters of Democratic New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani attend a campaign event on November 1, 2025 in the Queens borough of New York City.
(Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
“We will organize to win and defend the agenda that resonated with voters: free childcare, fast and free buses, freezing the rent and building affordable homes, and more,” says Our Time for an Affordable NYC.
On the heels of over 1 million New Yorkers voting for Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s affordability agenda, his allies have launched an organization that aims to keep the movement behind the democratic socialist’s successful campaign active during his term.
“We will organize to win and defend the agenda that resonated with voters: free childcare, fast and free buses, freezing the rent and building affordable homes, and more,” says the website of the new 501(c)(4), Our Time for an Affordable NYC.
“We’ll be door-knocking, phone-banking, communicating, and organizing at the neighborhood, city, and state level,” the site explains. “To get it done, we’ll collaborate with community organizations, movement groups, and unions that have been doing this work and share a commitment to the affordability agenda.”
While Our Time embraces Mamdani’s messages and policies, it is distinct from the mayor-elect and his campaign, and “was legally incorporated last week before his victory over former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo,” the New York Times reported Thursday. The newspaper noted Mamdani’s comments about the group during a press conference earlier this week.
“I will always celebrate anyone who is looking to build on the incredible, amazing grassroots enthusiasm of our campaign,” he said. “This work was not simply to win an election but transform our city, and that means it has to continue.”
Mamdani “also encouraged supporters to join the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, his political home,” according toCity & State New York. Our Time’s leadership has ties to the NYC-DSA, which played a key role in mobilizing support for Mamdani during the campaign.
Our Time’s site names five people leading the organization: executive director Jeremy Freeman, field manager Magdalena Morańda, senior adviser Susan Kang, and board members David Turner and Batul Hassan.
“Our goal is to channel the energy of a volunteer base towards winning the affordability agenda, and doing so at this scale is unprecedented in New York City history,” Freeman told the Times. “In developing the organization, we’re looking carefully at past examples both positive and negative, and we’ll certainly be sure to avoid the pitfalls of any similar efforts by past administrations, and we’ll be as transparent as possible in our practices.”
The group’s creation has prompted comparisons to Our Revolution, which launched after the 2016 presidential run of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), one of Mamdani’s most prominent supporters.
Some political observers have also framed it as what former Democratic President Barack Obamashould have done after winning his first term. The American Prospect‘s executive editor, David Dayen, said that “this is the opposite of what Obama did to his volunteer base after 2008.”
There’s also the cautionary tale of former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Campaign for One New York, which shut down in 2016 amid alarm over its finances, including donations from entities that had business before or labor contracts with City Hall.
Our Time is “a fully independent organization,” and it is “not asking for dues or formal membership,” the group’s site says. “We are accepting donations from individuals, foundations, and other philanthropic organizations. All donations greater than $1,000 will be disclosed publicly on our website.”
Freeman told the Times that the group will not be accepting money from corporations or firms with business before the city.
“Our victory was historic, but the campaign for an affordable New York City is just beginning,” Our Time’s site says. “Even as billionaires have made their opposition clear, more than 100,000 volunteers helped win this election, and they want to keep going. Our Time can be a vehicle for continued engagement—a way for folks to plug in and stay active while they find a long-term political home.”
The group is coming together as Mamdani supporters, skeptics, and critics all wonder how much of his popular platform he’ll actually be able to accomplish after the state assemblyman is sworn in as mayor next January.
Time on Tuesday published a detailed look at the barriers Mamdani will face in his mission to deliver a rent freeze, more affordable housing, city-run grocery stores, fare-free buses, no-cost childcare, a higher minimum wage, and taxes targeting the 1%.
“Raising taxes would require approval from the Democratic-controlled state Legislature and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul,” Time noted. “Hochul endorsed Mamdani but expressed fears that significant tax hikes would force wealthy residents out of the city, ultimately opposing his proposed tax increases.”
After Mamdani’s Tuesday victory, longtime labor organizers Peter Olney and Rand Wilson wrote in an op-ed that during his four-year term, “every Republican and corporate Democrat will do everything possible to ensure he fails, to discredit his socialist platform.”
“Any success he achieves as mayor will be due to the strength of the movement that prevailed in the primary and continued to grow for his election in November,” they stressed. “If that movement stays mobilized, continues to grow, and delivers for New York’s working class, it will be an inspiring political model that our labor movement should support and attempt to replicate in other US metropolitan areas.”
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From the NYT editorial board to CNN panels, Zohran Mamdani is hearing unsolicited advice––and veiled threats––from US corporate media.
by Adam Johnson November 7, 2025 (Therealnews.com)
Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani speaks during a press conference at the Unisphere on November 05, 2025 in the Queens borough of New York City. Photo by Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images
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Unable to stop Zohran Mamdani’s momentum after he won New York’s mayoral Democratic primary last June––fueled by a message of populist policies and social justice, and unperturbed by nonstop bad faith attacks by pro-Israel bullies––centrist and liberal media has adopted a different, more subtle tone in their effort to “moderate” the Mayor-elect: using the trappings of pragmatism and technocracy to whittle down the redistributive policies and class-driven language that defined his campaign. Rather than govern as he campaigned, as a crusading outsider socialist standing for tenants, Gaza, and workers, they insist it’s time for Mamdani to Grow Up, put on his big boy pants, purge his circle of Democratic Socialists, and hire Serious People motivated by Serious Solutions.
This makes sense. After all, traditional media attacks on Mamdani fell universally flat for months on end. Nothing seemed to stick, in part due to the fact that Mamdani seems to genuinely be a choir boy whose greatest transgressions are saying objectively true, but critical, statements about Israel and referring to his parent’s cousin at his “Auntie”––two things, it turns out, 90% of the world does. So a new tactic has emerged, one of attempted co-option, supposedly good faith advice, phone calls from powerful and famous Democratic luminaries, backroom meetings with “business leaders,” and the parallel implied threats of pushback if he doesn’t go along with The Way Things Are. This piece isn’t meant to be a commentary on whether this approach has been, or will be, successful (the jury is very much out on that). But it is worth documenting the way this particular mode of ideological disciplining works, and how it manifests in our media.
Those engaging in this process of moderation would not, of course, put it in these sinister terms. They would say they were simply seeking to guide a young, naive political novice through the myriad headwinds of “the second hardest job in America.” And in some cases this may be true. But for an elite media apparatus that, itself, can create these headwinds whenever it wishes, this posture serves as both warning and threat. It’s the process of establishing acceptable ideological boundaries––the crossing of which, everyone understands, will result in negative coverage and editorial scolding.
Now, the obligatory “to be sure” paragraph: I am not saying that there aren’t genuine limitations to what mayors can accomplish and real technocratic hurdles. Mayors cannot deficit spend; they require party and state support to achieve much of anything; the police manage their security and thus loom tremendous, undemocratic power over them. New York City has over 300,000 employees, all with discrete and oftentimes conflicting interests. But these complexities are very often used as cover for the nontechnocratic, ideological work of pushing politicians into taking more capital-friendly positions and priorities. This article will be a discussion of that process: of the bad faith nuance-trolling and how the narrowing of the horizon of the possible, before the ink even dries on the ballots, is less about good-faith concerns over limitations and logistics and very much about trying to turn Mamdani into Pete Buttigieg 2.0.
Complexities are very often used as cover for the nontechnocratic, ideological work of pushing politicians into taking more capital-friendly positions and priorities.
First and most prominently was the New York Times’ post-election editorial. The Times editorial board, which infamously published a cowardly anti-endorsement of Mamdani before the June Democratic primary (after saying they would not run endorsements anymore less than a year earlier), now takes on the tone of a principal calling Mamdani into their office for a stern talking-to. They’re not mad, they’re not going to attack him, they’re just disappointed and Deeply Concerned.
The Times board sets the tone early, leading off with the patronizing and false premise that Mamdani ran a “social-media-driven campaign.” The Mamdani campaign, it’s worth noting, knocked on an unprecedented 3 million doors, 1 million more than the 2 million actual votes cast, fueled by a DSA volunteer core that the Times later, of course, recommends Mamdani throw under the bus. This is followed by framing their advice as Mamdani lowering his progressive expectations. “For Mr. Mamdani to be effective, he will need to grapple with the recent history of big-city civic leaders promising bold, progressive change. They have mostly delivered disappointment, including in Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Ore., as well as in New York City itself under Bill de Blasio,” they begin. It doesn’t matter that several of the relevant mayors listed are not progressive in any meaningful sense and all of them, save perhaps Johnson in Chicago, have adopted every Tough on Crime policy the Times goes on to recommend. It’s a vibe, not an intellectually honest assessment on the limits of left-wing politics. Those cities are left-coded, and that’s all that matters.
From there, the Times lists six ways Mamdani “can improve life in New York by marrying his admirable ambition to pragmatism and compromise.” The Times advises he abandon his pledge for free buses, saying this plan “would leave the system without the revenue it needs to pay for speed improvements,” and that “free buses could also reduce the sense of security for riders, turning buses into homeless shelters.” Somewhat bizarrely, they ignore Mamdani’s other major campaign pledge, freezing rent for rent stabilized units, then praise his willingness to incentivize more private development by undoing supposedly burdensome fire regulations. The editorial then runs down a list of campaign promises he must abandon or “compromise” on: free childcare (“He is unlikely to achieve this goal in full, given its costs and the lack of an obvious revenue source.”) and alternatives to policing (which they insist should only be done “when feasible,” whatever that means). And they push Mamdani to make nice with Big Business (both Mamdani and business leaders “should recognize that they have a common interest in the city’s well-being and in preserving its status as a hub of business and finance”). The Times then finishes with the obligatory ideological tsk tsk-ing over DSA, anti-police politics and, of course, Israel:
But the reasons that many New Yorkers are skeptical of him also deserve to be taken seriously. He had almost no management experience before his campaign, and extreme rhetoric was his normal mode of communication until recently. He called the New York Police Department “a major threat to public safety.” He initially refused to condemn Hamas after its Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel. To this day, he proudly identifies with the Democratic Socialists of America, whose platform supports open borders, voting access for noncitizens and a weaker U.S. military.
He can win at least some of his skeptics over by getting results as mayor. He should start by building a leadership team light on democratic socialists and heavy on officials with records of accomplishment and proven management skills.
In short: aim for small wins that do not offend capital, make peace with Big Business, purge your ranks of anyone with progressive or socialist ideological commitments, be nice to the police and its powerful union, and continue to engage in conspicuous gestures of moderation on Israel like “condemning Hamas” (with no parallel demand he, or anyone, “condemn” the entity that has killed 20,000 children and committed genocide). Put another way: shed everything that made your campaign interesting and exciting and instead just be a slightly more liberal version of Eric Adams.
Put another way: shed everything that made your campaign interesting and exciting and instead just be a slightly more liberal version of Eric Adams.
The Washington Posteditorial board would scold Mamdani along similar lines, albeit more openly ideological––a result of their Bezos-driven, overt turn to the right. After lamenting Mamdani’s radical politics and what they say about The State of Things, the Post writes that “the best outcome would be for Mamdani to take a cautiously incremental approach and try pilot programs for his most radical ideas instead of immediately imposing them on the entire city. It seems that there are enough voters to put him in power — but if New Yorkers begin to flee in droves, it could force him to moderate.” This is a popular line from oligarchs and their media organs but you don’t usually see it spelled out like this––an explicit threat of a capital strike in a paper owned by the world’s second-richest person. But this is certainly what’s going on: moderate or New York’s wealthy will use their tremendous leverage to make governing more that much more difficult.
This isn’t to say slimy and racist attacks from other liberal quarters are not still ongoing. ADL chief and MSNBC mainstay Jonathan Greenblatt announced a “Mamdani monitor” Wednesday that’s basically a Canary Mission for just the Mamdani administration (and no other mayor, congressperson, or elected, much less the current White House, which is drowning in antisemites). This “monitor,” which will surveil and attempt to dig up dirt on any Mamdani hires, has been widely condemned by everyone from former Human Rights Watch Director Ken Roth to Patrick Gaspard of the Center for American Progress as selective and racially motivated. It’s yet another disciplinary mechanism designed to keep Mamdani in line, albeit more stick than carrot.
ADL chief and MSNBC mainstay Jonathan Greenblatt announced a “Mamdani monitor” Wednesday that’s basically a Canary Mission for just the Mamdani administration (and no other mayor, congressperson, or elected, much less the current White House, which is drowning in antisemites).
Politico, a reliable conduit of elite opinion, painted a picture of a “divided” city and a “narrow victory” that would force Mamdani to moderate his policies and message. Reporter Joe Anuta leans heavily into editorializing, writing that Mamdani’s “victory over moderate Democrat Andrew Cuomo was fueled by record turnout and deep enthusiasm among progressives. But it also exposed raw divides over religion, ideology and identity that will define his first days in office.” It’s unclear what elections don’t expose similar divisions but one is meant to takeaway the vague impression that it’s incumbent upon Mamdani to win over the people who loathe him, regardless of how valid or invalid their reasons––a requirement, of course, never imposed on moderate politicians when they win elected office. What follows is a series of vague threats from the extremely wealthy and their lobbyists, unsubstantiated claims of antisemitism, and rambling sour grapes.
“As he faces the dual challenge of reassuring his critics and proving that his movement can run the nation’s largest city. The degree of antipathy toward his fledgling administration complicates that dual pursuit. In practical terms, repairing relations with blocs of the city wary of his leadership will require the devotion of significant political capital — energy that could otherwise go toward delivering on his main policy planks.” Translation: moderate on taxing the rich and Israel or we’ll make governing that much more difficult. CNN’s Van Jones, who works with a mentor program funded by pro-Israel donors and used “dead Gaza baby” as punchline on Bill Maher three weeks ago, expressed a simular attitude towards Mamdani after his victory speech Tuesday night, which he apparently believed contained too much DSA red meat:
CNN's Van Jones was not a fan of Zohran Mamdani's angry, far-left, rage-filled victory speech:
"I think he missed an opportunity. I think the Mamdani that we saw in the campaign trail, who was a lot more calm, who was a lot warmer, who was a lot more embracing, was not present… pic.twitter.com/aM2AlcgM1U
“Is he going to be more of a class warrior even in office? I think he missed a chance tonight to open up and bring more people into the tent,” a Very Concerned Jones laments. “I think his tone was sharp. I think he was using the microphone in a way that he was almost yelling. And that’s not the Mamdani that we’ve seen on Tiktok and the great interviews and stuff like that.”
The message here is fairly consistent across high-status pundits, lobbyists-populated articles, and editorials: you won. We can’t stop you from winning (unfortunately humans still get to cast one vote each). But think very carefully about your rhetoric, the targets of your criticism, and what your priorities are. Here are the boundary lines. If you cross them, things will be made more difficult—by the rich, by pro-Israel pressure groups, by other Democrats, by us in the media. Play ball, and you can coast with modest, incremental improvements. Govern as the class warrior, govern as someone who leans into meaningfully redistributive policies, support for Palestine, and genuinely universalist policies like free transportation and childcare, and we will help fuel the very headwinds that we are now ostensibly warning you about.
Empire Files Premiered Jul 12, 2023 A new film by Abby Martin exposing the world’s biggest polluter: the US military. Earth’s Greatest Enemy is a new documentary film investigating the Pentagon’s catastrophic toll on the planet–from carbon emissions, to toxic dumping, to habitat destruction and more, while highlighting the struggles against it. This will be the first ever piece of media that puts every facet of the Pentagon’s pollution together into one indictment. But funds are needed to complete post-production. All donations are tax-deductible via:
Despite Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s much-vaunted ambitions to lead the fight against climate change and the deforestation that has ravaged the Amazon, Lula continues to look to the country’s oil industry to build Brazil’s wealth. He argues that the money generated from oil exports will help finance the country’s accelerating transition to cleaner energy.
And there have been some notable successes: last month, Amazon deforestation hit an 11-year low.
These lofty ambitions will be on full display as Brazil prepares to host the COP30 climate summit in the port city of Belem on the edge of the sprawling Amazon.
But barely three weeks earlier, Brazil’s majority state-owned oil giant Petrobas announced that it had received approval to drill exploratory oil wells at the mouth of the Amazon River. The decision had many environmental activists criticising this apparent paradox at the heart of Lula’s climate policy.
“Brazil’s presidency of COP30 is hypocritical, as it claims to want to raise climate ambitions while granting a new oil exploration license to its national company,” said Fanny Petitbon, France director of the 350.org clean energy NGO.
“It’s completely mind-boggling.”
Brazilian activists were also quick to condemn the decision.
“The approval is an act of sabotage against the COP and undermines the climate leadership claimed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,” the country’s Climate Observatory said in a statement.
What’s on the agenda for COP30?
Un cartel anunciando la próxima Cumbre Climática COP30 de la ONU se encuentra fuera del centro de prensa en Belém, estado de Pará, Brasil, el martes 4 de noviembre de 2025. AP – Eraldo Peres
Black gold
Petrobas has for decades been eyeing this stretch of water in what’s known as the Equatorial Margin, some 500 kilometres from the mouth of the Amazon River. And with good reason – like similar swaths of territory off the coasts of neighbouring Suriname and Guyana, it holds vast reserves of oil. Brazilian authorities estimate that the black gold buried beneath these waters could bring in €46 billion and create more than 350,000 new jobs.
Although the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) has long baulked at the project, it finally gave its approval after what it described as a “rigorous process” with “more than 65 technical consultations”.
Climate action in a fractured world: Is there a will ‘to cooperate in a world full of conflict’?
But the project is far from risk-free, either for the region’s biodiversity or the communities living along the coast. In a technical report published by Brazilian daily Folha de São Paulo, IBAMA found that the drilling could have dire repercussions for the manatees that call the coast home – mammals that are already facing the risk of extinction.
The region is also home to the largest expanse of mangroves in the world – a fragile ecosystem that Brazil Journal said is also threatened by the project. The Equatorial Margin’s coast also harbours three Indigenous lands and six quilombola territories – peopled by the descendants of African slaves – as well as countless fishing villages that would be the first to bear the brunt of any oil spills or other industrial accidents.
Up in smoke
So why was such a project approved under a self-proclaimed climate defender such as Lula?
“This sums up the duality of the Brazilian president, caught between economic and ecological interests,” said Catherine Aubertin, research director at France’s Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations.
Speaking last year at COP29 in Azerbaijan – another major crude oil producer – Lula said he wanted to continue to increase Brazil’s oil exports to 36 percent by 2035.
Global South charting a greener future with climate solutions sparking economic growth
There’s just one problem. According to projections, Brazil’s oil production will begin to decline from 2030 onwards as its current reserves are depleted. It’s a prognosis that has set off something of a panic in the upper ranks of the Brazilian government as well as the halls of Petrobas.
“The Equatorial Margin is the future of Brazil’s energy sovereignty,” Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira wrote in a social media post. “We are ensuring that exploration is carried out with environmental responsibility, in accordance with the highest international standards, generating benefits for the Brazilian people.”
But climate scientists and activists agree that the time for looking for new oil reserves is over. Instead, they say, moving away from fossil fuels – the leading emitters of greenhouse gases – is crucial if humanity is to slow the world’s warming.
According to a Climate Observatory analysis, emissions released by Brazil’s energy sector are likely to rise from 490.6 million tonnes to 558 million tonnes of CO2 by 2050. It’s a far cry from the country’s ambitious promise to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions from 67 percent to 59 percent by the same year.
“It’s a contradiction that the Brazilian president is more or less owning up to,” Aubertin said. “He responds to it by repeating the same argument as other large oil producers: he supports the idea that oil revenue is used to finance the energy transition.”
“Is it contradictory? It is,” Lula conceded in a June 2024 interview with Brazilian radio CBN. “But as long as the energy transition isn’t solving our problem, Brazil needs to make money from this oil.”
Saving the forests
Aubertin stressed that Lula’s track record on climate change is more nuanced than the president’s oil ambitions make it seem.
“Even though Brazil is exporting its oil, it has still reached a very good level in terms of [the sustainability of] its internal energy consumption,” she said. “Eighty-nine percent of its electricity production comes from renewable energy.”
The Brazilian president has also undertaken a range of actions to make good on his climate commitments, Aubertin said. Since 2023, Lula has put in place a national energy transition policy with investment potential of up to €330 billion as well as ratifying a law creating a mandatory carbon market.
But his main victory in the fight to protect the environment has taken place on a different front: the fight against deforestation. Since coming to office, Lula has championed the struggle against illegal logging as one of the most critical goals of his presidency.
He brought back Marina Silva as environment minister, who had already managed to drastically lower the rate of deforestation during Lula’s first two terms (2003-2010). At the same time, the Brazilian president reactivated the Amazon Fund, an international financial mechanism designed to raise money in the fight against deforestation, strengthened regulations and stiffened penalties for illegal logging.
In just two years, the results have been spectacular. Although deforestation affected more than 10,000 square kilometres in 2022, the last year of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro’s term in office, Brazil’s deforestation had been halved by 2023 and continued to fall to close to 4,200 square kilometres in 2024. Outside of the nation’s massive rainforests, deforestation levels also fell in other vulnerable ecosystems such as the Cerrado, the biodiverse savanna south of the Amazon.
“Deforestation is mainly due to infrastructure construction and agricultural expansion, whether legal or illegal,” said Erin Matson, a consultant at Climate Focus and the author of a comprehensive report published in mid-October on the state of the world’s forests.
“Brazil’s excellent results show that simply strengthening controls can quickly and drastically reduce deforestation.”
“In the long term, curbing deforestation will only be possible through profound changes to our economic model, as pressure on forests continues to increase in line with global demand for soy, wood and paper,” she added. “But Brazil provides a very good example of how, when a head of state takes action, results can be achieved.”
A president ‘bound hand and foot’
“Lula acts with the leverage that he has,” Aubertin said. With Brazil’s Congress dominated by conservatives keen on continued investment in petrol and representatives of agribusiness still carrying significant weight in the halls of power, “he is bound hand and foot and has to deal with a lot of pressures – sometimes contradictory ones”.
Perhaps because of this, Brazil’s agribusiness sector, which is responsible for 30.5 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, seems to have remained untouched by any environmental measures that would cut into its profit margins.
The industry managed to avoid the application of the carbon market law thanks to the support of the Parliamentary Agricultural Front, a powerful legislative bloc that often advocates for the agribusiness industry.
As COP30 begins, it remains to be seen just how Brazil’s climate contradictions will be reflected in negotiations. True to form, the Brazilian president seems to have carefully sidestepped the awkward issue of fossil fuels for the moment.
Lula has already made it clear that protecting forests will take pride of place in COP30. He has said he hopes that one of the summit’s major advances will be the adoption of the Tropical Forest Forever Facilities, a new financial mechanism that would compensate countries for preserving their tropical forests – and which advocates say is as a much-needed weapon in the bitter fight against deforestation.
This article has been adapted from the original in French.
By Rachel Swan,Staff Writer Nov 5, 2025 (SFChronicle.com)
Gift Article
San Francisco physician Dr. Nasser Mohamed has sued Waymo over civil rights violations, saying the autonomous vehicle company misidentified him as a terrorist.Courtesy Nasser Mohamed
A San Francisco physician has sued Waymo over civil rights violations, saying the autonomous vehicle company denied him service because his name resembles Muslim and Middle Eastern names on a government sanctions list.
Dr. Nasser Mohamed, a human rights and LGBTQ activist who runs a primary care practice near Japantown, filed a lawsuit Tuesday in San Francisco Superior Court asserting that Waymo’s parent company, Alphabet, had misidentified him as a terrorist.
The error stemmed from an artificial intelligence program that scanned the Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions list compiled by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Mohamed’s attorneys recount in their written court complaint. Mohamed said he learned from employees at Waymo that the company had used AI software to cross-check the list as part of its identity verification process after he registered for an account.
Although Nasser Mohamed’s name is not listed, it bears similarities to “one or more Muslim or Middle Eastern names on the list,” the complaint says.
A Waymo spokesperson pushed back on the allegation, which comes on the heels of another headline-grabbing controversy: Some San Franciscans are calling for a ban on autonomous vehicles, after a Waymo robotaxi ran over a cat in the Mission District.
“Waymo does not discriminate use of our service,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement. “We are committed to providing access to all in the communities we serve. We disagree with the claims made.”
Mohamed first realized something was amiss in early November 2023, when he registered for an account with the robotaxi company, which at that point was offering rides to select users of its WaymoOne app. Upon creating an account, Mohamed said he received a string of error messages that prevented him from booking rides in the self-driving cars.
In January, Mohamed began asking Waymo customer support to explain the service denials. He said that when he asked whether the denial was based on discrimination, the company closed his support ticket.
Eventually Mohamed posted about his experience on social media and drew responses from people within his network who are affiliated with Waymo, said his attorney, Shounak Dharap. They explained the identity verification process and described the mechanics of the AI software, but said they were unable to override it, according to the lawsuit.
“This is a new manifestation of a problem that’s going to arise the more we rely on these AI systems,” Dharap said, noting that similar instances of “algorithmic discrimination” have stymied people seeking employment, insurance or public services.
Dharap emphasized that his client did not file the suit for financial gain. Primarily, Mohamed is seeking public injunctive relief “so that this doesn’t happen to anybody else.”
Rachel Swan is a transportation reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. She joined the paper in 2015 after stints at several alt weekly newspapers. Born in Berkeley, she graduated from Cal with a degree in rhetoric and is now raising two daughters in El Cerrito.
Your one-click response helps capture the impact of our campaign so we can turn the pressure on Spotify up even further! If you have any questions about how or why we’re holding Spotify accountable, please check out our previous message below.
— Indivisible Team
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Spotify is running ads recruiting agents for ICE.
Let that sink in. A platform built to connect creators and listeners is helping an authoritarian regime build up its secret police force. They’re choosing complicity over the artists, podcasters, and fans who make Spotify what it is — and when users and musicians called them out, Spotify’s first act was doubling down.
But we’re not going to idly accept that. We’re going to make them listen.
When ABC/Disney capitulated to the Trump regime by silencing Jimmy Kimmel this year, millions of paying customers spoke up by canceling their Disney+ subscriptions and putting off their Disney vacations. It worked.
The same people-power that made ABC/Disney reverse course can work on Spotify. Spotify needs its listeners and subscribers far more than it relies on advertisers. If enough of us cancel our subscriptions, it’ll send a clear message that’s too loud for Spotify to ignore.
To catch Spotify leaders’ attention and compel them to stop capitulating, we need to move fast and in unison, so we’re asking anyone who can to cancel your Spotify Premium subscription today.
Read on for more tools and info, including ways to join this fight even if you aren’t a Spotify user!
If you’re not a Spotify Premium subscriber, there’s still a meaningful place for you in this campaign! Chances are high that you know someone — a child, grandchild, friend, or social follower — who uses Spotify Premium, and pushing your favorite artists and podcasters to speak out with us is also really helpful.
Here’s how you can make a difference if you don’t subscribe to Spotify:
Urge artists, podcasters, and labels to publicly denounce these ads and pressure Spotify leadership. If you know anyone who creates music or content for Spotify, please reach out to them directly. If you don’t, use social media to publicly call on your favorite artists to join the fight.
Attend a peaceful protest outside Spotify offices*. We’ll share information on peaceful and nonviolent protests as they are planned, and we encourage you to organize a peaceful protest of your own if Spotify has a presence in your community.
Profit-driven media giants and their billionaire owners seem to think that going along with the authoritarian Trump regime is the easy thing. They’re following the profits and painting it as neutrality.
But in the face of an unjust regime, neutrality is complicity.
*All events should be hosted on public property or in public spaces, such as streets, sidewalks, or parks. Please follow all state and local guidelines.
Palestinians carry bodies of people they recovered from the rubble of a house destroyed in an Israeli airstrike, on October 29, 2025 in Gaza City, Palestine.
(Photo by Omar al-Qattaa/AFP via Getty Images)
“We call on the world to send international teams to recover the bodies of the missing,” said the member of one civil society group. “We call on the world to provide the necessary equipment to recover the bodies.”
A civil society group in Gaza on Thursday appealed for international assistance to help recover the bodies of more than 10,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces who remain buried beneath the rubble of the flattened strip.
Referring toGaza as “the world’s largest mass grave,” Aladdin Al-Aklouk, a spokesperson for the National Committee for Missing Persons in the Genocide Against Gaza, said that “these martyrs were buried under the rubble of their homes, which have turned into mass graves, without their final dignity being preserved or their bodies being retrieved.”
“We express our shock and strong condemnation of the absence of an effective role by international organizations and humanitarian bodies, especially those concerned with the issue of missing persons, in light of the ongoing escalating humanitarian disaster,” Al-Aklouk continued.
“The remnants are ticking time bombs and pose a danger to the population in the Gaza Strip. We need specialists alongside the teams working in the sector,” he added. “We call on the world to send international teams to recover the bodies of the missing. We call on the world to provide the necessary equipment to recover the bodies.”
“The remnants are ticking time bombs and pose a danger to the population in the Gaza Strip.”
According to the Gaza Health Ministry—whose casualty figures have been deemed accurate by Israeli military officials and a likely undercount by multiple peer-reviewed studies—at least 68,875 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7, 2023. Although a US-brokered ceasefire technically remains in effect, Gaza officials have documented over 200 Israeli violations in which more than 240 Palestinians have been killed and over 600 others injured.
Palestinians are struggling to dig through more than 60 million tons of debris after over 80% of all structures in Gaza were destroyed or damaged by two years of Israeli bombardment. That’s more than 200,000 buildings and other structures.
United Nations experts estimate it will take seven years for 100 trucks to remove all debris across Gaza, where more than three-quarters of roads are damaged and unexploded ordnance and Israeli booby traps beneath the debris continue to pose deadly threats to recovery workers and survivors in general.
Israel’s destruction and denial of the heavy equipment needed for such a monumental recovery operation has left Palestinians reliant upon rudimentary tools such as shovels, pickaxes, wheelbarrows, rakes, hoes, and even their bare hands. They dig amid the stench of death and decomposition that lingers in the air.
The Abu Naser family lost more than 130 members in an October 29, 2024 strike on their five-story home in Beit Lahia, where over 200 people were sheltering when it was bombed. Mohammed Nabil Abu Naser, who survived the bombing, immediately started digging through the rubble, first in search of survivors and later, for bodies.
“It was all bodies and body parts,” he explained. More than a year later, many of the victims have yet to be recovered.
“About 50 of them are still under the rubble to this day, a full year later,” Abu Naser toldThe Guardian on Monday.
Often, Gazans survived initial bombings only to die slowly trapped beneath rubble. Two American volunteer surgeons, Drs. Mark Perlmutter and Feroze Sidhwa, last year described how wounded survivors suffered “unimaginably cruel deaths from dehydration and sepsis while trapped alone in a pitch-black tomb that alternates as an oven during the day and a freezer at night.”
“One shudders to think how many children have died this way in Gaza,” they added.
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US Senators voted down a proposed war powers resolution blocking the Trump administration from waging war on Venezuela, on November 6, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo: US Senate screen grab)
“Shame on the Republicans who continue to shirk their duty and deny their constituents a voice,” said one retired US Army general.
US senators voted 51-49 against the measure introduced last month by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). Two Republicans—Paul and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—joined Democrats and Independents in voting for the resolution.
“It’s sad that only two Republicans voted in favor,” Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the peace group CodePink, said on X following the vote. “So much for ‘America First’ and for upholding their constitutional authority by stopping the executive branch from taking illegal military actions.”
Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, a senior adviser to the group VoteVets, said in a statement that President Donald Trump “is waging a war that he unilaterally declared and refuses to get approved by the American people via their representation in Congress.”
“It isn’t just criminal and unconstitutional, it betrays those who did fight on battlefields and spilled blood to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,” Eaton added. “Shame on the Republicans who continue to shirk their duty and deny their constituents a voice.”
VoteVets’ MG Paul Eaton (Ret) blasts GOP Senators for rejecting Senator Tim Kaine’s War Powers Resolution. He says Trump is waging a “criminal and unconstitutional” war and betraying the principle that Americans shouldn’t die without having a say in the matter, through their elected representatives.
The War Powers Resolution was passed over then-President Richard Nixon’s veto in 1973 to affirm and empower Congress to check the president’s war-making authority. The law requires the president to report any military action to Congress within 48 hours and requires congressional approval of troop deployments exceeding 60 days.
It’s been 63 days since the first-known Trump-ordered the first strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. At least 67 people have been killed in 16 such reported strikes since September 2, according to the Trump administration, which argues that it does not need congressional approval for the attacks.
Speaking on the Senate floor ahead of Thursday’s vote, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said:
As we speak, America’s largest aircraft carrier, the Gerald Ford, is on its way to the Caribbean. It is part of the largest military buildup in our hemisphere that we’ve seen in decades. According to press reports, Donald Trump is considering military action on Venezuelan territory. But it also sounds like nobody really knows what the plan is, because like so many other things with Donald Trump, he keeps changing his mind. Who knows what he will do tomorrow?
Trump has also approved covert CIA action in Venezuela and has threatened to attack targets inside the oil-rich country. The government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro recently claimed that his country’s security forces had captured a group of CIA-aligned mercenaries engaged in a “false-flag attack” against the nation.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said after Thursday’s vote: “Today, I was proud to once again cast my vote for Senator Kaine’s war powers resolution. President Trump is acting against the Constitution by moving toward imminent attacks against Venezuela without congressional authorization. In doing so, he is risking endless military conflict with Venezuela and steamrolling over the right of every American to have a say in the use of US military force.”
“Asserting Congress’s constitutional role in war is not some procedural detail; it is fundamental. Our government is based on checks and balances, and Congress’s authority to declare war is a core principle of what makes America a democracy,” Markey added. “Going to war without consulting the people is what monarchies and dictatorships do. Strong democracies must be willing to debate these issues in the light of day.”
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Trump Regime Takedown: Every Saturday Saturday, March 7, 2026 12:00 PM 2:00 PM Tesla San Francisco999 Van Ness AvenueSan Francisco, CA, 94109United States (map) Google Calendar ICS Keep democracy alive every Saturday by showing up, taking a stand, and sticking together for the long haul. Standing together is better than standing alone. Let’s get together... Continue reading →
This Sunday’s Town Hall: Announcing This Week’s Progressive Town Hall: Every Sunday at 4pm ET/1pm PT RSVP HERE Join PDA activists online from across the country to discuss the importance of progressives reclaiming the American story from the MAGA right, an issue of heightened importance as we’re now within one... Continue reading →
