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[Nick Mark MD @nickmmark]

The moral calculus here is simple.

For decades there was bipartisan congressional agreement to fund lifesaving programs. 80% of Americans agree with providing food and medical supplies to the worlds poorest people.

Elon was neither elected nor confirmed. He illegally and gleefully destroyed USAID, which did not save any money - in many cases he just disrupted distribution of supplies already purchased - but he did kill many children.

The closest analogy would be burning down a food bank causing people to die of starvation. It was an illegal act that was wasteful and caused harm. You can’t defend it by saying “what obligation do we have to fund food banks?”

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

Remember the stretch of Santa Barbara coastline that was poisoned in 1969, killing hundreds of thousands of seabirds?

The agency born from that disaster - the California Coastal Commission - has guarded 1,100 miles of California shoreline for 50 years.

Under federal law, it has the legal right to review and block federal projects along the coast. Offshore drilling. Pipelines. All of it.

Howard Lutnick just called that "environmental extremism."

The Trump administration has now ordered NOAA — the federal ocean agency - to conduct a formal performance review of the Commission. That review can end in decertification.

Here's what decertification means: California loses its legal authority to weigh in on federal coastal projects. The state no longer gets a say.

Federal agencies can approve offshore drilling, pipelines, and industrial projects along the California coast - without California's input, without California's approval.

The coast that burned in 1969 would have no guardian.

And it’s not hypothetical. Sable Offshore - a Houston oil company - is already drilling in the Santa Barbara Channel right now. Trump invoked the Defense Production Act earlier this year to force their pipelines back online over California’s objections.

The state tried to stop it. A court battle is ongoing. The Coastal Commission is one of the last legal tools California has left to fight back. That’s exactly why it’s being targeted.

Since when is preventing another oil disaster considered "environmental extremism"?

#DemsUnited

[GO GREEN @ECOWARRIORSS]

Trump
Plan to limit scrutiny of polluters and shift financial risks to taxpayers is attack on democracy, advocates say
Trump giving polluters a free pass and making ordinary people pay for the clean up
https://t.co/yXzlecgZ5Z

[Vatnik Soup @P_Kallioniemi]

Elon is now trying to shift the blame for dismantling USAID, America's greatest soft-power tool, by endorsing claims that he was "just an adviser."

Yet when USAID was being dismantled, Musk proudly declared: "We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper." The man even posed with a chainsaw on stage afterward.

A new Lancet study estimates that USAID programs prevented nearly 92 million deaths between 2001 and 2021, including more than 30 million children under five.

If the 2025 cuts continue, researchers project more than 14 million additional preventable deaths by 2030, including 4.5 million children. That's a death toll on the scale of the First World War, driven by cuts to humanitarian aid rather than a global war.

These broligarchs are completely detached from reality. They have zero accountability, and seem unable to grasp that their decisions have real-world consequences measured in millions of lives.

[GO GREEN @ECOWARRIORSS]

Utah approves datacenter twice size of Manhattan
Vast AI datacentres are popping up all over the place, obliterating habitat for birds and wildlife and stealing vast amounts of water from people and wildlife
A source of huge emissions and noise pollution
https://t.co/efOcbj2UuR

[Amy Siskind @Amy_Siskind]

The kleptocracy never stops. Does any Republican care?

Trump bought as much as $5 million in shares of Axon Enterprise — maker of Tasers, body cameras and policing software — two weeks before ICE sought a five-year, $220 million contract. https://t.co/Xwkc3Z0Nnz

[Curiosity @CuriosityonX]

🚨: U.S. scientists fired by Trump launched a new website to make the government's climate data freely accessible

[Mohamad Safa @mhdksafa]

France has reported around 1,000 deaths due to the heatwave.

Spain has reported 327 heat-related deaths.

Italy has reported 5, and Germany has reported 7.

This is no longer just a climate crisis. This is a humanitarian crisis.

[Citizens for Ethics @CREWcrew]

Eviction notices have been sent to farmers in northern Vietnam to make way for a $1.5 billion Trump Organization-branded luxury golf resort project.

Trump never divested from the Trump Org, so this project is one of his countless conflicts of interest. https://t.co/FdpTBl2yMc

[Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome]

New research from @nytimes finds that the US government is actively doing "critical minerals" deals with FOURTEEN different companies that have financial ties to the Trump and/or Lutnick families - deals worth around $9 billion in all:

[Brian Tyler Cohen @briantylercohen]

Trump has allowed China to lap us on energy, all so he can take in donations from dying fossil fuel companies. Trump First, America Last.

[Uzi @UziCryptoo]

The biggest welfare recipient in America is the richest family in America, the Walton family, who inherited Walmart, never have to work a day in their lives & are worth $354 billion by paying wages so low that many Walmart workers rely on food stamps, Medicaid & public housing.

[Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600]

Trees. Trees. Trees. They matter. Plant them. Protect them.

[Ariana Jasmine @arianajasmine__]

Florida tried to create "Alligator Alcatraz."

The Miccosukee Tribe stood up and sued. As a result, Alligator Alcatraz was officially shut down today.

We need to thank the Miccosukee Nation for their courage and attention to this fight; this victory wouldn't have happened without their commitment to protecting our environment.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

Bhutan did something almost no country on Earth has done: they put trees in the constitution.

Not a vague "we care about nature" type promise but an actual number. At least 60% of the country must remain under forest cover for all time.

They met the goal and blew past it.

About 70% of Bhutan is forested, which is one reason this small Himalayan country is one of the few carbon-negative nations on Earth. It absorbs more carbon than it emits.

That doesn't mean Bhutan has no emissions. It does. But its forests and land absorb more than the country puts out.

Which is kind of wild when you think about it, because most countries treat forests like a resource to be used and abused as needed.

Bhutan treated them more like national infrastructure. They looked at their forests and decided they weren't just leftover land waiting to be used for something.

[Daniel Swain @Weather_West]

Well, not a great day for NOAA's new Wildfire Fire Data Portal to be non-functional given the historically high "extremely critical" risk across portions of the interior West! Hopefully this comes back online soon. https://t.co/IE1Us0hANw

[Senator Jeff Merkley @SenJeffMerkley]

Bad: The Trump Admin is leaving taxpayers on the hook for capping abandoned wells—hugely expensive and hugely damaging to our health.

Worse: the Trump Admin is eliminating efforts to reduce pollution from methane—a super polluter that over 20-years traps 80x as much heat, ounce per ounce, as carbon dioxide.
https://t.co/JzPXzo6RbN

[Mother Jones @MotherJones]

Scientists are wary of glyphosate. MAHA loathes it. And our yearlong investigation shows California is spraying it everywhere.
https://t.co/QVRWIQDQL2

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

OpenAI and Microsoft are being sued by the owners of 400 local newspapers nationwide for mass copyright infringement.

The publishers claim the two tech companies illegally scraped their content to train their AI models — jeopardizing local journalism in the US.

[Fifty Shades of Whey @davenewworld_2]

Live Nation disclosed in a court filing that Trump spoke with their CEO Michael Rapino shortly before the DOJ abruptly reached a surprise settlement in their antitrust case against Live Nation and Ticketmaster. This was a settlement that avoided breaking up the company.

Most states refused to join the federal settlement, and argued that it didn't go far enough. A jury later concluded that the company was a monopoly that cost concertgoers and sports fans in 22 states.

So basically, a greedy monopolist that screws us over anytime we want tickets to a concert/game was talking privately with Trump, and then they suddenly got a slap on the wrist from the DOJ.