This article first appeared on Truthout and was produced in partnership with Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Fossil fuel stakeholders have been seeking new revenue in the petrochemical industry in general, and plastics in particular.

By Tina Casey

As the private transportation sector shifts focus to batteries, biofuels, and green hydrogen, fossil fuel stakeholders have been seeking new avenues of revenue in the petrochemical industry in general, and in plastics in particular. That’s bad news for a world already swimming—literally—in plastic pollution. Product manufacturers and other upstream forces could reverse the petrochemical trend, but only if they—along with policymakers, voters, and consumers—continue to push for real change beyond the business-as-usual strategy of only advocating for post-consumer recycling.

Plastic, Plastic Everywhere

Some signs of change are beginning to emerge. Public awareness is growing over the plastic pollution crisis, including the area of microplastics. A study commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund in 2020 found 86 percent of consumers in the United States were willing to support measures to cut down on plastic pollution, such as single-use plastic bag bans and increased recycling. Private sector efforts to reduce plastic packaging are also beginning to take effect.

However, these trends won’t necessarily lead to a global slowdown in plastic production or use, let alone a reversal. The United States, for example, is both a leading producer of plastic and the largest source of plastic waste in the world. The OECD estimates that, under a “business-as-usual” scenario, plastic waste will triple globally by 2060. Petrochemical producers are also eyeing growing markets in Asia and Africa.

Even if some nations kick the plastic habit, the global benefit of their efforts could easily be offset by rising demand for plastics elsewhere in the world. In a 2016 report titled, “The New Plastics Economy,” the World Economic Forum (WEF) noted that global plastic production totaled 311 million metric tons in 2014, up from just 15 million metric tons in 1964. The WEF also anticipated that the total plastic production would double to more than 600 million metric tons by 2036.

One key driver that is fueling plastic production is the increased availability of low-cost natural gas in the U.S., which was a result of the George W. Bush administration’s successful efforts to lift Clean Water Act protections on shale gas operations, resulting in “billions of gallons of toxic frack fluid from being regulated as industrial waste,” according to Greenpeace USA. By 2018, the shale gas boom of the early 2000s was credited with stimulating a decade-long petrochemical buildout in the U.S. totaling 333 chemical industry projects since 2010, with a cumulative value of $202.4 billion. Of interest from a global perspective, almost 70 percent of the financing was from direct or indirect foreign sources.

Another driving force on the supply side is the shift from crude oil (petrol) to oil for plastic production, a trend fostered in part by a glut of ethane produced by the fracking boom. The decarbonization of the transportation sector does not necessarily slow down crude oil production to refineries. “As traditional demands for oil—vehicle fuels—are declining as the transport sector is increasingly electrified, the oil industry is seeing plastics as a key output that can make up for losses in other markets,” noted a November 2021 article in the Conversation. Consequently, refiners are becoming more dependent on the petrochemical market.

Steppingstone to Change: Recycling

The impacts of plastic production and waste are already manifold, from the local destruction and greenhouse gas emissions caused by oil and gas drilling and refinery operations to the ever-increasing load of plastic waste in the environment including microparticles in the air, water, soil, food supply, and ultimately in the human body.

Plastic is also a major threat to wildlife, and in particular, marine species, as so much plastic waste ends up in the world’s oceans. Unless we take concrete steps and “change how we produce, use and dispose of plastic, the amount of plastic waste entering aquatic ecosystems could nearly triple from 9-14 million… [metric tons] per year in 2016 to a projected 23-37 million… [metric tons] per year by 2040,” according to the United Nations Environment Program.

Fossil energy stakeholders have long touted a downstream solution to reduce plastic pollution—namely, recycling. The generations-long failure of this strategy is all too obvious: As the United Nations Environment Program points out, “Of the seven billion tonnes of plastic waste generated globally so far [since the 1950s], less than 10 per cent has been recycled.” Despite recent advances in recycling technology, the amount of recycled plastic in the production stream mostly remains pitifully low across the world. Nations with lax environmental regulations—mainly poor countries—have become destinations for mountains of mismanaged plastic waste, in addition to bearing the weight of pollution related to plastic processing.

Recycling is still important, but the resolution of the plastic crisis requires swift and practical action several steps upstream, at the seats of source and demand.

Seeds of Change

Absent the political will to turn off the plastic spigot at the source, the task is left to supply chain stakeholders and individual consumers.

That is a monumental task, but not an insurmountable one. The rapid evolution of the renewable energy industry illustrates how the global economy can pivot into new models when bottom-line benefits are at play, along with policy goals and support from voters, consumers, and industry stakeholders.

In terms of reducing upstream consumption of petrochemicals, consumer sentiment can influence supply chain decisions, as demonstrated by three emerging trends that can drive the market for more sustainable products and packaging.

One trend is the growing level of public awareness of the ocean plastic crisis. Images of plastic-entangled turtles and other sea creatures can spark an emotional charge that gets more attention from consumers than street litter and landfills. The tourism, hospitality, and fishing industries are also among other stakeholders that have a direct interest in driving public awareness of ocean plastic.

In a related development, the public awareness factor has rippled into the activist investor movement, which is beginning to focus attention on the financial chain behind the petrochemical industry. In 2020 the organization Portfolio.earth, for example, launched a campaign on the role of banks in financing petrochemical operations.

The second trend that is gaining momentum is related to new recycling technology that enables manufacturers to replace virgin plastics with waste harvested from the ocean. However, this circular economy model must be implemented from cradle to grave and back again in order to prevent waste from ending up in the ocean, regardless of its content.

In a similar problem-solving vein, new technology for recycling carbon gas can provide manufacturers with new opportunities to build customer loyalty through climate action. The company LanzaTech provides a good example of growth in the area of recycling carbon. The company’s proprietary microbes are engineered to digest industrial waste gases or biogas. The process yields chemical building blocks for plastics as well as fuels. Other firms in this area are also harvesting ambient carbon from the air to produce plastics and synthetic fabrics, among other materials.

A third trend is the emergence of new technology that enables manufacturers to incorporate more recycled plastic into their supply chains overall. In the past, bottles and other products made from recycled plastics failed to meet durability expectations. Now manufacturers are beginning to choose from a new generation of recycled plastics that perform as well as, or better than, their virgin counterparts.

The problem is that all of these trends are only just starting to emerge as significant forces for change. In the meantime, fossil energy stakeholders have no meaningful incentive to pivot toward supporting a transition out of petrochemicals, let alone a rapid one.

In fact, for some legacy stakeholders, the renewable energy field appears to be an exercise in greenwashing. Shell is one example of an energy company that touts its wind and solar interests while expanding its petrochemical activities. An even more egregious example is ExxonMobil, which continues to publicize its long-running pursuit of algae biofuel, an area that is still years away from commercial development.

Until policymakers, voters, and consumers exercise their muscle to reduce plastic pollution at the source, the petrochemical industry will continue feeding the global plastic dependence regardless of the consequences for public health and planetary well-being.

This article first appeared on Truthout and was produced in partnership with Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Tina Casey has been writing about sustainability, the global energy transition, and related matters since 2009. She is a regular contributor to CleanTechnica and TriplePundit, where she also focuses on corporate social responsibility and social issues.

Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture, and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters, and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

The following is an excerpt of an article that was originally published on Asia Times.
Click here to read the full article.

As Pakistan drowns, as Puerto Rico is cast into darkness, and as Jacksonians remain thirsty, it’s past time for a climate tax on fossil fuel companies.

By Sonali Kolhatkar

What do Pakistan, Puerto Rico, and Jackson, Mississippi, have in common? They’ve all recently experienced climate-related catastrophic rains and flooding, resulting in the loss of homes, electricity, and running water. But, even more importantly, they are all low-income regions inhabited by people of color—the prime victims of climate injustice. They face inaction from negligent governments and struggle to survive as fossil fuel companies reap massive profits—a status quo that United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has called a “moral and economic madness.”

Pakistan, which relies on yearly monsoons to enrich its agricultural industry, has had unprecedented floods since June, impacting 30 million people and killing more than 1,500—a third of them children.

Zulfiqar Kunbhar, a Karachi-based journalist with expertise in climate coverage, explains that “things are very critical” in the rain-affected areas of his nation. Kunbhar has been visiting impacted regions and has seen firsthand the massive “agricultural loss and livelihood loss” among Pakistan’s farming communities.

Sindh, a low-lying province of Pakistan, is not only one of the most populous in the nation (Sindh is home to about 47 million people), but it also produces about a third of the agricultural produce, according to Kunbhar. Twenty years ago, Sindh was stricken with extreme drought. In the summer of 2022, it was drowning in chest-deep water.

The UN is warning that the water could take months to recede and that this poses serious health risks, as deadly diseases like cerebral malaria are emerging. Kunbhar summarizes that provinces like Sindh are facing both “the curse of nature” and government “mismanagement.”

Climate change plus government inaction on mitigation and resilience equals deadly consequences for the poor. This same equation plagues Puerto Rico, long relegated to the status of a United States territory. In September 2022, on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico in 2017 and killed nearly 3,000 people, another storm named Fiona knocked out power for the entire region.

Read more at Asia Times.

Sonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her forthcoming book is Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and the racial justice and civil liberties editor at Yes! Magazine. She serves as the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Women’s Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan. She also sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization.

It would be hard to dream up a more epitomized election matchup of our era—one of the great fiends to emerge from the Trump world election denier movement is running for secretary of state in Arizona, the officeholder who largely oversees the state election process, against one of the most effective and brave citizens who played a key role in protecting the integrity of our voting systems.

Voting Booth’s Steven Rosenfeld, who was the lead reporter to cover Adrian Fontes’ victory over the “cyber ninjas” in the 2020 elections aftermath, recently interviewed Fontes on his new election run as a Democrat against Republican nominee and Trump insurrectionist Mark Finchem, which could very well define Arizona’s electoral landscape for many state and federal elections to come.

Fontes tells Rosenfeld, “Winning back the confidence of the American people in our elections is not going to be easy, but nothing worthwhile is ever easy. It is critically important that we reach out to every corner of our political society during the course of this campaign and after. We’re going to have to be very cognizant of the ideas that have been put out there, whether they’re correct or incorrect. And we’re going to attack the lies with the truth and trust.”

Read more of Rosenfeld’s interview here—it’s just one of the important pieces of reporting and expertise produced in the past month by IMI’s amazing and talented writers.

Check out the rest below—I am always impressed by their work:

Steven Rosenfeld’s reporting on the January 6 House select committee hearings provides a glaring summary of former President Donald Trump’s deep ties to far-right militia leaders. Evidence showed Trump egging on his most belligerent loyalists at every turn, writes Rosenfeld, and “it was Trump who had been lying about the 2020 election and intentionally urging his followers—in state and federal government posts, and in the street—to disrupt a peaceful transfer of power to a new presidential administration.”

The remarks by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) outlined in “How the January 6 Committee Completed a Damning Indictment of Trump” capped a series of eight hearings insisting that Trump and his enablers be held accountable in court, ensuring that federal legislative reforms be adopted so a presidential coup never happens again. And while the select committee does not have the authority to prosecute Trump and his co-conspirators, the committee can make a powerful public case and create a template for criminal prosecutions.

The public has been paying a lot of attention to the hearings, according to Celinda Lake, a top Democratic pollster of Lake Research Partners, who explains how this could push independent voters away from the GOP: “Seventy percent of Americans agree with the statement, ‘I would not vote for anyone who’s supported or encouraged the attack on our country on January 6.’ That includes 97 percent of Democrats, 73 percent of independents, and 39 percent of Republicans.”

Trump’s corruption has infected many of the government bodies designed to protect the health and well-being of all Americans, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), writes criminologist Gregg Barak in an excerpt from his book Criminology on Trump (Routledge, 2022) produced for the web by Earth | Food | Life. Trump’s first EPA administrator Scott Pruitt was one of his most controversial appointments to a Cabinet-level position, embodying the White House’s broad support for the fossil fuel industry and disdain for climate science. Andrew Wheeler became the next administrator, ordering the EPA in June 2019 to terminate its funding to 13 health centers around the country that were studying the effects of pollution on the growth and development of children and other living things. And now with the Supreme Court ruling against the EPA on June 30—a 6-3 vote, with all three of Trump’s appointees voting with the conservative bloc—it is questionable that the Trumpian damage to the environment can be repaired.

If you’re feeling defeated by the Supreme Court’s EPA ruling, there’s still a lot we can do, writes EFL’s Reynard Loki. The U.S. is the world’s second-biggest consumer of energy and plays a central role in the global shift to a low-carbon—and ultimately, zero-carbon—economy. If solar and wind energy are fully integrated into the global energy mix, renewable sources could provide up to 80 percent of the world’s electricity. Even in the wake of the Trump administration’s environmental harm, the U.S. government is not without levers to transition to sustainable energy: President Biden can declare a climate emergency under the National Emergencies Act to curb fossil fuel exports. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill could enact far-reaching clean energy legislation—and could even amend Section 111 of the Clean Air Act to give the EPA explicit authority to move power plants toward renewables in order to meet federally mandated emission reductions. And like pro-choice supporters disappointed by the court’s recent overturning of Roe v. Wade, those who are concerned about the court’s EPA ruling could use this moment as a rallying cry to step up climate action.

By November 15, 2022, the human population will reach a new milestone: 8 billion people, according to the United Nations, a staggering figure that should alarm even the casual observer of the various environmental and health crises stemming from overpopulation. And yet the UN has advanced a false narrative, writes Carter Dillard, policy adviser for the Fair Start Movement. While the UN applauds lower mortality rates, we need to start getting real about population, Dillard emphasizes. The UN itself projects widespread famine and notes that inequality is growing for “more than 70 percent of the global population.” The people least responsible for the climate crisis—the poor and the vulnerable—are set to suffer the most, and yet many leaders in the rich world are pushing for policies that will exacerbate the crisis, with abortion bans on the rise across the United States, and some wealthy nations even offering their citizens financial incentives to have more babies. And as the difficult conversation about population is swept aside, the ecological and social resources necessary to support each human life cannot catch up.

The U.S. has no shortage of catastrophic emergencies, from climate change to gun violence, adding to its tally of preventable deaths—and yet the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade will add to it the casualties that will result from botched abortions, as Economy for All chief correspondent Sonali Kolhatkar observes in “The Selfish Politics of Anti-Abortionists.” Underlying the battle to ensure that anyone with a uterus will be forced to take a pregnancy to term is a general attitude shared with many other right-wing attacks: that the denial of rights will only affect someone else. One abortion provider told the Daily Beast, “All of us who do abortions see patients quite regularly who tell us, ‘I’m not pro-choice, but I just can’t continue this pregnancy.’” Those claiming to be against abortion often rely on being able to access the procedure when they need it—a common conservative approach to social needs.

In the meantime, the SCOTUS ruling in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency has lit our planet on fire, writes Economy for All fellow Thom Hartmann. The U.S. (with 4 percent of the world’s population) has produced more greenhouse gases than any other nation and continues to be one of the planet’s major emitters. Blowing up the EPA’s CO2 rules will guarantee the future profits of the fossil fuel industry and also speed up the destruction of our atmosphere and the life on Earth it supports. Justice Kagan, in her dissent, pointed out that the Republicans on the court have weakened the power to respond to “the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.” They’re saying, essentially, that the EPA (and any other regulatory agency) can’t be allowed to do its work: instead, that detailed and time-consuming analysis of a problem, developing specific solutions, and writing specific rules have to be done by Congress itself.

With all the controversial decisions handed down by the Supreme Court this term, the June 30 agreement to hear a case called Moore v. Harper could be among the most dangerous. In “America Is Occupied By a Dangerous Second Amendment Scam,” Hartmann writes that this decision underpins a major legal strategy in Trump’s attempted coup: the argument that state legislatures can substitute their own judgment of who should be president in place of the person chosen by a majority of voters. While the Constitution grants state legislatures the authority over when, where, and how elections are held, it does not give state legislatures total power over our democracy. For the last century, the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected the independent state legislature theory, which would make it easier for state legislatures to pull all sorts of additional election chicanery without oversight from state courts: more voter suppression laws, gerrymandered maps, and laws eliminating the power of election commissions and secretaries of state to protect elections. Hartmann suggests that the way to fight back is for Congress to expand the Supreme Court and thus add balance to a branch of government hijacked by radicalized Republicans; impose term limits on Supreme Court justices and have them rotate with judges on the U.S. courts of appeals; and restore federal voting rights protections and expand access to the ballot box.

The IMI team is hard at work producing these and many other important stories. Please join us—media is often the starting point for the changes in the world we know are overdue, and we all want to see.

And in case you missed it, here is more of our most recent work:

The Truth About Markets, Pillar of Capitalist Ideology

Richard D. Wolff – August 10, 2022 – Economy for All

Pacific Islanders’ Food-Sharing Customs Ensure Resiliency in Face of Disaster

Stacy Jupiter, Teri Tuxson, Caroline Ferguson and Sangeeta Mangubhai – August 9, 2022 – Earth | Food | Life

How Alex Jones Helped Enrich the Global Elites He Railed Against

Sonali Kolhatkar – August 6, 2022 – Economy for All

Can We Stop the GOP From Killing Medicare, Social Security—and Us?

Thom Hartmann – August 6, 2022 – Economy for All

Trump Republicans Are a Greater Threat to Democracy Than Trump Himself

Steven Rosenfeld – August 2, 2022 – Voting Booth

As the War in Ukraine Devastates the Nation’s Ecosystems, the World Reaches Record-High Military Spending

Erika Schelby – August 2, 2022 – Earth | Food | Life

Could Voter Guides Help Break Through the Partisan Noise in the Midterm Elections?

Steven Rosenfeld – July 31, 2022 – Voting Booth

Can Global Food Shortages Be Prevented?

Thom Hartmann – July 31, 2022 – Economy for All

To Reduce Inflation, Control Corporate Profits

Sonali Kolhatkar – July 29, 2022 – Economy for All

Thanks from Jan Ritch-Frel and the rest of the IMI team.

The following is an excerpt of an article that was originally published on ZNet.

Click here to read the full article.

Using ballot measures and careful, nonpartisan messaging that appeals to fairness, progressives can achieve victories on economic justice and expanded health care access.

By Sonali Kolhatkar

Progressive activists and organizers are eyeing lessons from the resounding victory for abortion access in Kansas where nearly 60 percent of voters recently defeated a ban on the politicized medical procedure. Now, the Fairness Project hopes that state-by-state ballot measures can restore the reproductive right to an abortion that the Supreme Court stripped away earlier this year. Such measures can also achieve economic justice victories like increasing the minimum wage and expanding access to paid sick and family leave.

At a time when the GOP has political control of a majority of state legislatures and has imposed its preference for strict control of uteruses and lax control of firearms, low wages for the poor and low taxes for the rich, the ballot measure process may be a powerful direct-democracy solution.

Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, says that “Kansas is a classic example of the large distance between where the voters and the electorate are, and increasingly where their more extremist legislators are.” It was conservative legislators who placed the abortion ban on the ballot in Kansas—not anti-abortion activists—thinking they could solidify in their state the federal anti-abortion victory won at the Supreme Court in the Dobbs decision. Kansas voters proved them wrong.

“What happened in Kansas could be mirror-replicated in states around the country,” says Hall. Indeed, reproductive justice activists in Michigan are hoping to repeat the success of the Kansas vote. They have gone on the offensive and put a ballot measure to voters in order to enshrine abortion access in their state before a trigger law banning abortion can take effect. Advocates of the measure are counting on voters’ common sense prevailing over legislators’ political theater.

Read more at ZNet.

Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute.

Trump’s appointments reveal the frightening far-reaching power of a corrupt president.

By Gregg Barak

Grasping the enormity, the breadth, and the depth of “Trump corruption” is rather astonishing. Most news junkies and politicos alike are quite familiar with the in-your-face looting, skimming, and self-dealing of the president and his family members. Beyond the family corruption, there is a much larger world of Trump corruption. A “sliminess perpetrated by literally thousands of presidential appointees from Cabinet officials to obscure functionaries,” as reporter Jim Lardner put it in his article for the American Prospect. It is certainly difficult to tabulate all the knaves, thieves, and corporate stooges as well as the nefarious schemes perpetrated.

The corruption infected many of the government bodies designed to protect the health and well-being of all Americans, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in ways that we haven’t fully reckoned with.

Former President Donald Trump’s first Environmental Protection Agency administrator was one of his most controversial appointments to a cabinet-level position. This appointment, in particular, embodied the White House’s broad support for the fossil fuel industry and disdain for climate science. Prior to his appointment, Scott Pruitt had made a career—as Oklahoma’s attorney general—of attacking the very federal agency that he would someday run. As an outspoken skeptic of climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions, Pruitt, along with other Republican attorney generals, led the charge and, as Rebecca Hersher and Brett Neely reported for NPR in 2018, “sued the EPA to stop ozone and methane emissions rules and block regulations on coal-fired power plants.” Of course, it was not Pruitt’s anti-environmental policies that brought about his abrupt departure after 18 months in office: That was why he was hired in the first place.

Pruitt was fired (“resigned”) because of his garden-variety corruption and lavish spending on his expenses, office, and travel. He also had the habit of mixing his personal and his professional lives, which led to more than a dozen investigations by the Office of the Inspector General. For example, Pruitt spent more than $124,000 on unjustified first-class air travel and $43,000 on a soundproof phone booth. He used EPA staff to land a job for his wife, rented a condominium apartment on Capitol Hill at a bargain rate from a lobbyist’s wife, and had his security detail drive him around on personal errands. As the investigations piled up several of his close aides and EPA staffers exited the shop. After all the negative publicity, pressure mounted on Trump from the Congressional Republicans to oust Pruitt.

On Twitter, Trump announced on July 8, 2018, that he was accepting Pruitt’s resignation, noting: “Within the Agency Scott had done an outstanding job, and I will always be thankful to him for this.” Some of Pruitt’s “outstanding” work included his response to an initial study requested by his aides from EPA economists to reevaluate the effects of the Obama administration’s clean water rule. According to a 30-year veteran of the agency who left around the same time, when the study found more than a half-billion dollars in economic benefits, these economists “were ordered to say the benefits could not be quantified,” reported the American Prospect via their Mapping Corruption project, an extensively researched interactive dossier exposing the breadth of corruption in the Trump administration. Similarly, after “a scientific advisory board questioned the basis for a proposed rewrite of the Obama administration rules on waterways and vehicle tailpipe emissions, more than a quarter of the panel members were dismissed or resigned, many of them being replaced by scientists with industry ties.”

Under Pruitt’s EPA, more generally, the agency moved to limit the use of scientific research. They excluded numerous studies that relied on confidential personal health data. Meanwhile, vacancies were left unfilled, especially in the areas of air pollution and toxic research. The Trump EPA did not miss a beat with its anti-environmental and anti-species agenda when Andrew Wheeler became the next administrator. For example, as a former coal lobbyist whose top client was Murray Energy and whose CEO was a major backer of Trump and a climate change denier, Wheeler ordered the EPA in June 2019 to terminate its funding to 13 health centers around the country that were studying the effects of pollution on the growth and development of children and other living things. As Trump wrote on Twitter announcing Wheeler as Pruitt’s replacement: “I have no doubt that Andy will continue on with our great and lasting EPA agenda. We have made tremendous progress and the future of the EPA is very bright!”

While Wheeler was at the helm of the EPA, Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray prepared a policy “wish list” that was hand-delivered to Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Several of Murray’s recommendations were acted on, including, as reported by American Prospect, “abandoning an Obama administration rule barring coal companies from dumping waste into streams and waterways; making it easier to open new coal plants, and allowing higher levels of mercury pollution.” In related matters, former industry lobbyist Nancy Beck, the deputy assistant administrator for Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, was leading the charge against an EPA proposal to halt the sale of three chemicals linked to birth defects, nerve damage and deaths. Under Wheeler, the EPA was completely absolved of any duty to address global warming.

Besides the EPA’s capture by mega-polluters, conflicts of interests, and Trump’s top appointments, the American Prospect’s Mapping Corruption project has underscored the undue influence of a dozen deputy and assistant administrators dispersed throughout the environmental protection organization. Below are the first five administrators identified by the project:

• “David Dunlap, deputy assistant administrator for research and development, is a former policy director for Koch Industries. At EPA, Dunlap has had a role in regulating formaldehyde despite the fact that one of the country’s largest producers of formaldehyde, Georgia-Pacific Chemicals, is a Koch subsidiary.”
• “David Fischer, deputy assistant administrator for Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, is a former industry lawyer and senior director of the American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical companies.”
• “Alexandra Dunn, assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention, was also employed by the American Chemistry Council.”
• “As an industry lawyer, Susan Bodine, now assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance, had defended polluting companies against Superfund cleanup responsibilities.”
• “Peter Wright, assistant administrator for land and emergency management, oversees toxic waste site cleanup. He used to work for DowDuPont, which has been implicated in problems affecting roughly one-seventh of all toxic waste cleanup sites.”

Corruption and white-collar crime reached new heights during Trump’s four years as president. Similarly, Trump introduced a level of corruption never seen before in the highest echelons of the U.S. government. It is difficult to assess the full measure of the negative impact of Trump’s EPA on our collective health and well-being, as well as the costs, time, and energy that it will take to undo the damages caused by the science denier-in-chief. And now with the Supreme Court ruling against the Environmental Protection Agency on June 30—a 6-3 vote, with all three of Trump’s appointees voting with the conservative bloc—it is questionable that the Trumpian damage to the environment can be repaired.

This excerpt is adapted from Criminology on Trump (Routledge, 2022) and was produced for the web by Earth | Food | Life (a project of the Independent Media Institute).

​​​Gregg Barak is a criminologist and author. He is a fellow of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences and emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice at Eastern Michigan University. His books include Unchecked Corporate Power (Routledge, 2017), Chronicles of a Radical Criminologist (Rutgers University Press, 2020), and Criminology on Trump (Routledge, 2022). In 2020, Barak received the Gilbert Geis Lifetime Achievement Award from the Division of White-Collar and Corporate Crime of the American Society of Criminology.

When I look at the cascading challenges around issues like reproductive rights, voting and elections, or the conflicts raging in the world, from Ukraine to Ethiopia—there’s always a less-discussed media problem; it takes real work to get properly educated about the facts related to any of these issues. There is a superabundance of corporate news that is either indifferent or hostile to the public interest, and all too often the pundits or outlets are bought and sold by the interests that have a hand in the issue.

And the search engines and social platforms are of little help to readers who don’t have the free hours to fight through and find some journalism or information with integrity. That’s why I like to work with the wonderful and talented independent journalists at IMI. Read Local Peace Economy’s article by April M. Short on the Supreme Court decision that ended Roe v. Wade, for example— it’s not like what you find featured on Google News. It gets right to the heart of the issue: this is a disaster for women, and an attack on the idea that our government should protect human and individual rights against the prerogatives of dogma and religious doctrine.

“Ignoring half a century of precedent and the fact that 60 percent of Americans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases, a U.S. Supreme Court stacked with far-right extremists overruled Roe v. Wade (and Planned Parenthood v. Casey) on June 24, 2022. While this decision is no surprise if you’ve been paying attention recently, it still emits a forceful shockwave, hurdling our society back into a dark age that disrespects the sovereignty of women, and all people,” she writes.

Short’s recent article is joined by important work from IMI’s writers—take a look!

Economy for All’s coverage this past month has inadvertently put a spotlight on the cognitive dissonance on the Supreme Court. The Court’s recent decisions go against the majority opinion on guns, reproductive rights and the separation of state and church. As the final arbiter of the law, the Court has failed miserably this past week to ensure the American people the justice and protection they deserve.

Guns have become an intimate part of American culture, writes Sonali Kolhatkar, “one that is fed by gun-makers and the gun lobby, the right-wing media and Hollywood, and of course the Republican Party.” On the heels of the Uvalde school shooting in March, Scientific American published a plea by a group of pediatricians stating that “We must do better for our children,” and pointed to “the politicization of guns taking priority over public health.” Gun violence is now the leading cause of death among young people aged 1 to 19.

While it’s true that the National Rifle Association holds political sway via affiliation and large campaign donations to GOP politicians, guns have become synonymous with “freedom” and “defense.” But the freedom to defend oneself from what, or from whom? Violent crime and property crime rates nationwide have dramatically fallen since the 1990s and studies show that guns are rarely used in self-defense. “Ultimately, the white male Republican belief that guns are a way to defend oneself from imaginary evil people is a hate-filled fantasy,” writes Kolhatkar, and “the price we as a nation are paying for this fear-based fantasy is the lives of our children.”

In Reagan’s Racism Once Saved Lives: Now It’s Killing Children, Thom Hartmann provides an illuminating primer on gun control in California. “There’s no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons,” Ronald Reagan said in 1967 when armed Black Panthers showed up at the California State Capitol and political activist Bobby Seale read a statement to the people in front of the Capitol: “Black people have begged, prayed, petitioned, demonstrated, and everything else to get the racist power structure of America to right the wrongs which have historically been perpetuated against Black people. The time has come for Black people to arm themselves against this terror before it is too late.”

Within weeks, Republican Assemblyman Don Mulford, with bipartisan support, introduced into the California Assembly law AB-1591 to ban people in California from carrying loaded weapons in public. It was enthusiastically signed into law by Reagan less than three months after Seale’s statement at the Capitol. While Reagan’s racism produced the first significant gun control in the state—California, America’s largest state, has more gun deaths than any state except Texas— it is white supremacy that is the largest force fighting against gun control in the nation today.

It’s no doubt a tough time to be the parent of a newborn in the United States today. “Not only is child care prohibitively expensive, writes Sonali Kolhatkar, “but the cost of all things including baby products is rising, COVID-19 poses a threat to children too young to be vaccinated—and there has been a months-long shortage of baby formula.” The baby formula scarcity began when the COVID-19 pandemic led to a disruption of ingredient supply chains and transportation delays. Then, the Food and Drug Administration found that several leading brands produced by Abbott Laboratories were contaminated with dangerous bacteria leading to a recall and a temporary closure of Abbott’s main Michigan factory where government inspectors found “shocking” conditions. Just as the Michigan plant reopened, torrential flooding forced it to shut down again. This shortage has driven prices up and Black and Latino parents are disproportionately more likely to rely on formulas. There are only two companies producing 70 percent of these products, a monopoly that the United State government has encouraged. On one end of the food chain are starving farmers, and on the other end there are starving families, including babies. In the middle are a handful of massive corporations like Abbott and Cargill who just keep getting wealthier.

If Poverty Is a Moral Issue, Then the U.S. Is Bankrupt. While newspaper headlines are warning of rising inflation and the possibility that voters will respond by punishing Democrats in the midterm elections this fall, there are too few headlines about the numbers of Americans who are suffering from poverty, hunger and homelessness in one of the world’s wealthiest nations. Sonali Kolhatkar cites several factors for this: flawed government indicators about who qualifies as poor or low-income; mainstream media coverage in favor of wealthy elites that downplays the extent of poverty; and corporate greed. Meanwhile, President Biden’s ambitious anti-poverty legislation campaign to “Build Back Better” is languishing in legislation. Among the anti-poverty measures that the bill would have enacted was the renewal of an expanded child tax credit. During the brief time that an increased child tax credit was in effect in 2021, it helped to push millions of American families out of poverty.

“What happens when you actually provide for the people, when you actually ensure that people are making living wages and have housing, is that that actually saves the nation, both spiritually and morally,” said Rev. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, in an interview with Kolhatkar, reminding us that what matters much more than the unquenchable thirst of a handful of wealthy elites is the well-being of all Americans.

As thorny a topic as it may be, having smaller families is one of the most impactful ways to reduce anthropogenic emissions, writes Carter Dillard, policy adviser for the Fair Start Movement. The New York Times columnist Ezra Klein missed the opportunity to highlight reforms that can promote smaller families as one of the most impactful long-run ways to reduce emissions and enhance equitable investments in each child. Instead, he pushed women, specifically, to have kids with the romantic optimism of producing world problem solvers and, benefiting the investor class no less.

In the face of gun violence, now the leading cause of death among young people aged 1 to 19, increasing rates of children dying as a result of abuse and neglect—an average of five children a day in the United States, and as high as 1 billion children being exposed to violence internationally, surely we need to create a conducive environment to help protect them. Urging people to just have kids is especially surprising for Klein, who according to Dillard, routinely champions veganism and animal rights. “He is undoing with one hand what he claims to be doing with the other,” writes Dillard. “Instead of an anthropocentric view of the world, which mostly benefits the few, we need to look at a reformative ecocentric view that benefits everyone.”

Maureen Medina, the founder of Leave in Peace and a campaign strategist and organizer for Slaughter Free NYC gets to the heart of another matter; biolabs and cows. How do we justify slaughtering cows for bovine heart valves to treat cardiovascular disease, she asks, when the consumption of red meat is what weakens our hearts? In 2012, Medina received a 23 mm bovine valve from Edwards Lifesciences to replace her pulmonary valve. On condition of anonymity, one nurse shared with her that “Healthy people don’t make money.” In fact, “more than 70 percent of chronic illnesses [including heart failure] can be prevented or reversed with a whole-food, plant-based dietary lifestyle,” according to the Plantrician Project. Yet “the U.S. government spends $38 billion each year to subsidize the meat and dairy industries, but only $17 million each year to subsidize fruits and vegetables,” according to a 2015 University of California, Berkeley paper. It’s a vicious cycle. On one side, big agribusiness is slaughtering cows for meat and dairy—foods that researchers have linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. On the other side, medical corporations are profiting from producing bovine heart valves.

It’s no secret that corporations benefit from both misinformation and disinformation. State lawmakers introduced nearly 2,900 bills based on American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) templates from 2010 through 2018, writes Elliott Negin, senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists. More than 600 of them became law, among them was a bill introduced in June 2021 by Texas Governor Greg Abbott banning the state from contracting with or investing in businesses that divest from coal, oil or natural gas companies.

ALEC is a lobby group backed by corporations and right-wing foundations that provides state lawmakers with ready-made, fill-in-the-blank sample legislation drafted by, or on behalf of, ALEC’s private sector members, including tobacco, fossil fuel and electric utility companies.

The Energy Discrimination Elimination Act is just one of the thousands of pieces of legislation ALEC has disseminated nationwide since its formation in 1973. ALEC’s success depends on tactics Negin describes as Orwellian framing, corporate deception, exploitation of understaffed legislators and the undermining of democracy, depending in large part on the fact that the general public pays little attention to what goes on at state houses.

A 2018 survey by researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that only 19 percent of the respondents could name their state legislators and a third did not know the name of their governor. Nearly half did not know whether their state had a one or two-house legislature.

Attention and activism, however, are key to fighting back and ALEC’s stance on climate change has prompted some of its corporate members to defect—even in the energy sector—especially after news organizations and advocacy groups such as Greenpeace and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) drew attention to ALEC’s lies. Public interest groups are also turning up the heat on ALEC over its relatively recent voter suppression efforts.

Numerous analyses find that Pro-Trump Republicans are building new paths to subvert future election results, writes Steven Rosenfeld in Election Subversion Is Replacing Voter Suppression as New GOP Threat. “The language of the voting rights movement is changing. For decades, it had been centered around overcoming voter suppression and Jim Crow, which is shorthand for intentional barriers to stymie voters at the starting line—affecting their voter registration, their voting options, and whether or not their ballots are accepted. But today, thanks to Donald Trump’s 2020 election-denying loyalists, the focus is shifting to the finish line in elections, where counting votes is what matters. Election subversion is the new political buzz phrase.”

In The Ugly Side of Trump’s 2020 Lies and Bullying Come Before Committee, Steven Rosenfeld provides several accounts of how Trump-directed mobs threatened officials who wouldn’t side with him in his efforts to subvert the 2020 election: “The January 6 hearings have shown that it was Trump and his minions—not Democrats, nor state officials who followed their oaths of office, nor local election workers who did their jobs—who plotted to overturn the election, and who embraced lying, ignoring laws, harassment and violence to seize the presidency.”

What stood out was Trump’s “boorish and boundary-breaking harassment of legislator leaders and top election officials who would not bend to his will to overturn their state’s election results.”

At the June 21 hearing, Democratic and Republican legislators and state election officials “described how Trump’s foot soldiers threatened them on social media, published their private contact information online and stalked them outside their homes—which neither Trump nor his team discouraged, as [Liz] Cheney noted.”

A select panel hearing probed Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 results in states. The fourth hearing by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol focused on how Trump’s team pressured local and state government officials to overturn Biden’s victory. Witnesses included two Republican election officials from Georgia and a state legislator from Arizona who resisted Trump’s pressure and received numerous threats from Trump supporters that have continued well into 2022 elections.

As the hearings continue, there are not only questions of what accountability will ensue for participants in Trump’s failed 2020 coup but also what can be done about Republicans who still embrace the stolen election lie. Recently, for example, the Texas Republican Party adopted these claims in its party platform. That action follows scores of election-denying candidates running for state and federal office in 2022 and winning their primaries. The hearings are revealing how far people who admired or envied Trump were and may still be willing to go. As new details begin to surface so too are questions as well as suggestions of how and where to hold participants accountable.

The IMI team is hard at work producing these and many other important stories. Please join our cause to produce media that can change the world.

And in case you missed it, here is more of our most recent work:

Can Community Schools Rescue a ‘Troubled’ District?

Jeff Bryant – July 11, 2022 – Our Schools

Supreme Court Could Wreak Havoc in Battleground State Elections

Steven Rosenfeld – July 10, 2022 – Voting Booth

Feeling Defeated by the Supreme Court’s EPA Ruling? There’s Still a Lot We Can Do

Reynard Loki – July 5, 2022 – Earth | Food | Life

Polls: After Hearings, Swing Voters and Supreme Court on Collision Course

Steven Rosenfeld – July 2, 2022 – Voting Booth

The Supreme Court has Lit Our Planet on Fire

Thom Hartmann – July 1, 2022 – Economy for All

Mark Meadows’ Role as Key Co-Conspirator in Trump Coup Comes into View

Steven Rosenfeld – June 29, 2022 – Voting Booth

How the American Legislative Exchange Council Turns Disinformation Into Law

Elliott Negin – June 28, 2022 – Earth | Food | Life

Colombia, Once a Pro-U.S. Conservative Bastion, Turns Left

Sonali Kolhatkar – June 27, 2022 – Economy for All

Thanks from Jan Ritch-Frel and the rest of the IMI team.

The story of “America divided” has played out in the media and political news for decades. Isn’t it time to find areas of agreement and common evolution on moral and political attitudes? One striking trend line is with regard to animal rights at the ballot box. Whether it’s Florida or California, Massachusetts or Missouri, it turns out that animal rights have won 70 percent of the time at the ballot box over the past three decades. That’s a political supermajority.

The potential for building a wider moral consensus in a divided country from an animal rights perspective is worth exploring. The Independent Media Institute’s Earth | Food | Life project gives readers a path to consider the lives of the animals who are raised for our food or who share our environments, as you’ll see in IMI’s recent stories below.

It’s important to keep in mind these and other moral issues that unite this country under the surface, even as the divisions and challenges facing society continue to build. Check out the recent work our journalists have been up to:

During the 2022 midterm election year, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate will be contested. As Americans gear up to vote Tuesday, November 8, Steven Rosenfeld, Voting Booth’s editor, chief correspondent, and senior writing fellow, reliably provides the play-by-play.

In his recent reporting, he notes that while the far right gains ground in the East, out West among the five states that held their 2022 primary elections on May 17, a string of GOP candidates for office who deny the 2020 presidential election results and embrace various conspiracies were rejected by Republicans who voted for more mainstream conservatives. And yet, Pennsylvania state legislator Douglas Mastriano, an election denier and white nationalist, won the gubernatorial primary with votes from less than 7 percent of the 9 million registered voters in Pennsylvania.

Unlike many Republican candidates who are mimicking Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, or who initially rejected Trump’s claims but are now flirting with conspiracy theorists, Maricopa County’s top elected Republicans called out Arizona’s attorney general, Republican Mark Brnovich, for lying about the 2020 election. Meanwhile, Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who in November 2020 refused Donald Trump’s demand to “find” the votes for the ex-president to win the state and defended the accuracy of Georgia’s results and recounts, is “being bent to the will” of 2020 election deniers as his May 24 primary approached, civil rights advocates say. Rosenfeld’s reporting remains an independent account of the truth that is essential to restoring shared public faith in democracy.

Reproductive health care, global warming, and student loan debt are among the numerous social justice issues that are at stake. New York Times bestselling author and Economy for All writing fellow Thom Hartmann dissects Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s Dobbs v. Jackson draft opinion, the abortion case that could reverse Roe, concluding that at its heart, it’s just insidious religious doctrine. The abortion battle is not just about religion, however; Hartmann also argues that the abortion firestorm is also a dangerous racist panic about the end of white supremacy in America.

Student debt, like medical debt or the inability to pay increasing rents, is just another feature of a capitalist, market-driven system designed to ensure the health of Wall Street over the wellness of people. And those financial stresses affect people of color the most, writes Economy for All chief correspondent and writing fellow Sonali Kolhatkar in “Why Canceling Student Debt Is a Matter of Racial Justice.” “It’s time to end this collective financial burden, and the president can do so with the stroke of a pen,” she writes.

Climate change too is the result of a deadly calculus: human lives are worth risking and even losing over the profits of global corporations. It’s a no-brainer for the world to quickly and without delay transition to renewable energy sources, writes Kolhatkar, in light of the World Meteorological Organization’s alarming conclusion about how close we are to reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and facing the most dangerous impacts of climate change. Instead, President Biden has fallen woefully short on his campaign promises to address the climate crisis and failed to stand up to corporate interests. But while the market-driven economy favors environmental doom, public opinion is on the side of science.

Can we abandon pollutive fossil fuels and avoid an energy crisis? It’s a question asked by Earth | Food | Life contributor Richard Heinberg, senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute and the author of Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival. “When it comes to maintaining energy flows, there is a closing window to avert both climate catastrophe and economic peril,” he writes. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the West’s response of imposing sanctions on Russia are forcing a reckoning, and yet we treat these fuels as though they were an inexhaustible birthright; but they are, of course, finite and depleting substances. Energy is often an area where a narrative of division prevails, and yet what’s essential for the environment is inextricably linked to what’s good for the energy industry in the long run.

Meanwhile, monkeys infected with transmissible diseases are being trucked across the United States, writes EFL contributor Lisa Jones-Engel, a primate scientist and Fulbright scholar who has conducted academic research on the consequences of infectious diseases moving between human and macaque populations. Highly emotional and intelligent, macaques are seed dispersers, making them a keystone species in the environment. They are being rounded up from forests and urban areas and shipped thousands of miles across the globe, ostensibly to provide us with lifesaving treatments and vaccines. Despite macaques’ vast immunological and biological differences from humans, the cruel and unethical extraction of macaques from Asia for use in biomedical research is a multibillion-dollar industry that is pushing them over the edge.

Perhaps to truly learn about nature, life, and love, we need to build better relationships with our nonhuman family. In an excerpt from Sy Montgomery’s book The Hawk’s Way produced for the web by EFL and Atria Books, the naturalist and bestselling author describes the crucial role and sharpness of the vision of birds based on their eye size in proportion to their bodies. And because of our differing brain circuitry, birds capture at a glance what it might take us many seconds to apprehend. For birds, seeing is being. “Too often humans see through our brains, not through our eyes,” writes Montgomery. “This is such a common human failing that we joke about the absent-minded professor or the artist so focused on an imagined canvas that they walk into a tree.”

The IMI team is hard at work producing these and many other important stories. Please join our cause to produce media that can change the world.

And in case you missed it, here is more of our most recent work:

GOP Split: Far Right Gains Ground in East, While Losing Out West

Steven Rosenfeld – May 20, 2022 – Voting Booth

Monkeys Infected With Transmissible Diseases Are Trucked Across U.S.

Lisa Jones-Engel – May 17, 2022 – Earth | Food | Life

As the Planet Warms, Let’s Be Clear: We Are Sacrificing Lives for Profits

Sonali Kolhatkar – May 14, 2022 – Economy for All

God on His Side? Doug Mastriano’s Rise in Pennsylvania’s GOP Gubernatorial Primary

Steven Rosenfeld – May 13, 2022 – Voting Booth

The Art of Building a Human-Hawk Relationship

Sy Montgomery – May 10, 2022 – Earth | Food | Life

Abortion: Why Is the Court Using Religious Belief to Alter What Should Be Secular Law?

Thom Hartmann – May 10, 2022 – Economy for All

Maricopa GOP Leaders Call Out Arizona Attorney General for Stolen Election Lies

Steven Rosenfeld – May 9, 2022 – Voting Booth

Why Canceling Student Debt Is a Matter of Racial Justice

Sonali Kolhatkar – May 8, 2022 – Economy for All

How Collectives Are Empowering People to Understand the Tricky Financial Side of Life

Aric Sleeper – May 4, 2022 – Local Peace Economy

Georgia SOS Raffensperger Flirts With Trump Propagandists in Reelection Campaign

Steven Rosenfeld – May 4, 2022 – Voting Booth

Thanks from Jan Ritch-Frel and the rest of the IMI team.

Many of us have wondered whether the body of activists and dark money front groups who emerged from the 2020 election debacle would persevere into the next federal elections and attempt to subvert our democratic process in more systematic ways. Well, the tough news is that more than 80 individuals across the country are in fact running for office who in all likelihood will attempt in a range of ways to sabotage the election process in this country.

Steven Rosenfeld of the Independent Media Institute’s Voting Booth project cites a recent troubling report that states, “there is a coalition of ‘America First’ Secretary of State candidates—a group of at least eight people running for the post this cycle—that all backed former President Trump’s efforts to undermine the will of the voters in 2020.” Add in a host of local-level candidates and individuals running for attorney general and governor, and we have a problem on our hands.

Voting Booth has doggedly covered this topic since the November 2020 election—charting the election subversion process, and the many heroes and public interest advocates who have stopped them in the courts and in the public arena.

As Rosenfeld quotes one activist, “while some have tried to… move on from 2020, we cannot. It is so important to our system of democracy, and how the people of this country are represented, and their votes are counted, that we have nonpartisan trusted election officials in these positions that are making these decisions. And what we are seeing happen across the country is putting that system at risk.”

And I also want to share what the many other talented journalists of IMI have been up to:

Sam Davis, a conservation scientist working at the intersection of forests, climate and justice, writes that the recent decision by the Supreme Court to consider limiting the scope of the Clean Water Act of 1972 is likely to further threaten the biodiverse ecosystems of the United States. No version of “waters of the U.S.” (WOTUS), part of the Clean Water Act, adequately protects the nation’s natural areas, and the lack of clarity over the federal law has virtually stripped U.S. wetlands from protection, which could have far-reaching environmental impacts as we try to mitigate the additional challenges posed by climate change.

Kids are really worried about issues directly impacted by the climate crisis too. EFL’s editor, chief correspondent and writing fellow Reynard Loki recently met with seventh grade students at the Math and Science Exploratory School in Brooklyn, New York, and wrote about what is worrying them—rising sea levels, extreme weather events, the spread of disease, air pollution and the extinction crisis. Using letter templates provided by Loki, the students personalized their messages to their elected representatives urging lawmakers to support a part of the New York state budget that puts bills on the state and federal levels that strengthen our response to the climate crisis, which were emailed and tweeted to legislators by EFL. Loki discussed this youth climate activism campaign in a recent public radio interview.

Young people are also making their voices heard through creative campaigns in collaboration with MacArthur grant-winning visual artist Mel Chin that appeal to representatives to tackle childhood lead poisoning. Affecting an estimated 37 million U.S. homes, chronic lead poisoning is highest in children in low-income families and communities of color, underscoring the pervasive issues of race and environmental justice. Editorial fellow Rachel Raphaela Gugelberger writes about some of the ways in which artist Mel Chin employs art and community engagement as powerful tools for addressing complex environmental issues.

An ongoing investigation by Our Schools chief correspondent Jeff Bryant has revealed that a substantial sector of charter schools, particularly those operated by for-profit operators like Accel Schools, are at the forefront of a wave of charter operations that follow an investor-driven business model. Inside the charter schools—which former teachers and board members described as having rushed orientations; no school handbook, curriculum, books or instructional materials; empty classroom shelves; worn flooring and furniture; and insufficient heating—students are expected to spend most of their instructional time on Chromebooks supplied for in-school use only, and to work on i-Ready, a digital software program for reading and mathematics, for at least 30 minutes per class period.

For years, charter schools have gotten away with wasting billions in federal funding, but a wave of new proposals would end the grift. “President Joe Biden is taking steps to ensure that federal education funding will not be squandered on unneeded, mismanaged schools and the operators wanting to profit off of taxpayers,” writes Jeff Bryant in the Progressive. But these efforts are being opposed by the powerful charter school lobby, which has enjoyed a privileged status in the U.S. Department of Education and has responded to government proposals prohibiting funds to charters that hand over their finances to for-profit operators with a campaign of hyperbolic misinformation.

Did you know that more than 80 election-denying candidates are running for governor, attorney general and secretary of state in 2022’s primaries? A series of reports by Voting Booth’s chief correspondent Steven Rosenfeld underscore that disinformation is getting worse in 2022, not better. Partisan propaganda, election denial, conspiracy-minded secretaries of state, and anti-voter legislation in 41 states are jeopardizing the future of accessible, fair, and trustworthy elections.

Believers of Trump’s big lie about the 2020 election continue to ignore national media and election experts, writes Rosenfeld. As 2022’s primaries approach, an unprecedented wave of public and private efforts are underway to foster trust in election operations and election officials in response to ongoing claims by Donald Trump and his supporters, including many officeholders and candidates, that President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected. Will they be convinced by poll workers and local leaders to trust the democratic process again?

One of the most problematic areas in the social response to the world health crisis of COVID-19 has been the profit-seeking and opportunism of Western private businesses. If you ever wondered how we went from a culture that produced Jonas Salk, who understood vaccines as a social product and a public good, to pharmaceutical executives at companies like Pfizer and BioNTech negotiating the sale of their medicines while prioritizing profits over public health, check out the new book Owning the Sun: A People’s History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to COVID-19 Vaccines by IMI Economy for All fellow Alexander Zaitchik, which was released by Counterpoint Press in March. Owning the Sun tells the story of one of the most contentious fights in human history: the legal right to control the production of lifesaving medicines.

Sonali Kolhatkar, chief correspondent and writing fellow for Economy for All, writes on the multipronged strategy of state-level abortion bans that have chipped away at reproductive rights, ushering in the end of women’s right to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. “You have to admire the long game that anti-abortion evangelicals have played, steadfastly remaining single-issue voters, catapulting any state or federal leader into power—no matter how antithetical to their values—as long as they promise to oppose abortion,” writes Kolhatkar. “Asleep at the wheel, lawmakers have left Americans at the mercy of a vocal minority intent on criminalizing abortion while caring little about financial support for parents.”

The IMI team is hard at work producing these and many other important stories. Please join us now—we need you.

And in case you missed it, here is more of our most recent work:

Why Does the GOP Side with Putin?

Thom Hartmann – April 10, 2022 – Economy for All

New Peer-Reviewed Study by Our Schools’ Jeff Bryant and Velislava Hillman: “Families’ Perceptions of Corporate Influence in Career and Technical Education Through Data Extraction”

Jeff Bryant and Velislava Hillman – April 7, 2022 – Our Schools

Why Hydropower Dams Are a False Climate Solution

Josh Klemm and Eugene Simonov – April 7, 2022 – Earth | Food | Life

Housing Is a Human Right—Here’s How to Make It a Reality

Sonali Kolhatkar – April 4, 2022 – Economy for All

Thanks from the IMI team—please join our cause to produce media that can change the world.