MOTHER JONES – Politics | Politics & Government

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. As the deadly war in Iran triggers what the International Energy Agency has described as the worst oil crisis in history, climate advocates are calling for a faster shift away from fossil fuels, but the conflict may also hamper that transition. US-Israeli strikes on Iran have disrupted supply routes through the strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of global oil flows. The US, Israel and Iran have also all launched strikes on fossil fuel facilities, creating additional market shocks. Reduced reliance on oil and gas is insulating some regions from the ongoing fuel crisis. “Electricity generated from wind and solar is largely insulated from fossil fuel price volatility—once built, the fuel is free,” said Jan Rosenow, a professor of energy at Oxford University. But the war is also creating near-term challenges that could slow clean energy growth. Here’s what to know about how the current crisis could shape the expansion of renewable energy. Clean energy as a shield Climate advocates are calling for the world to grow its renewable energy capacity to boost energy independence. Former US secretary of state John Kerry this month told the Guardian that oil and gas were a “security challenge,” while the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, last week said that “our addiction to fossil fuels is destabilizing both the climate and global security.” Some countries are indeed better positioned to withstand the current fuel crisis because of the growth of clean energy technologies. Spain and Portugal, for instance, have seen electricity prices decline in recent weeks. “This should be the final wake-up call that there is a better way than continued dependence on fossil fuels.” Pakistan, too, has seen a surge in the deployment of rooftop solar panels over the past five years, helping the country weather disruptions in the oil and gas market. There, “households and businesses have discovered that rooftop solar coupled with batteries are cheaper than electricity imported from the grid,” Rosenow said. Electric vehicles have also helped some economies withstand price increases for gasoline, in which crude oil is a key ingredient. Two examples are China, where more than 50 percent of all new cars sold are electric, and Nepal, where that share sits at at 70 percent. In light of this evidence, countries across the world are being urged to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels. But the Iran war may… [TheTopNews] Read More.

In the days leading up to this week’s opening of CPAC, the nation’s oldest conservative political convention, organizers still seemed to be holding out hope that some brighter MAGA luminary would agree to headline the event. The CPAC app and social media accounts offered a slow drip of news of newly confirmed speakers. There was the HUD secretary, a low-level HHS official, and a Nigerian lawyer who advocates for Christians in his Muslim country. On March 21, CPAC excitedly announced that Todd Chrisley would be joining the lineup. Who? You could be forgiven for not knowing about Chrisley. A minor reality TV star, Chrisley was in prison until May last year, serving a 12-year sentence for bank and tax fraud, when President Donald Trump pardoned him. What Chrisley has to offer the CPAC audience is unclear. “To speak on the process of receiving a pardon?” posited one incredulous Facebook commenter responding to the Chrisley announcement. During the Trump decade, CPAC had been a showcase for the MAGA faithful, and Trump and his family were its biggest stars. Trump himself first appeared at the event in 2011 when he was toying with a presidential run. He hasn’t missed the event in a decade. “Nobody can deny that [CPAC] is the center of political gravity,” CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp told me in 2022. But the center of gravity has clearly tilted if the modest crowd in the convention hall at the Gaylord Texan resort in Grapevine is any indication. “It’s shitty,” Warner Kimo Sutton told me of the turnout. “Last time this place was packed.” A GOP stalwart who who ran Trump’s 2016 campaign in Hawaii, he was here two years ago, the last time CPAC came to Dallas. He was still hoping more stars would show up. “I’ve heard the widow is coming,” he whispered, saying he had it on good authority that Erika Kirk, the widow of the murdered Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, might be making a surprise appearance. Whether a late showing by “the widow” is enough to spice up the convention remains to be seen. After all, people book hotels and buy tickets months in advance, often expecting to see Trump and some of his famous children. CPAC doesn’t discourage this view. Trump’s previous appearances feature prominently on the CPAC website. But as of Thursday night, not a single Trump family member was on the… [TheTopNews] Read More.

It’s 6:15 a.m. on Wednesday, March 18, and I’m being driven to Los Angeles International Airport by a loved one. The freeway is congested—traffic unrelenting. I bring out my phone to check my messages and am stunned to discover the New York Times’ investigation into the allegations of sexual abuse by multiple women at the hands of United Farm Workers co-founder Cesar Chavez. I tense up remembering that my loved one has suffered sexual abuse at the hands of family members. I’m reluctant to talk to her about the reporting. “Read it out loud,” she says defiantly. For the next hour and 15 minutes of LA traffic, I find myself awkwardly reading the shocking report out loud, occasionally pausing so that she can catch her breath. After reading that Chavez raped children, I, too, need to catch my breath. Pain, anger, and betrayal burn through me as I finish the story. I want to talk through what I’m feeling. Not surprisingly, my loved one processes in silence, not unlike the women Chavez abused. Cesar Chavez was never a squeaky-clean movement leader. I was once undocumented and I grew up knowing he hated the likes of us (“wetbacks” and “illegals,” he called us). I looked past this because I felt U.S. Latinos needed a Mexican American leader to look up to. But the rape of women and children is not something any of us can look past. I often speak to high school and college classes, and when I ask young people what they know about Cesar Chavez, some identify him as a labor leader while others think he was a boxer, and a few even think he was a revolutionary akin to Che Guevara. Ironic, if you consider that Che Guevara, much like Chavez, was better at revolutions than he was at governing. According to Miriam Pawel’s The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez’s Farm Worker Movement, Chavez’s lack of interest in establishing a well-run union was the main factor in the United Farm Workers weakening over time. Chavez saw how the 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which offered guarantees for union organizing, would shift the core work of the UFW from protest to administration, and he was not interested. Like Guevara, he was more interested in toppling institutions than in governing them. The way Latino communities are rallying around the women who were raped… [TheTopNews] Read More.

The first thing you notice when you enter Sherman Austin’s Long Beach, California, apartment is the sounds. His cellphone buzzes constantly, mostly notifications requiring his attention from StopICE.net, a crowdsourced nationwide alert system he developed to let users know when federal immigration officers are nearby. Then there are the beeps. Follow them and they’ll lead you to Austin’s cramped bedroom, where two large computer screens sit inches from his bed. On one, columns of characters scroll continuously, Matrix-style, tracking traffic and potential attacks on a server he uses for StopICE. The beeps come from the other, which displays security camera feeds outside his apartment. Every time a camera spots a potential intruder, it issues a series of loud beeps. It beeps a lot. Threats come in two main varieties. The first are promises to hurt or kill Austin himself. “You’re [sic] last days are coming close,” read one February email. A recent commenter on Austin’s Facebook wrote, “You’re just lucky I am out of the US at the moment and it would take me 10+ hours to get there, or I would have already slit your throat in front of your loved ones.” Austin, who has a long history in activism for which he spent nearly a year in federal prison in the 2000s, isn’t particularly rattled by these messages. “Most are just talk,” he says. But the other type of threat feels far less nebulous. Austin believes it’s only a matter of time before he looks at his security monitors and sees federal agents crouching outside his door. “I’m not doing anything illegal, but we all know how these things go,” he says. “They look for people to make an example of.” Austin, 43, is slim and lithe, with a patchy beard covering his angular face. Today, a cold rainy one in February, he’s wearing a gray-checked flannel and has his long dreadlocks partially tucked under a black baseball cap bearing a picture of a black panther. Despite his radical pedigree and a sideline as a competitive boxer—he turned pro in his mid-30s for six featherweight bouts—he’s an unassuming presence. A set designer could not improve on his apartment’s vibe. The walls are adorned with an electric guitar, boxing gloves, a Malcolm X photo, and a map of tribal lands in the American Southwest. Much of the furniture is handmade. On one shelf are drills he… [TheTopNews] Read More.

Democrats on Wednesday denounced a massive contract that the Homeland Security Department handed to a company owned by a financial supporter of former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem as an example of what they called rampant corruption under President Donald Trump. DHS last May awarded Salus Worldwide Solutions a contract worth up $915 million to provide flights out of the country for undocumented immigrants under a self-deportation program set up by the Trump administration. As Mother Jones has reported, Salus had limited prior federal contracting experience but won the business following extensive contacts with top department officials. A DHS contracting officer acknowledged the situation created “an appearance of favoritism,” according to a court document. Salus is owned by a former State Department official who in October 2024 gave $10,000 to a political action committee that supports Noem. “The web of corruption here will take us some time to fully unpack,” Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-R.I.) said Wednesday at an unofficial hearing held by House Homeland Security Committee Democrats. Magaziner and other Democrats also pointed to a $220 million ad campaign Noem launched last year. The ads, crafted in part by firms with close ties to the former secretary and to her adviser Corey Lewandowski, were nominally aimed at urging immigrants to self-deport. But they also appeared intended to promote Noem herself, complete with a now infamous spot featuring the former secretary on horse. CNN recently reported that the department paid $20,000 to rent the horse for Noem. The DHS inspector general has reportedly launched an investigation into that ad campaign. Additionally, lawmakers cited an NBC News report alleging that Lewandowksi requested that companies seeking DHS contracts pay him, or hire people associated with him. A Lewandowski representative has called those accusations “absolutely false.” The so-called shadow hearing Wednesday was part of a broad effort by congressional Democrats to trumpet plans to commence aggressive oversight of DHS and federal contractors should they take control of one or both congressional chambers next year—and regain the subpoena power that Republicans are largely unwilling to use to scrutinize the Trump administration. “We want to assure the public that at some point there will have to be a reckoning for a lot of the contracts and other things that we question,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the committee’s ranking member, said Wednesday. “We plan to put as many people on notice as possible that the committee in… [TheTopNews] Read More.