2026-04-24 19:00:00
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Republican lawmakers are attempting to shield big oil from having to pay for its contributions to the climate crisis, alarming environmental advocates.
New House and Senate bills led by Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) would give oil and gas companies broad legal immunity from policies and lawsuits aimed at holding the industry accountable for damages caused by its emissions.
Dubbed the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026, the proposal would protect the sector from liability. It is similar to a 2005 law that has largely blocked lawsuits against the firearms industry over gun violence.
“To try to legislate that science away is something that’s really alarming.”
The Republicans’ proposal is designed to stop a surge of climate accountability measures launched by states and municipalities—which Hageman’s office called “leftist legal crusades punishing lawful activity,” in a statement. In recent years, more than 70 state and local governments have sued oil companies for allegedly deceiving the public about the dangers of their products. Meanwhile, New York and Vermont have also passed climate “superfund” laws requiring major polluters to pay for damages from past emissions, with other states considering similar policies.
If passed, the new federal legislation would dismiss pending climate accountability lawsuits, void all climate superfund laws and block similar future efforts. The proposals attempt to undermine the very foundations of climate accountability measures, said Delta Merner, lead scientist at the science hub for climate litigation at the science advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists.
Hageman, for instance, in a statement said her bill would “affirm” that the federal government had exclusive authority and jurisdiction over the regulation of greenhouse gases, but legal experts dispute that, Merner noted. The language attempts “to take away the ability for local harms to be decided at the local and state level,” Merner said.
Cruz’s bill, meanwhile, attempts to discredit climate attribution studies—scientific analyses quantifying how much the climate crisis altered the likelihood or intensity of specific extreme weather events—on which some climate legal claims are based. “To try to legislate that science away is something that’s really alarming,” said Merner.
This year, the top US oil lobby, the American Petroleum Institute (API), said blocking “abusive” climate lawsuits was a top priority. Months earlier, 16 Republican state attorneys general asked the justice department for a “liability shield” for oil companies. And last year, both the API and energy giant ConocoPhillips also pressed Congress on draft legislation to limit climate liability.
“The industry knows it’s vulnerable. They are not totally confident they can win cases on their merits.”
“Immunity is clearly something the industry has been after,” said Cassidy DiPaola of the pro-climate superfund group Make Polluters Pay. “We’re in a period where there’s a Republican trifecta that will basically bow down to the industry, and I think they view this moment as one of their biggest opportunities to get it.”
Industry groups have praised the federal proposal. In a joint statement, Mike Sommers, the API CEO, and Chet Thompson, the CEO of the influential fuel lobby group American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, thanked Hageman and Cruz for the legislation, saying: “Congress should act decisively to reaffirm federal authority over national energy policy and end this activist-driven state overreach.”
Asked about advocates’ concerns about the new policy proposal, API referred the Guardian to its previous statement.
The bills’ introduction came as red states are also proposing to block climate lawsuits and superfund acts. Last week, Tennessee passed a measure blocking big oil accountability efforts, and Utah greenlit a similar law earlier this month. Other states are considering similar policies, but none of them are as straightforward about their goals as the federal proposals, said DiPaola.
“It’s honestly shocking how direct the federal lawmakers are being with with their wording,” she said. “We kind of anticipated it being a little bit more discreet, but they’re not hiding the ball whatsoever. They’re saying it out front: ‘You can’t hold us accountable.’”
The industry and its allies have made a variety of other attempts to thwart climate accountability efforts, including challenging superfund laws in court and attempting to have litigation thrown out. “In some ways, this federal bill feels like a capstone [of the] multi-layered strategy that we’ve been watching unfold, where the fossil fuel industry is attacking climate accountability on several fronts at once,” said Merner.
The industry has seen mixed results. Some climate litigation, for instance, has been thrown out. But last week, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from the Trump administration that aimed to pre-emptively block Hawaii from suing big oil. “The industry knows it’s vulnerable,” said Merner. “They are not totally confident they can win cases on their merits.”
Jay Inslee, a former Washington governor, has recently been raising concerns about the fossil fuel industry’s desire for a liability waiver, particularly since Hageman indicated in February that a federal proposal was in the works. “Every elected official who cares about the interests of their constituents more than those of corporate polluters should oppose this disgraceful proposal,” Inslee said in a statement.
It’s not clear whether Republicans could muster the votes to pass the legislation as it is written. But the bills could help lay the groundwork for a similar measure to be slipped into a larger piece of must-pass legislation, or via the reconciliation process when measures can pass with a simple majority rather than the 60-vote filibuster threshold. “We don’t think that the strategy is to pass this bill as a freestanding bill,” said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, which backs the litigation against the oil industry. “But bad things can happen at any minute, and we’ve got to be ready for it.”
The introduction of the federal legislation, Wiles said, “demystifies” oil industry allies’ objectives.
“If there was any doubt that they would try to do something this outrageous and this damaging to the justice system and to people’s rights to go to court to seek redress for harms, there’s no doubt any more,” he said.
2026-04-24 05:30:03
While testifying in support of the Department of Health and Human Services’ budget before Congress this week, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attacked home-and community-based services, a Medicaid-backed program that provides over seven million disabled people the support they need to remain out of institutions.
Specifically, Kennedy singled out the fact that some states allow some family caregivers to receive payment through Medicaid, a system Kennedy alleged is “rife with fraud.” Kennedy indicated that he’d like to dismantle those programs in favor of unpaid work, implicitly by women, in the home—already the predominant model for many households, and a far from sustainable one.
I spoke with Calli Ross, a parent and advocate who fought for paid caregiving for minor disabled children in her home state of Oregon, about what RFK Jr. doesn’t understand—or want to know—about these programs.
Most states allow parents of adult children with disabilities, family members of children with disabilities, and family members of the elderly to be paid for providing attendant care.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now saying all of this should be considered “natural supports” and unpaid labor. And the underlying rhetoric is that this labor should be provided by women.
Tensy is my 11-year-old little boy who was born with a genetic condition that makes him more susceptible to illness. At age one, he developed chronic lung disease. At four, he had his first cardiac arrest, going 33 minutes without oxygen to his brain. He recovered fairly well but with limited mobility. He requires 24/7 ventilator support for his lungs, uses a feeding tube, and is a wheelchair user.
In 2024, he had a second cardiac arrest caused by a seizure. This led to the loss of his smile, facial movement, and any purposeful physical movement. He is still able to communicate using an eye gaze device and experiences a full life because he is supported in his home and community.
In Oregon, like other states, a state assessment determined that to live safely at home, Tensy requires 744 hours of nursing and attendant care each month. These supports go far beyond typical parenting. They include tracheostomy care, manually resuscitating him during seizures, and full support for all activities of daily living.
Because Oregon passed the Children’s Extraordinary Needs waiver in 2023, parents of the highest-needs children are allowed to work up to 20 hours per week providing these supports, care that is clearly above and beyond typical parenting. Similar policies exist for adults with disabilities and the elderly, run by states but supplemented by federal matches. The few states that allow parents of minors to be paid are funded under the same principle.
Our program is incredibly small. Only 155 children can participate [at a time], and the waitlist is thousands long. That bill is named for my son: Tensy’s Law.
These are hours someone else could be paid to work—if the workforce existed. And by someone else, I mean anyone off the street who is 18 or older without a felony. But even that low-qualification workforce doesn’t exist. There is a well-documented national caregiver crisis. Many families are being forced to leave the workforce, rely on state aid, or institutionalize their loved ones at a much higher cost to state and federal systems.
As the baby boomer generation ages, the number of family caregivers is rapidly increasing. Without the infrastructure to support this care economy, the system as a whole will fail. We cannot expect women to leave the workforce en masse and provide the care needed for our aging and ill family members. We cannot expect families with children with disabilities to survive on GoFundMe and prayers.
Tensy is one of the 155 in children in Oregon, with a waitlist in the thousands, allowed to choose his dad as his paid caregiver for 20 hours a week. That is the cap, currently, in our state. (Even then, due to administrative delays, my son wasn’t able to benefit from having his dad as his paid caregiver until January.)
It isn’t much, but because of this help, we are able to afford a wheelchair-accessible vehicle. My husband is able to take more time from his job to provide Tensy the care he needs to thrive. As his parents, we are the most knowledgeable and most able to care for our son. But without support, we cannot keep him home. And that’s the reality everywhere.
2026-04-24 03:32:47
The US Army announced this week that it has successfully 3D-printed a drone-based warhead prototype, and successfully used that weapon to make something explode.
In a press release, the military called the weapon “a lightweight, powerful, and lethal warhead that could be deployed from a small, agile drone.” In a video posted April 21 and captioned only “Multi-Purpose,” a drone blows up a makeshift bunker on a military testing site.
3D-printed drones and drone-based weapons are fairly new, and they’re having a bit of a moment in the American military limelight. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who President Donald Trump calls “the drone guy,” told lawmakers last week he has learned a great deal from Ukraine’s use of cheap and easily replicable drones, and is eager to apply those lessons to the United States’ wars. (Per reporting from The Economist in 2023, Ukraine has also used ChatGPT to build bombs.)
The Ukrainian military has “fundamentally changed the approach to warfare,” Driscoll said during a congressional hearing Thursday. Iran, too, has reportedly used cheap Shahed drones—$20,000 each—to take out million-dollar American and Israeli missiles. Now, the US may adopt similar technology. “The United States Army is a beacon of transformation,” Driscoll said. “Imagine what we could do if we weren’t bound by the red tape!”
This latest 3D-printed warhead, called the BRAKER, is part of a larger push towards high-tech, cheap munitions. At SpaceX’s Stargate campus in mid-January, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth urged the military and weapons-tech contractors to “accelerate like hell.” And as the Pentagon budget is slated to crest $1 trillion for the first time ever this year, the military is pushing to triple drone-related spending to $74 billion.
As the United States continues to bombard Iran—killing thousands of people, and spending, at last count, nearly $60 billion doing so—the military is looking for cheaper ways to mass-produce war from a distance. That might be why US News and World Report thinks drone stocks are worth buying.
2026-04-24 02:24:13
Paolo Zampolli epitomizes why so many people hate the Trump administration.
Zampolli serves as Donald Trump’s US special envoy for “Global Partnership” and is mired in controversies over this year’s World Cup, Jeffrey Epstein, and, according to the New York Times, ICE.
He’s a shining example of people alleged to be scammer and abusers have weaseled their way into using Trump’s global platform for their own nefarious purposes. Let’s take a look.
On Wednesday, Zampolli told the Financial Times he made a suggestion to Trump and FIFA President Gianni Infantino that Iran be replaced by Italy at this summer’s World Cup. The soccer tournament will be played in the US, Canada, and Mexico, and both the US and Iran have expressed concerns that it would not be possible for Iran, which is currently at war with Israel and the United States.
“I’m an Italian native and it would be a dream to see the Azzurri at a US-hosted tournament. With four titles, they have the pedigree to justify inclusion,” Zampolli said to the Financial Times (“Azzuri” is a nickname for the Italian national sports team, which has won the competition four times, but has failed to qualify for three successive tournaments). Zampolli is an Italian-American but has no apparent association with Italian soccer or the World Cup.
The Financial Times suggested that Zampolli’s idea was designed to improve US and Italy relations after Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni condemned Trump’s bizarre remarks about Pope Leo XIV over the war in Iran.
You may be wondering: Why is an American envoy attempting to lobby on behalf of Italy instead of the US?
Zampolli reposted the Financial Times‘ Tuesday story on X and, late Wednesday night, posted two screenshots of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reporting his World Cup proposal.
“Firstly, it is not possible, secondly it is not appropriate,” Italy’s sports minister, Andrea Abodi, told LaPresse. “You qualify on the pitch.”
“The attempt to exclude Iran from the World Cup only reveals the moral bankruptcy of the United States, which is afraid even of the presence of eleven young Iranians on the field of play,” the Iranian embassy said. A spokesperson for Iran’s government said Wednesday that Iran is prepared to play at the World Cup, according to the Associated Press.
According to the BBC, FIFA is not planning to replace Iran with Italy.
In other words, everyone hates the Trump administration.
Zampolli, a former head of a modeling agency in the ’90s, claims that he introduced Donald and Melania Trump and helped the first lady obtain a work visa in the mid-’90s. He even told the Daily Mail he was prepared to testify before Congress following Melania’s public denial earlier this month of close connections to Jeffrey Epstein, including that it was the convicted sex offender introduced her to Donald Trump. Melania Trump called for a congressional hearing to allow survivors of Epstein’s abuse to testify.
Zampolli has his own ties to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. He and Epstein discussed and later failed in their bid to purchase the agency Elite Model Management in 2004, and according to the Daily Beast, became a partner of Maxwell’s environmental charity and nonprofit organization, the TerraMar Project, that described itself as focused on protecting oceans. Maxwell launched the project in 2012 but the organization was dissolved in December 2019, following Epstein’s arrest in July of that same year.
Last month, the New York Times reported that Zampolli sent a request to David Venturella, an ICE official, to put his ex-girlfriend Amanda Ungaro, who is Brazilian and was arrested on charges of workplace fraud, in ICE detention. Zampolli had been in a custody battle with Ungaro over their son.
The Times obtained communication records demonstrating that Venturella contacted ICE’s Miami office to make sure agents would take Ungaro from a Miami jail where she was being held, an order that Venturella said was important to an individual closely connected to the White House. Ungaro was placed in ICE custody and deported, but, according to the Times, it remains unclear whether Zampolli’s request led to Ungaro’s deportation.
Mr. Zampolli denied asking ICE to detain Ungaro, saying he only asked Venturella about the status of her case.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement to the Times that Ungaro was detained and deported due to an expired visa and her fraud charges. “Any suggestion that she was arrested and removed for political reasons or favors is FALSE.”
Neither the US State Department nor the Kennedy Center immediately responded to a request from Mother Jones for Zampolli’s comment on the Financial Times and New York Times stories. (The Office for Global Partnerships is an office within the US State Department and Zampolli is on the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center, as appointed by President Trump.
Sensing a pattern? If Zampolli does get a role in organizing the World Cup, fans, players, journalists, and other travelers may be subjected to the Trump administration’s brutal immigration policies.
2026-04-24 00:54:51
Laura Spivak, an organizer with Washington County Indivisible, has spent the past few months trying everything to stop the construction of an ICE detention warehouse only five miles from her home.
“We’ve protested, we’ve written and called, we’ve fought legal battles,” she said at a press conference Thursday in support of the Ban Warehouse Detention Act, a bill Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) is introducing to prohibit the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from using taxpayer funds to purchase, convert, or operate commercial warehouses as immigration detention centers. Senators Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Andy Kim (D-N.J.) introduced a similar bill in the Senate two weeks ago.
Spivak has found some success fighting the warehouse detention center in her backyard. Last week, a judge agreed to temporarily block the construction of a Williamsport, Maryland facility, where ICE planned to jail up to 1,500 people. But without more help, Spivak fears that this will only be a temporary victory.
The Ban Warehouse Detention Act, Spivak said, “prevents local politicians from colluding with DHS to convert warehouses into detention camps, and prevents them from shutting out the voices of residents like us.”
As of February, the Department of Homeland Security planned to spend over $38 billion purchasing 24 warehouses across the country, in order to detain up to 92,000 people. So far, they have purchased eleven.
Spivak thinks that money could be better-spent doing pretty much anything else. Williamsport’s local library needs renovation, its school buildings need modernization, and investing in tourism could bring prosperity to the town’s historic district. “A prison camp will not help Williamsport develop economically,” she said. “It will drive down property values and bring shame to a town that deserves a helping hand, not a federal slap in the face.”
In early April, the Department of Homeland Security said they would pause the purchase of any new warehouses while conducting an internal review of facilities purchased under recently-fired Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. But a pause, Tlaib said Thursday, is not enough.
“We need to save lives right now,” Tlaib said. She has been in contact with immigrants held in warehouse detention in Michigan, she said: some of them have been held for months after signing letters stating their willingness to leave the country; others are becoming sick due to the conditions in the facilities.
“A young lady that was in the facility for over a year at 33 years old, and never had a seizure before, had a seizure because of malnutrition and sleep deprivation,” Tlaib said. “I mean, this is a form of torture.” Immigrants at one GEO-group-owned facility in North Lake, Michigan, have launched a hunger strike demanding access to adequate food, medical care, and legal representation.
The local-level pushback against ICE, meanwhile, continues: there are rapid-response networks in every major city, where residents alert each other to the presence of ICE officers and gather resources for immigrants in their communities. Online maps show current and future detention warehouse purchases planned in communities across the country. And wherever ICE plans to build a facility, protests tend to follow.
Under Tlaib’s draft bill, no agency may “Establish, operate, expand, convert, or renovate any warehouse, industrial facility, tent, soft-sided structure, modular unit, or similar building or structure for the purposes of housing, processing, or detaining individuals under civil immigration authority.”
“Human beings do not belong in warehouses,” said Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Il.). “From Arizona to New Hampshire, even Republican local elected officials oppose these warehouses. Not one penny of our tax dollars should be going towards these massive detention centers.”
2026-04-23 03:44:07
The Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial is being sued by one of its billionaire investors, who claims the company froze his token holdings.
In the lawsuit filed Tuesday, Justin Sun accused World Liberty Financial of “engaging in an illegal scheme to seize property.”
“They wrongfully froze all of my tokens, stripped me of my right to vote on governance proposals, and have threatened to permanently destroy my tokens,” Sun wrote in a statement on X on Tuesday night. While he said he remains an “ardent supporter” of Trump and his administration’s efforts to make crypto-friendly policies, Sun wrote that “certain individuals” associated with World Liberty were operating the venture “in a manner that goes against President Trump’s values.”
Sun backed the Trump family when they launched World Liberty Financial in 2024, investing $30 million. He spent another $45 million on 3 billion tokens just a few months later. According to Reuters, Sun owns about 4 billion tokens worth approximately $320 million.
World Liberty Financial’s co-founder, Zach Witkoff, wrote in a Wednesday post on X that Sun’s legal complaint “is a desperate attempt to deflect attention from Sun’s own misconduct.” Witkoff did not offer more details on what Sun did but said the investor’s actions required the company to “take action to protect itself and its users.”
As my colleagues Russ Choma, Dan Friedman, and Tim Murphy wrote in 2025:
Shortly after Trump took office, the Securities and Exchange Commission—which had accused Sun of fraud in a federal complaint—agreed to pause its lawsuit while the parties pursued a “potential resolution.” That was one of more than a dozen lawsuits and investigations targeting crypto firms that the SEC reportedly backed off from after Trump took office.
Sun eventually resolved the case with the SEC in a $10 million settlement last month.
The Trump family receives 75 percent of net proceeds from token sales. According to the Wall Street Journal, since the launch, they have received about $1 billion in proceeds as of December 2025.
