This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Elon Musk was once lauded as a sort of green Tony Stark—the genius inventor who leads a double life as superhero Iron Man—for single-handedly tackling the climate crisis one Tesla at a time, helping to forge a clean energy future and pushing for new taxes to drive down fossil fuel use.

But the climate credentials of the world’s richest person have become clouded by his embrace of rightwing politicians, some of whom dismiss global heating, as well as by his management of X, formerly known as Twitter, during which many climate scientists have fled the platform amid a proliferation of misinformation about the climate crisis.

Those contradictions run deeply through his work and life. The man who sometimes seems to think of himself as a spartan-living, green thinker is actually one of the elite 1 percent of the world’s population who, according to a new Oxfam report, produce as much carbon pollution as the poorest two-thirds of humanity, comprising 5 billion people. Where does the reality lie?

In 2020, Musk vowed to get rid of “almost all physical possessions” and he has since jettisoned a number of mansions, opting instead to occasionally sleep on the couch of friends’ homes and, more recently, to move into a $50,000 modular home in Boca Chica, Texas, near the testing and development site of SpaceX, his space tourism venture. And unlike many billionaires, Musk does not own a superyacht, which tend to be highly polluting.

Henry Ford may be known for revolutionizing the automobile industry, but there’s another thing he mass produced: antisemitism.

That’s one thing my colleague Dan Schulman explains in his new book, The Money Kings: The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants Who Transformed Wall Street and Shaped Modern America. The book tells the Gilded Age saga of a collection of German-Jewish financial dynasties—including the families who founded Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers—who profoundly influenced the 20th century. At the heart of the story is Jacob Schiff, a renowned financier and philanthropist who rivaled J.P. Morgan as the leading investment banker of that era. Though Schiff is not well remembered today, his legacy can be found in many aspects of modern life, including in the thriving Jewish community that his philanthropy helped to nurture.

There was also a tragic aspect of the story of Schiff and his allies, who would become leading characters in antisemitic conspiracy theories that persist to this day.

I recently got to chat with Schulman about some of the ways Schiff’s legacy persists today, and he filled me in on something that I found particularly interesting: Henry Ford’s obsession with German-Jewish bankers, which contributed to the automaker’s methodical, years-long dissemination of antisemitic propaganda via his weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. Over seven years, “this paper relentlessly attacked Jews—it blamed Jews not only for wars and financial panics but things like wrecking American baseball,” Schulman notes. Schiff and his partners in the investment bank of Kuhn Loeb were frequent targets.

Now, here’s where things take a turn. The Dearborn Independent collected its anti-Jewish writings into four volumes titled The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem. Millions of copies were published throughout the world, including in Germany. And when a New York Times reporter visited an up-and-coming politician named Adolf Hitler in 1922, he noticed a portrait of Ford on the wall of Hitler’s office and a stack of copies of The International Jew. “Hitler and the Nazis were distributing millions of copies,” Schulman tells me. “In a very real way, Henry Ford was a Nazi muse.” It’s through the Indepedent‘s attacks on Schiff and other Jews that Ford not only helped to plant the seeds of modern antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish power but also influenced Germany’s genocidal leader. With antisemitism once again surging, it’s more important than ever to understand the origins and history of this hatred and bigotry.

Hamas and Israel will free hostages and prisoners in a deal brokered by American, Qatari, and Egyptian officials that will include a four-day ceasefire to allow more humanitarian aid to reach Gaza, officials announced late Tuesday. 

The negotiations come after six weeks of brutal fighting that has killed more than 11,000 Palestinians—more than half of whom were women and children—and 1,200 Israelis, according to the latest numbers published by the Associated Press.

Here’s what to know about the agreement: 

What are the details of the release of the hostages and prisoners? 

According to Qatar’s government, 50 women and children held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza Strip will be released. Those hostages are part of a group of 240 people kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7. The freed hostages will likely include at least three Americans—two women and a child—National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on the “TODAY” show Wednesday. Israel has also agreed to extend the ceasefire for 24 hours for every additional 10 hostages released, Sullivan confirmed. 

“I know you don’t like to admit it,” New York Mayor Eric Adams told reporters last month. “But I know you get on your knees and pray every night, ‘Thank God Eric is the mayor of our city.'” 

Chuckling with smug self-satisfaction, Adams delivered these remarks roughly two weeks before federal authorities raided the home of his chief fundraiser in an explosive investigation into whether his mayoral campaign accepted illegal donations from Turkey. The probe—which has since expanded to include the seizure of Adams’ personal phones—and mounting reports revealing Adams’ intensive ties and travel to Turkey, comes as the mayor proposes billions in cuts to city programs. Those cuts include slashing the NYPD, food and housing services, the sanitation department, library hours, and a litany of major cultural institutions. 

It’s against this gloomy backdrop that Adams’ standing with New Yorkers—or from his perspective, the supplicants who thank God every day for delivering him to Gracie Mansion—has nose-dived, according to a new Marist poll. With only 37 percent approving of his job performance, a staggering 72 percent of those polled believe Adams’ mayoral campaign is guilty of wrongdoing in its dealings with Turkey; New Yorkers appear split on whether such malfeasance was illegal or merely unethical. 

Perhaps the most prominent person watching this flood of bad news for the embattled mayor? Andrew Cuomo. The former New York governor, who resigned in 2021 over sexual harassment allegations, is reportedly considering a run to replace Adams in 2025 should a federal investigation effectively irreparably damage his political career. All of which is certain to put the ongoing effort among progressives to identify a formidable challenger into overdrive, should New Yorkers not have an appetite to watch a tortured battle between two ignominious men. 

As for the ongoing FBI investigation, when asked on Tuesday whether he’d be willing to disclose details of his personal trips to Turkey, Adams offered a one-word reply: “Maybe.”

A top Ukrainian military officer working under the command of the head of Ukraine’s top general played a central role in the undersea bombing of the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline last year, the Washington Post and Der Spiegel jointly reported on Saturday.

The two publications said that unnamed officials in the US and Europe had identified Roman Chervinsky, a 48-year-old colonel who served in Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces, as “coordinator” of the September 26, 2022 Nord Stream bombing in which three explosions ruptured two pipelines that transport gas from under the Baltic Sea Russia to Germany. The reports say that Chervinsky “took orders from more senior Ukrainian officials, who ultimately reported to Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s highest-ranking military officer.”

The initially mysterious 2022 explosions created an international whodunnit. Many initially blamed Russia. In February, the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh published a report claiming the United States was behind the blasts. Russia has echoed that claim.

But the Post’s report is the latest information to emerge suggesting Ukraine was responsible. Ukraine benefited from the Nord Stream disabling—even before the war, its citizens were vocal critics of the pipelines, which bypassed the country and cost Kiev revenue it had previously received from transporting Russian gas toward Western Europe. As Russia prepared to invade Ukraine in 2022, Germany, under US pressure, shut down the pipeline. But the prospect of its resumed operation, which would earn Moscow revenue it could use to wage war, gave Ukraine a motive.

Chervinsky denied playing any part in the sabotage. “All speculations about my involvement in the attack on Nord Stream are being spread by Russian propaganda without any basis,” he said in a statement to news outlets.

If Donald Trump wins back the presidency, he plans to quickly detain millions of undocumented immigrants in vast camps in Texas, try to end birthright citizenship, renew a version of his effort to ban Muslims from entering the United States, and deny visas to foreigners whose politics his advisers don’t like, the New York Times reported Saturday.

The draconian measures are part of a “blitz” described by far-right Trump immigration adviser Stephen Miller—as an effort to execute an array of problematic, and in some cases clearly illegal, steps to restrict legal immigration and deport millions before immigration-rights lawyers and federal courts can catch up.

Trump’s anti-immigrant plan is the latest detailed authoritarian blueprint to emerge from within the indicted former president’s brain trust. Trump, if elected, also reportedly plans to immediately invoke the Insurrection Act to “ allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations,” end civil service protections so he can fire large swaths of the federal workforce, and use the Justice Department to prosecute critics and political enemies.

It may not be news that Trump wants to do such things. But the specificity and resolve with which his advisers are preparing to implement his wishes is a major departure from Trump’s frenetic past attempts. Throughout his first term in office, Trump’s malicious intentions were often thwarted by his administration’s inexperience, incompetence, and advisers who tried to instill some presidential norms and prevent their boss from violating the law. Trump and his remaining loyalists, the Times notes, believe they will face no such restraints in a second term.

Here are further details of the measures Trump is planning, according to the Times:

Among the thousands of people who should have spent more time thinking before posting about Israel and Hamas, Sen. Tom Cotton may have just taken the prize.

The Arkansas Republican on Thursday jumped on what he called “reports” that freelance photographers who documented Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israelis “almost certainly knew about the attack in advance” and “even participated” in the plot. He fired off a letter demanding that the Justice Department “immediately open a national security investigation” into four media outlets that employed the journalists: CNN, the Associated Press, Reuters, and the New York Times—the latter of which Cotton has, infamously, written for.

Hours later, the head of an Israeli media watchdog organization whose speculation had sparked these accusations against the journalists admitted he had no evidence for it. Gil Hoffman, who runs “HonestReporting”—a website that says it aims to combat media disinformation about Israel—said he was just “raising questions” when he suggested in a widely circulated online post Wednesday that the freelancers who took photographs of Hamas invaders during their attack must have known it was coming: “Is it conceivable to assume that ‘journalists’ just happened to appear early in the morning at the border without prior coordination with the terrorists?” the site asked. “Or were they part of the plan?”

Hoffman told the AP on Thursday that those were “legitimate questions” but also said he accepted the subsequent explanations from some of the freelancers he impugned that they had not, in fact, conspired with the terrorists to commit mass murder. Hoffman also said: “We don’t claim to be a news organization.”

The real news organizations that Hoffman was questioning have responded to his post by stating that they did not have advance knowledge of the attack and that they have no indication the freelance journalists they paid did either. The earliest photo at issue, published by Reuters, was taken 45 minutes after Hamas gunmen entered Israel, the outlet said. All available evidence suggests that Palestinian reporters, who live in the geographically tiny Gaza strip, rushed to the scene of major news event, “doing what photojournalists always do during major news events,” as the Times said.

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

After half a decade of failed attempts, Kathleen Campbell thought 2021 would finally be the year she retired. That is—until she received a letter in December from Navigator CO2 Ventures.

The company wanted to build part of its carbon dioxide pipeline through her property, about 1,000 feet from her rural Illinois home, just south of Springfield, which she had shared with her husband for more than 30 years. The massive project would ultimately span five Midwestern states, and Navigator was threatening to seize her property through eminent domain if she didn’t grant them an easement.

“This has absolutely ruined my retirement,” Campbell remembers thinking. Anxiety gave way to anger as she imagined a backhoe tearing up the beets, peppers and other vegetables growing in the quarter-acre garden that she and her husband had spent years cultivating. Later, she would learn a CO2 pipeline in rural Mississippi had ruptured just a year prior, sending at least 45 people to the hospital.

But Navigator’s executives couldn’t have known who they were dealing with. A distinguished research professor at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Campbell had spent her life combing through complex health studies and thwarting deep-pocketed pharmaceutical companies from bringing potentially dangerous drugs to market. Within months, she had helped birth a formidable opposition campaign to the pipeline.

Last month, the head of Florida’s public university system issued a directive. After consulting with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), Chancellor Ray Rodrigues ordered the state’s universities to “deactivate” campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine. Rodrigues suggested—without evidence—that the national SJP organization was violating criminal laws by providing “material support” to Hamas, which two weeks earlier had massacred roughly 1,400 people in Israel. In a similar letter, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called on universities across the country to “investigate the activities” of SJP chapters “for potential violations of the prohibition against materially supporting a foreign terrorist organization.”

Rodrigues and Greenblatt based their demands in large part on a public relations “toolkit” in which the national SJP described the October 7 attack as “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance.”

“SJP chapters are supporting & praising Hamas terrorism,” Greenblatt wrote after the toolkit became public. “This is unacceptable, dangerous & despicable.” That may be so, but as attorney Greg Lukianoff explains, the document wasn’t evidence of a crime—and it certainly shouldn’t be used by universities to interfere with constitutionally protected speech. “We don’t even think the analysis is particularly hard,” he told me last week during a wide-ranging interview about threats to campus free speech during the Israel-Hamas war.

Lukianoff—the co-author of the new book The Canceling of the American Mind—is the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a civil liberties group that for years has battled to protect the free speech rights of college students, staff, and faculty. After Rodrigues ordered the closure of SJP chapters, FIRE wrote its own letter to Florida universities, calling on them to “refuse the State of Florida’s order to violate” students’ rights. To do otherwise, FIRE argued, would represent “unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.” (Disclosure: I’ve donated a small amount of money to FIRE.)

Since we spoke last week, there’s been a bit of hopeful news. According to one key DeSantis ally, two of Florida’s most prominent public universities are “openly disobeying” the order to disband SJP chapters. The schools, according to Politico, cite “lingering legal concerns” for their unwillingness to immediately comply with the governor’s demands.

Since October 7, there has been a divide. Polls have found that Democratic voters are about equally sympathetic to Palestinians and Israelis, do not approve of Israel’s response to the attack by Hamas, and favor sending humanitarian aid to Gaza by far larger margins than sending weapons to Israel. But these have not been the priorities of the representatives they elected.

President Joe Biden and most Democrats in Congress continue to take the pro-Israel line that the party has for decades. Biden has rejected calls for a ceasefire while adhering to a longstanding personal policy of largely refraining from public criticism of Israel. Most Democratic members of Congress have avoided breaking with the administration or making themselves a target for pro-Israel groups. Like the president, they tend to be old—the average Democratic House member is 58 and the average senator is 65—and came of age at a time when largely unconditional support for Israel was the norm.

Their positions are particularly at odds with the younger voters whom Democrats will need to win next year. Many young progressives appear more disgusted with a Democratic president than they have been in decades. At the anti-war protests that have spread across the nation, they have chanted, “Biden, Biden, you can’t hide; we charge you with genocide.” The concern for Democrats is not so much that younger voters will back Republicans in 2024, but that they will support a third-party candidate, or not vote at all.

There is limited survey data on support for a ceasefire. A poll from the left-leaning Data for Progress last month showed that two-thirds of all voters, including 80 percent of Democrats, support the United States calling for a ceasefire. So far, a pro-ceasefire resolution introduced by Rep. Cori Bush (D-Ill.) is backed by only 18 of 212 House Democrats. Along with them, perhaps a couple dozen additional Democrats have called for some form of stopping the violence.

Waleed Shahid, a Democratic strategist and former communications director for Justice Democrats, said that he believes most Democrats have not called for a ceasefire because of the “political wrath they would face” from groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Democratic Majority for Israel. AIPAC alone spent at least $28.5 million in the last election cycle, according to Jewish Currents. Much of that went to defeating progressive candidates seen as critical of Israel.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The US and UK militaries “owe” at least $111 billion in reparations to communities most harmed by their planet-heating pollution, a first-of-its-kind study calculates.

The research employs a “social cost of carbon” framework—a way to estimate the cost, in dollars, of the climate damage done by each additional ton of carbon in the atmosphere.

“The environmental costs of maintaining the global military reach of the US and UK armed forces are astonishing,” said Patrick Bigger, research director of the Climate and Community Project and co-author of the report.

According to the report, which was published by the UK-based think tank Common Wealth and the US-based Climate and Community Project, the two militaries have generated at least 474 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent since the 2015 United Nations Paris climate agreement. That’s more than the total greenhouse gas emissions produced in the UK last year.

In 2010, Barack Obama signed the Plain Writing Act into law, requiring that federal government documents use clear, straightforward language. Despite its passage more than a decade ago, though, getting plain-language information about government policy—ranging from the federal to local level—isn’t always easy. 

Plain-language documents serve a dual purpose: they can make information more accessible to people with disabilities that affect cognition and memory, but also address the fact that legislation is already complicated for most people to read—a case in point of how accessibility practices benefit even those without a particular disability.

New Disabled South, a disability justice nonprofit founded in 2022, is trying to make more information available to disabled people on legislation that affects them, launching its Plain Language Policy Dashboard in November to cover 14 Southern states. As of now, the bills it explains fall into six categories: accessibility, civil rights, criminalization, poverty and care, democracy, and education. 

Dom Kelly, New Disabled South’s CEO, told me that he hopes the dashboard—which uses AI to translate texts into plain language, which is then checked for accuracy and additional analysis is added—can also help “combat myths and disinformation” that spread on social media, like whether a mental health–related bill could actually lead to more institutionalization. 

I spoke to Kelly and e.k. hoffman, associate director of the nonprofit’s advocacy arm, about the policy dashboard and the importance of accessibility in politics.

Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia will not run for reelection next year. 

The conservative Democrat called the choice—which he shared the news of in a video he posted to X—”one of the toughest decisions of my life.” Instead of running for Senate, Manchin said he would be “traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.” 

If you think that sounds insufficiently vague…I agree. Which is why I reached out to Manchin’s press team in a bid to get some clarity. And specifically, to ask: Is he running for president?

No word yet. (Though, I’m not quite holding my breath: after my colleague David Corn reported a Manchin scoop back in 2021—that he was considering leaving the Democratic party and formulating an exit plan if the Build Back Better plan wasn’t dramatically cut down to his liking—the senator denigrated the Mother Jones story as “bullshit.” We stand by the story.)

In the meantime, NBC News reports that a person “with direct knowledge” of the politician’s future plans said “nothing is off the table” and “no specific decisions have been made other than a commitment to find a way to change the country’s political dialogue.”

GOP presidential candidates are threatening to deport international students who they accuse of sympathizing with anti-Israel terrorists. “If you are here on a student visa as a foreign national, and you’re making common cause with Hamas, I’m canceling your visa and I’m sending you home, no questions asked,” vowed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis during Wednesday night’s debate.

“To every student who has come to our country on a visa to a college campus, your visa is a privilege, not a right,” South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott said during the same event. “To all the students on visas who are encouraging Jewish genocide, I would deport you.”

Those comments were just the latest salvo in the escalating Republican campaign against immigrants who the right accuses of siding with Hamas, the group that perpetrated the October 7 mass murder in Israel. It’s a trend that is setting off alarm bells for civil liberties advocates, who warn that these proposals risk conflating support for Palestinian rights or criticism of the Israeli government with an endorsement of terrorism. Moreover, they argue, threats of deportation could have a severely chilling effect on free speech and the right to protest.

“It’s a really dangerous rhetoric,” says Azadeh Shahshahani, the legal and advocacy director of Project South, an organization that focuses on racial justice and immigrants’ rights. “This seems to be just another measure that is targeting a particular group of people, in this case immigrants, and using vulnerability in terms of immigration status to try to force people to stay quiet.”

The Republican demands have already gone far beyond typical campaign-trail bluster. In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) urged the Biden administration to “immediately deport any foreign national—including and especially any alien on a student visa—that has expressed support for Hamas and its murderous attacks on Israel.” A week after the October 7 attack, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) introduced a resolution calling on President Biden to “revoke visas and initiate deportation proceedings for any foreign national who has endorsed or espoused the terrorist activities of Hamas” or other anti-Israel terrorist organizations. 

Rep. Mike Johnson, the newly elected Republican House speaker, used to conduct a seminar in churches premised on the idea that the United States is a “Christian nation.” This ministry, as he has referred to it, is yet more evidence that Johnson is committed to a hardcore Christian fundamentalism that shapes his views of politics and government.

The seminar, titled “Answers for Our Times: Government, Culture, and Christianity,” was organized by Onward Christian Education Services, Inc., a company owned by his wife, Kelly Johnson, a Christian counselor and anti-abortion activist who calls herself a “leader in the pro-family movement.” The website for her counseling service—which was taken down shortly after Johnson became speaker—described the seminar, which featured both her and Johnson, as exploring several questions, such as, “What is happening in America and how do we fix it?” The list includes this query: “Can our heritage as a Christian nation be preserved?” There were different versions of the seminar running from two-hour-long lectures to retreats lasting two days. 

Mike and Kelly Johnson, each a fundamentalist Christian and culture war battler who advocates adhering to what they call a “Biblical worldview,” launched this initiative in 2019. After one such presentation on February 24, 2019, at the First Baptist Church in Bossier City, Louisiana, where they are members—an event that also featured Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council—a local television news show reported that the seminar’s goal was to “keep God in Government.” Johnson posted the article on his congressional website. 

According to a Louisiana Baptist newsletter, the Johnsons intended to first pitch their seminars to Baptist churches in the Pelican State before expanding to other states. The publication reported that the couple’s goal was “to equip churches to take a stand against the cultural attacks now being directed at people of faith, the traditional family and basic freedoms embedded in the U.S. Constitution.” It noted that Johnson said he was compelled to create this new ministry while serving in the US House because he was concerned “that too many believers today feel ill-informed to provide substantive answers to fake arguments.” It quoted Johnson: “Our nation is entering one of the most challenging seasons in its history and there is an urgent need for God’s people to be armed and ready with the Truth.” He was referring to what fundamentalists call “Biblical truth.”

A promotion blurb for the seminar described it this way: “As polls show that Christianity is in rapid decline in America, and the culture is growing more secularized and more coarsened, many believers feel ill-informed and ill-prepared to do anything to reverse these trends. Scripture is clear that we have an obligation to provide substantive answers… But HOW?”

For the briefest of moments, it must have felt like the good old days for the former president’s eldest daughter.

But fresh from her star turn at Kim Kardashian’s celebrity-studded 43rd birthday party in Beverly Hills, Ivanka Trump will be back in the public eye very soon, in far less glamorous climes: The witness stand of a downtown Manhattan courtroom.

Seemingly desperate to distance herself from her dad, the eldest Trump daughter will nonetheless be forced to testify in his $250 million New York civil fraud case on November 3, after Judge Arthur Engoron on Friday rejected Ivanka’s bid to avoid testifying in open court, according to the Associated Press. Ivanka Trump’s lawyers had stated that she hasn’t been part of the Trump Organization since 2017 and currently resides in Florida, arguing that the New York court shouldn’t have jurisdiction over her.

Ivanka, along with Eric and Don Jr., will now be compelled to take the stand ahead of the main defendant himself, Donald Trump. The former president will appear on November 6, in the blockbuster trial that threatens to unravel his sprawling business empire.

Ivanka has wanted to move on from all this drama, explicitly announcing she won’t be joining her father’s 2024 campaign. In the “billionaire bunker,” she now calls home—a 300-acre gated community on an island near Miami called Indian Creek Village—Ivanka’s friends have reportedly been supportive of her bid to write a new chapter. According to the New York Times, “Ms. Trump now generally minds her own business and people close to her think it is time she is allowed to move on with her new life.”

The Maine mass-shooter obtained several weapons legally, including some in the days immediately before the attack, according to the New York Times, citing local officials.

Robert Card, who shot and killed 18 people in Lewiston, Maine, during a rampage on Wednesday, bought guns in July, just before being hospitalized and ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, according to CNN.

New York State Police told the broadcaster that police were called to Camp Smith in July, where Card was serving in the National Guard, because he was acting “belligerent” and was potentially “intoxicated.” An unnamed federal law enforcement source told CNN that Card informed Army personnel he was “hearing voices” and having thoughts about “hurting other soldiers.” 

Just ten days earlier, Card had purchased a high-powered Ruger SFAR rifle. Maine, where Card purchased the gun, does not require background checks on all gun sales. Twenty states currently enforce universal background checks on firearms purchases. 

Studies suggest that, by themselves, universal background checks may have some effect on reducing gun violence and homicide; many academics believe that they can be very effective when combined with other gun control measures, including gun licensing laws. Maine also does not have permit laws for carrying guns, except in certain places like state and national parks. 

Scores of protestors gathered in New York on Friday night in support of a ceasefire following Israel’s expansion of its ongoing siege of Gaza. Soon after, tens of thousands joined large-scale marches through the streets of London on Saturday morning, demanding an end to the widening bombardment.

Friday night’s protests in New York took place in Manhattan’s Grand Central Station and was organized by Jewish Voices for Peace, which bills itself as “the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world.” The group staged a similar protest on Capitol Hill earlier this month. On Friday, protestors took over the main atrium of the train station for a sit in, and chanted “cease fire now” and “let Gaza live,” many wearing black shirts that said “not in our name” and “ceasefire now.” Two protestors stood on a ledge with a sign that read “Never again for anyone.” 

Jews have taken over New York's Grand Central Station to demand #CeasefireNOW and rights for #Palestinians. Thanks @JvpAction @jvplive @jvpliveNY!! pic.twitter.com/vce42tiOvn

According to the New York Times, as many as 1,000 people attended the Grand Central Station protest. The Times reported that police had initially tried to block entrances to keep protestors from streaming in, but were unable to do so. Organizers told the media that roughly 300 protesters were arrested as a part of the protest. 

Online, activists and celebrities like filmmaker Michael Moore voiced support for the protests.

Maine Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat who last year voted against a federal assault weapons ban, apologized on Thursday for his previous opposition and pledged to reverse course following the mass shootings in Lewiston that killed 18 people and left 13 injured. 

“The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure, which is why I now call on the United States Congress to ban assault rifles, like the one used by this sick perpetrator of this mass killing in my hometown,” Golden said at a press conference. “For the good of my community, I will work with any colleague to get this done in the time that I have left in Congress.” 

Golden—who was elected to office in 2018, won reelection last year and is up for re-election in 2024—was one of five Democrats who voted against a federal assault weapons ban last July. The bill eventually passed the House but has yet to come up for a vote in the Senate. In his apology on Thursday, Golden said he had opposed the ban out of a desire to protect his family and “because of a false confidence that our community was above this.” 

“To the people of Lewiston, my constituents throughout the second district, to the families who lost loved ones, and to those who have been harmed, I ask for forgiveness and support as I seek to put an end to these terrible shootings,”  Golden said. 

Contrition is rare among gun-supporting lawmakers, who have often stopped short of taking meaningful legislative action after mass shootings and become known instead to offer “thoughts and prayers”—or alternative theories about what actually makes such events so lethal. My colleague Mark Follman noted one example following the horrific mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas last year, in which the shooter used an AR-15:  

George Santos has pleaded not guilty for the second time this year. Santos’ plea on Friday morning at the Eastern District of New York’s Long Island courthouse comes after prosecutors unveiled a superseding indictment earlier this month that charges the freshman Republican congressman with helping to orchestrate a fake donor scheme first exposed by Mother Jones in February, fabricating a $500,000 loan to his campaign, and making unauthorized transactions with donors’ credit cards.

Santos is now facing 23 counts of criminal charges.

Federal prosecutors had requested that District Court Judge Joanna Seybert, a Bill Clinton appointee, hold Santos’ trial in May or June of next year. Seybert said that was not possible given the cases already on her docket, and set September 9 as the trial date. The trial is expected to last two to three weeks.

It is unclear whether Santos will be a member of Congress in September. Fellow New York Republicans are moving forward with a motion to expel Santos from the House as part of an effort to distance themselves from him as they run for reelection in swing districts.

Santos did not make a statement or take questions from reporters as he exited the courthouse. On his way out, he was heckled by a small group of protesters. One held a sign that read “Devolder, Defrauds, Devoters,” a reference to Santos’ second last name.