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

New Mexico will invest $500 million into purchasing water from controversial sources, including treated oilfield wastewater, as a means to bolster the state’s water portfolio. The purchases are the latest in a long-running series of deals dipping into untapped waters to shore up dwindling supplies as climate change and decades of overconsumption drive aridification of the Southwest. 

The water would come from two sources: brackish saltwater, from aquifers deep underground, and produced water—wastewater from oil and gas wells. Neither source, but particularly the latter, is immediately fit for most consumptive purposes. But as traditional water supplies like rivers and groundwater aquifers are depleted in the Southwest, local and state governments are increasingly investing in new water sources to keep up economic and population growth, despite skepticism from environmentalists and water experts. 

“In arid states like ours, every drop counts. A warming climate throws that fact into sharper relief every day,” said Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in a press release Tuesday. “This is innovation in action: We’re leveraging the private sector to strengthen our climate resiliency and protect our precious freshwater resources.”

Critics are calling the plan a handout for the fossil fuel industry that will only incentivize further drilling for oil and gas in New Mexico, where the produced water comes from, driving increased emissions of greenhouse gases to further warm the climate and dry out the region. 

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

When Greta Thunberg posted a photo of herself holding a “stand with Gaza” sign on Instagram in October, the backlash in Israel and Germany came hard and fast.

An Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson initially told Politico that “whoever identifies with Greta in any way in the future, in my view, is a terror supporter,” although later retracted his comments. The official X account of Israel said “Hamas doesn’t use sustainable materials for their rockets” and told Thunberg to speak up for its victims. The Israeli education ministry said it would strike any reference to the Swedish climate activist from its curriculum.

In Germany, politicians and pundits across the political spectrum demanded that the national branch of Fridays for Future, the student protest movement that Thunberg started in 2018, distance itself from her views. The group put out a statement underlining its support for Israel’s right to exist and, in the weeks that followed, explicitly distanced itself from social media posts made by the international group. Germany’s leading news magazine Der Spiegel ran a lengthy article with personal comments on Thunberg’s childhood character and appearance under the headline: “Has Greta Thunberg betrayed the climate movement?”

The violence in Israel and Gaza since October 7 has become an unexpected flashpoint for climate activists in rich countries. As world leaders meet for the Cop28 summit in Dubai, the loose collection of movements, many of which have built their support around inclusivity and global justice, are divided on whether or how to take a stand on the conflict.

The four GOP candidates competed over many things at the Republican debate Wednesday night—support for Israel, fitness to lead, and how they felt about Donald Trump. But one recurring theme was which one could claim to be most anti-trans of them all.

Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sparred over who took a more draconian stance on so-called bathroom bills, which prevent transgender people from using bathrooms aligned with their gender identity.

Haley pointed out that while running for governor in 2018, DeSantis once dismissed legislating the “bathroom wars” as not “a good use of our time.” DeSantis clapped back, noting that he signed a bathroom bill as governor and took Haley to task for refusing to do so herself. She claimed such a bill was unnecessary and voters weren’t asking for it.  

“I stood up for little girls,” DeSantis declared. “You didn’t do it.”

Vivek Ramaswamy falsely claimed “transgenderism” is a “mental health disorder,” adding that he wants to impose a federal ban on gender-affirming care for minors. 

Chris Christie said the quiet part out loud at the fourth Republican debate Wednesday night. The dominant figure in the Republican Party—former President Donald Trump—isn’t on the debate stage, and when the debate began, nobody talked about him despite his dominance in the polls.

When the former New Jersey governor finally wrestled some airtime from his three opponents—Vivek Ramaswamy, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—he noted that none of them had taken on Trump directly.

“We’re 17 minutes into this debate and…we’ve had these three acting as if this race is between the four of us,” Christie said. “The fifth guy, who doesn’t have the guts to show up and stand here, he’s the one who, as you just put it, is way ahead in the polls.”

“The fact is that when you go and say the truth about somebody who is a dictator, a bully, who has taken shots at everybody…then I understand why these three are timid to say anything about it,” he added, calling Trump “Voldemort, he who shall not be named.”

During his first time speaking in tonight's GOP debate, Chris Christie criticized his debate competitors and moderators for not bringing up Donald Trump or clearly denouncing the former president's falsehoods and recent comments about being a “dictator.” https://t.co/kN48tKlMMu pic.twitter.com/3aNfIwvXYK

For the first time since Roe was decided in 1973, a pregnant adult is asking a court to step in so she can have an abortion.

In late November, Kate Cox received the confirmation she’d been dreading: her fetus likely wasn’t going to survive. Cox, who lives in Texas, is 20 weeks pregnant. Doctors told her continuing the pregnancy could threaten her life.

Cox is now asking a judge to grant a temporary restraining order to halt the enforcement of Texas’ near total ban so she can terminate her pregnancy. “Kate Cox needs an abortion,” reads the first line of Cox’ petition, “and she needs it now.” 

Cox is represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights. The organization is currently arguing in the Texas Supreme Court that pregnant people with medical complications have not been receiving proper care in the state. As I have previously reported, that case is about situations like the one Cox is experiencing right now in which vague exceptions to abortion bans undermine clarity of care:

[Texas’] law calls for “reasonable medical judgment” and permits abortion if the patient could die or if they’re at “serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.” The lawsuit argues this language is too vague and dangerous for pregnant people and providers. 

President Biden condemned accounts of rape and sexual violence reportedly perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli girls and women, stating that “the world can’t just look away at what’s going on.” 

Biden made the comments at a campaign fundraiser in Boston on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press, adding that the world must condemn “without equivocation” and “without exception” the “horrific accounts of unimaginable cruelty” shared by survivors over the past few weeks. 

“Reports of women raped—repeatedly raped—and their bodies being mutilated while still alive—of women corpses being desecrated, Hamas terrorists inflicting as much pain and suffering on women and girls as possible and then murdering them,” Biden said, according to the AP. “It is appalling.”

Hamas has denied allegations of sexual assault.

Biden’s comments come as evidence of sexual atrocities perpetrated by Hamas mounts and officials increasingly demand an investigation.

Donald Trump’s long history of telling on himself continues with the admission of his authoritarian aspirations. 

The startling confession came on Tuesday during a town hall with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, during which the former president was asked whether he’d seek revenge on his political enemies if elected again to the White House. Trump responded that he would not be a dictator—”except for day one.”

Hannity asks Trump for a second time if he has plans to abuse power. Trump admits he plans to do some dictatorial things on "day one" of his second term. pic.twitter.com/51b9I8bIJ7

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 6, 2023

Retail workers are walking out during  the busiest shopping day of the year, Black Friday, leveraging a weekend of huge profits for retailers to demand better pay and working conditions. 

Amazon workers in more than 30 countries are striking this weekend as part of the worldwide “Make Amazon Pay” campaign, protesting the retailer’s labor practices, low wages, and high emissions. The strike would amount to “the largest day of industrial disruption in Amazon’s thirty-year history,” according to Amanda Gering, an organizer with the UK’s GMB union, which began strikes at Amazon earlier this month. This Black Friday marked the fourth year globally that Amazon workers have planned strikes for this shopping weekend—an effort that began during Covid, when Amazon made record profits as workers struggled and, in some cases, died.

In Washington, about four hundred Macy’s employees from three different stores went on strike, beginning their picket at 3:00 AM on Black Friday. Their union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, says that Macy’s isn’t doing enough to address safety threats like violent shoppers and shoplifting, and that pay is not keeping up with the cost of living. “Workers don’t feel safe in our store, and now they are scared of retaliation so they’ve stopped calling for help when they see a threat,” explained sales associate Liisa Luick in a release from UFCW 3000. Azia Domingo, who has worked for Macy’s for 21 years, said, “Macy’s is making billions of dollars and paying their CEO $11 million a year, but most of us workers are struggling to make ends meet…We shouldn’t have to question whether we can afford to have health insurance and go to the doctor.”

These Black Friday strikes cap off a historic year of labor action. In September, the United Auto Workers launched a historic strike at the country’s three largest automakers. (Mother Jones’ rank-and-file staff, including the author of this post, are represented by UAW Local 2103.)  In October, the largest health care strike in US history took place when 75,ooo Kaiser Permanente workers across five states and Washington, DC, walked out. Hollywood actors and writers spent almost half the year away from sets and writer’s rooms, demanding better pay and protections around the use of artificial intelligence. 

“Workers know that it doesn’t matter what country you’re in or what your job title is,” said General Secretary Cristy Hoffman of UNI, an international union federation which has workers taking part in this weekend’s Amazon strike.  “We are all united in the fight for higher wages, an end to unreasonable quotas, and a voice on the job.”

After one year, with more than 2,500 lawsuits filed, New York’s Adult Survivors Act expired Friday. The act lifted the statute of limitations for civil claims by adult sexual assault survivors, providing New Yorkers a one-year “lookback window” to sue their offenders or the institutions that enabled them.

For the last year, survivors’ high-profile cases against powerful individuals have made national headlines, sometimes decades after they were assaulted. In May, a federal jury found Donald Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation in a case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll under the act. The rapper Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs has been sued three times under the act. Cases have also been brought against performers Russell Brand, Bill Cosby, and Jamie Foxx. 

But, of course, not every case was brought against a famous person—and many reveal the complicity of powerful institutions in New York state. As the act was set to expire, Anna Kull, a partner at trial law firm Levy Konigsberg LLP, told the Financial Times that of the nearly 630 cases she filed, 600 were “cases filed on behalf of formerly incarcerated women who were sexually abused by correctional officers.” The Survivors Law Project, a collaboration between lawyers Carrie Goldberg and Susan Crumiller, filed suit against the New York Police Department under the act, alleging  “a pervasive and long-standing custom and practice of transferring and/or demoting female police officers in retaliation for making complaints of sexual harassment.”

The Survivors Law Project also worked with Maggie Cruz to bring a suit on behalf of her mother, a developmentally disabled woman who was raped and impregnated in 1985. Through a DNA test, Cruz identified her father as a caretaker who worked at the facility where her mother had lived. “My mother has had a hard life,” said Cruz in a statement. “I hope this lawsuit will help her get the care that she deserves after [the New York State Office for People With Developmental Disabilities] failed to protect her from her attacker 37 years ago.”

Evelyn Yang, the wife of former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, used her platform to help pass the act, inspired by her own experience being sexually assaulted by her OB-GYN while pregnant with her first child. Earlier this year, she spoke to my colleague Maggie Duffy about her experience:

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

In the beginning, parking lots were created to curb chaos on the road. But climate change has turned that dynamic on its head.

Since the 1920s a little-known policy called parking minimums has shaped a large facet of American life. In major cities, this meant that any type of building—apartments, banks, or shopping malls—needed to reserve a certain amount of parking spaces to accommodate anyone who might visit. 

But transportation makes up almost one-third of carbon emissions in the US and cars represent a significant portion of those emissions. As the country attempts to aggressively cut carbon emissions, reducing dependence on fossil fuels will also mean rethinking what transportation and public space look like, especially in cities.

Earlier this month, the city of Austin, Texas, became the latest community to eliminate parking minimums and is now the largest city in the US to do so. “If we want half of all trips to be in something other than a car, then we can’t, as a city, in my opinion, mandate that every home or business have at least one parking space for each resident or customer,” said Zohaib Qadri, the Austin city council member who introduced the measure.

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.