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

A constitutional legal strategy is gaining traction as a way to potentially help bring about climate justice, boosted by a recent high-profile trial in which 16 young plaintiffs spoke movingly about how the climate crisis has affected their lives.

That case, the first US constitutional climate trial, came to an end in Helena, Montana, earlier this month, with a verdict expected to be delivered by a judge in the coming weeks.

Climate and legal advocates say the Montana case—which made national and international headlines—could inspire more legal action, while also pushing forward similar lawsuits pending against four other states and the federal government.

Some climate advocates are, meanwhile, working to enshrine similarly robust environmental rights in other state constitutions, which they say could become the basis of future climate litigation.

The inaugural edition of Tokyo Gendai, the art world’s latest fair, opened to VIPs on Thursday afternoon, with a long line forming ahead of the 2 p.m. opening time and crowded aisles throughout the day. Dealers reported a number of first-day sales, and the buzzing energy throughout the exhibition hall at the Pacifico Yokohama on the first day was palpable.

In a press conference just before the VIP opening of the fair, Magnus Renfrew described this moment as “the beginning of a new chapter for the art scene in Japan,” and he reiterated previous talking points that the inaugural edition of the fair is “the first step on a longer journey,” adding that the group’s “aspiration is that over the coming years we can really build this into a fair of global importance. It’s really time now for the Japanese art scene to step into the spotlight.”

Similarly, Katsunori Takahashi, the head of the private banking division for SMBC, the fair’s lead sponsor, said that though modern and contemporary art has, in recent years, become popular in Japan like elsewhere around the world, Japanese financial institutions “have only been making limited contributions” to the art scene when compared to their counterparts in North America and Europe. With SMBC as principal sponsor, “I think it is a very small step that I would like to make into a very big opportunity … to make further contributions” to Japan’s art market.

Below, a look at the best booths at the 2023 edition of Tokyo Gendai, which runs until Sunday, July 9.  

All images © the Estate of David Wojnarowicz. Courtesy of Primary Information, the Estate of David Wojnarowicz, and P·P·O·W, New York.

The following letters were sent by David Wojnarowicz to his Parisian lover Jean Pierre Delage in 1979, as part of a three-year transatlantic correspondence that ended in 1982. In them, the artist details his day-to-day life with the type of unbridled earnestness that comes with that age, providing a picture of a young man just beginning to find his voice in the world and of the love he has found in it. Although the two exchanged letters in equal measure, Delage’s have largely been lost, leaving us only with a glimpse into the internal world of Wojnarowicz during what turned out to be his formative years. 

Capturing a foundational moment for Wojnarowicz’s artistic and literary practice, the letters not only reveal his captivating personality but also index the development of the visual language that would go on to define him as one of the preeminent artists of his generation. Included with his writings are postcards, drawings, Xeroxes, photographs, collages, flyers, and other ephemera that showcase some of Wojnarowicz’s iconic images and work, as well as document the New York that formed the backdrop to his practice.

—James Hoff, editor

New York City
June 14, 1979

Last Friday morning, at the beginning of a hot June day in Philadelphia, I walked through a phalanx of about a hundred protesters in order to make my way to the Joyful Warriors Summit, the annual convention of the parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty. It was early in the day, but the bass from the speakers was already thrumming, and the protesters—most were young, many were not white—danced behind the barricades that separated them from the Marriott where the convention was taking place. Bedecked in rainbow gear, the jubilant crowd waved signs: “STAND UP TO BULLIES,” “DANCE THE HATE AWAY,” “GO HOME, KAREN.”

This was my second encounter with the joyful warriors, having attended their convention last year, in Tampa, Florida. At that event, there were a few lackluster official protesters, but most of the action outside came from kids attending the anime gathering at the convention center next door. Back then, inside the Marriott, I watched Moms for Liberty heads Tina Descovich, Tiffany Justice, and Marie Rogerson present Gov. Ron DeSantis with a commemorative sword. The golden boy in Tampa, who would be speaking at breakfast in Philadelphia, had a far less prominent role this year; it was clear that the headliner would be Friday’s evening speaker, former President Donald Trump.

Demonstrators react as James Calkins, a supporter of former President Donald Trump, walks outside the Moms for Liberty meeting in Philadelphia, Friday, June 30, 2023.

Nathan Howard/AP

Founded in 2021, Moms for Liberty began in Florida as a protest against school closures and then mask mandates. But as the pandemic wore on, the group’s mission coalesced into what is now known as the parents’ rights movement, focusing on what its supporters see as the dire consequences of schools’ over-involvement in shaping the moral lives of their offspring. The Moms do not think children should be learning about institutional racism in the United States. The Moms consider schools’ social-emotional learning programs—which focus on soft skills like friendship, anger management, and being part of a community—to be Trojan horses for a Marxist agenda. The Moms want to purge school libraries of books that present gender as a spectrum rather than a binary. The Moms want the federal government out of the schools, and, while they’re at it, abolishing the Department of Education would be a good idea as well.

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

More than 1,500 lobbyists in the US are working on behalf of fossil-fuel companies while at the same time representing hundreds of liberal-run cities, universities, technology companies and environmental groups that say they are tackling the climate crisis, the Guardian can reveal.

Lobbyists for oil, gas and coal interests are also employed by a vast sweep of institutions, ranging from the city governments of Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia; tech giants such as Apple and Google; more than 150 universities; some of the country’s leading environmental groups—and even ski resorts seeing their snow melted by global heating.

“It’s incredible that this has gone under the radar for so long, as these lobbyists help the fossil fuel industry wield extraordinary power.”

The breadth of fossil fuel lobbyists’ work for other clients is captured in a new database of their lobbying interests which was published online on Wednesday.

It shows the reach of state-level fossil fuel lobbyists into almost every aspect of American life, spanning local governments, large corporations, cultural institutions such as museums and film festivals, and advocacy groups, grouping together clients with starkly contradictory aims.

Pete’s Film Club made its long awaited return on the Football Ramble Patreon during the World Cup! The Club is the only place where you’ll hear us review the most bang average football films out there.

So today, we bring you episode one of our Patreon mini-series, where Pete and Luke review United Passions! It’s the film about FIFA made by FIFA. We’ll say no more because you simply HAVE TO hear it to believe it. 

For more bonus episodes like this and other exclusive benefits, head over to patreon.com/footballramble!

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Why the hell did President Joe Biden nominate a one-time protector of war criminals to a top administration post?

On the Monday before July 4—a black hole day for news—the White House let drop the word that it was appointing Elliott Abrams to the bipartisan US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. The commission’s job is to oversee US government information programs designed to convey American diplomacy to the world. It keeps an eye on the US Agency for Global Media, which manages the Voice of America and similar programs. The commission essentially helps the United States present its idea of itself to the rest of the planet.

This is a task for which Abrams is distinctly unsuited.

Long a stalwart in neoconservative circles, Abrams was one of the many cheerleaders in the early 2000s for the disastrous Iraq War. A decade earlier, in 1991, as a player in the Iran–Contra affair, he pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress about the Reagan White House’s secret operation to arm the Nicaraguan Contras. In short: As a top State Department official, he engaged in a cover-up to hide the arguably illegal operation overseen by Oliver North. 

But Abrams most odious (known) action occurred several years previously. As a top Reagan official, he dismissed reports that the US-trained-and-equipped military had massacred 1,000 civilians—including many women and children—in the Salvadoran town of El Mozote in December 1981. This was the largest mass killing in recent Latin American history. But Abrams wanted to protect the Salvadoran army, which the Reagan administration was showering with guns and money, despite its well-established record of human rights abuses. Abrams trash-talked American journalists who reported on the massacre and claimed the horrific reports were “implausible.” He praised the military unit that conducted this awful action. He suppressed the truth to assist killers.

Each time I return to Mexico I find myself marveling at how many elements of daily life there could, in some way, be described as Baroque: our sunsets, our cuisine, our pollution, our corruption. Century after century, the country has exhibited a great tendency towards exuberance, and a natural bent for the strange and the marvelous. There’s a constant play between veiling and unveiling (even in our newscasts, one senses indirect meaning in everything), as well as a fluidity of form, in which excess triumphs, every time, over restraint.

Three hundred years of colonial rule produced an intense syncretism of indigenous and European cultures, a bold new aesthetic accompanied by many new paradoxes, and these can be glimpsed today in both lighter and darker manifestations, some playful and others barbaric.

Mexican Baroque emerged from the conquest of the New World, from the long, fraught process of negotiation and subjugation that began to unfold once the Spaniards established their rule in 1521. The European monarchs wanted as much gold as their conquistadores could plunder, while their missionaries sought to convert the pagan savages to Catholicism. The Aztecs of course had their own gods, a monumental pantheon that included the fierce and formidable Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli, yet these ancient powers proved no match for colonial rapacity.

There was one pivotal overlap between the two religions, however, a fortuitous convergence which helped ease the transition from the Aztec cosmology to the Catholic faith. And this was the “theater of death” present in both religions. Accustomed to their own culture of human sacrifice, the Indians identified with the Crucifixion and with other violent chapters in the new theology, and were thus gradually lured by its passions and taste for the macabre. In artistic portrayals of certain scenes from the New Testament, the blood and the drama were laid on thick.

Is Andy Brassell a football journalist or a top pharmaceutical manager? You can tell it’s a summer Ramble…

Marcus, Luke, Pete and Andy react to Mason Mount’s goodbye video and Jonjo Shelvey’s nighttime activities. Plus, Marcus has some difficulties with Italian desserts and Pete has his say on Crystal Palace’s decision to keep Big Hodgson. Come join us!

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One of the worst exoduses in European football continues at RB Leipzig. So, what is Dominik Szoboszlai bringing to Liverpool – but also what kind of gap are he and others like him leaving in the Bundesliga?

Dotun, Andy and David pick the bones out of that and check in with the top three in La Liga, where Barcelona’s wishlist includes a former Southampton player and surely THE bargain of the window.

We'll be back with another OTC Transfer Special next week. Got a question for us? Ask away! Find us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and email us here: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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