All the handouts Big Meat gets

And despite all the freebies being put into the system I understand that rump roast is pushing about a dollar a bite, these days.

The federal government allows livestock grazing across an area of publicly owned land more than twice the size of California, making ranching the largest land use in the West. Billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies support the system, which often harms the environment.

As President Donald Trump’s administration pushes a pro-ranching agenda, ProPublica and High Country News investigated how public lands ranching has evolved. We filed more than 100 public record requests and sued the Bureau of Land Management to pry free documents and data; we interviewed everyone from ranchers to conservationists; and we toured ranching operations in Arizona, Colorado, Montana and Nevada.

The resulting three-part investigation digs into the subsidies baked into ranching, the environmental impacts from livestock and the political clout that protects this status quo. - ProPublica

Challenging student loan wage garnishment

This has suggestions.

For the first time since the onset of COVID-19, the Trump administration is set to garnish U.S. workers’ wages for defaulted student loans. The Department of Education has announced that beginning this week it will send at least 1,000 borrowers a notice of intent to garnish wages, sending additional notices every month as it expands its efforts to forcibly collect money from millions of borrowers in default…

But debtors shouldn’t feel hopeless. The truth is, there are a host of options at debtors’ disposal that the Department of Education does not tell borrowers about. Many borrowers who receive default notices will actually be eligible for debt cancellation, whether they know it or not.

Cancellation programs like Total and Permanent Disability, False Certification, and Borrower Defense can provide relief for millions of borrowers who deserve it because their university cheated them or closed down while they were enrolled. Another little-known option that borrowers have is to apply for a hardship exemption if wage garnishment causes them financial hardship. While temporary, and certainly not a solution to the student debt crisis, debtors can apply to pause or reduce forced collections if they are in difficult circumstances. - Truthout

The private sector takeover of disaster recovery

This has been going on for a while. But it’s accelerating now.

But even before President Donald Trump took office with an eye toward diminishing the agency, recovery funds couldn’t keep up with victims’ needs. Now, as the administration slashes FEMA funding, withholds aid, and puts more of the onus of recovery onto individual states, victim-assistance organizations feel that they’ve been left totally unprepared, with too few case managers to go around. All of these issues are likely to grow more severe in the coming year, as a review board appointed to reform the agency prepares to make its recommendations…

The private sector’s creeping influence over disaster recovery has been noted since at least 2007, when Naomi Klein published The Shock Doctrine, the book that injected the term “disaster capitalism” into a broader lexicon. But as climate change accelerates and hammers the United States with more billion-dollar catastrophes than ever before, privatization has become more common — and complicated. Private interests can quickly mobilize huge volunteer networks, giving campaigns, and rebuilding efforts in the wake of extreme weather. But, whatever their intentions, such measures are a consequence — and sometimes a cause — of the corrosion of public institutions originally intended to safeguard Americans. - Grist

Radiation's no big deal, including for women and kids

Or so Trump and his minions believe. Which makes the nuclear industry very happy.

A May 23 executive order from President Trump will now transform the stated mission of NRC from safety regulator to industry enabler, and in fact, NRC mission wording has been changed to say that nuclear power “benefits” society, despite the evidence to the contrary given the often serious health impacts of all nuclear power-related operations. This mission shift has sparked alarm among experts and safety advocates who argue that abandoning core principles of radiation protection will further endanger communities, sacrifice vulnerable populations, and increase the nuclear industry’s grip on energy policy…

But this request has put the NRC in an untenable position for two reasons. First, the NRC itself reaffirmed use of the LNT model in 2022. Second, contemporary health research has confirmed that LNT already underestimates cancer risk at lower doses in about half of cases.

These findings are particularly striking because they were based on studies of nuclear workers, a part of the adult population and predominantly male that research has shown are at less risk from radiation exposure. Therefore, these studies do not adequately reflect the heightened vulnerabilities of women, children, and pregnancy to cancer or other radiation-associated diseases. - Beyond Nuclear

The shutdown’s effects on food and ag

This explains the myriad ways in which consumers and farmers continue to be affected.

Now that the shutdown is over, SNAP is returning to its typical operations, said Katie Bergh, senior food assistance policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Most households have received their full November benefits, following delays from the Trump administration during the shutdown.

But for many households, getting full benefits will not erase the impact of the shutdown. Without assistance, SNAP recipients may have opted to buy groceries in lieu of paying an electric bill or car payment, for example, and are now potentially falling behind in their bills.

“All of that chaos and disruption is going to have long-term impacts for the households that were struggling to follow what was happening and waiting on their benefits in the interim,” Bergh said. - Civil Eats

The Israeli government is back to doing just what they want

Which was obviously the plan once they got the hostages returned. Anyone with any sense saw this coming. Trump is so easily played and suckered with flattery and bribes.

Amnesty International concludes that, over a month after a ceasefire was agreed upon in Gaza and all living Israeli hostages were returned, the Israeli authorities continue to pursue the textbook definition of genocide “by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” Moreover, Israeli leaders continue openly to affirm that this course of action is intentional on their parts…

The Secretary General of Amnesty International, Agnes Calmard, observed that “Palestinians remain held within less than half of the territory of Gaza, in the areas least capable of supporting life, with humanitarian aid still severely restricted.” Amnesty says that the Israeli military continues to occupy on the order of 55% of the Gaza Strip. There has been no move to rehabilitate the farmland that has been deliberately destroyed by the Israelis over two years or rebuild livestock. The Israelis routinely shoot at Palestinian fishing boats, preventing them from harvesting protein from the sea. The report concludes, “Palestinians are left virtually totally deprived of independent access to forms of sustenance.” - Informed Comment

COP30 didn't get much done

Though it wasn’t all failure, and it was probably a pipe dream to expect major breakthroughs to begin with.

The Brazilian president’s forceful remarks at the outset of negotiations in the Amazonian city of Belém were meant to set the stage for a new chapter in international climate diplomacy. On the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, the time had come, according to Lula, to stop arguing about what the historic agreement requires and instead focus on implementation — actually taking the steps required to both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect countries against the coming economic and public health consequences wrought by climate change…

But the Brazilian delegation, which was responsible for overseeing COP30 negotiations and ultimately brokering a new deal, was confronted by a different truth than the president envisioned. The viability of the planet may come down to a few degrees Celsius of warming, but in Belém’s fluorescently-lit negotiating rooms, everything ultimately came down to dollars and cents…

The most substantial new agreement negotiated at the conference reflected this realism. The delegations agreed that, by 2035, the world would triple international funding provided to help developing nations adapt to the consequences of a warmer world. - Grist