Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2025-07-07 Monday

Episode Date: July 7, 2025

Headlines for July 07, 2025; Texas Flood Kills 82+, Including 28 Kids, Amid Drought, Trump Cuts to Weather Service, NOAA & FEMA; “Most Massive Transfer of Wealth Upward in American History”: John Nichols on Trump’s Budget Law; “Frontal Assault” on Climate Justice: Rolling Stone’s Antonia Juhasz on Trump’s Budget Law; “Completely Illegal”: Dr. Feroze Sidhwa on Israel’s “Outrageous” Attacks on Gaza Hospitals & Staff

From New York, this is Democracy Now. We searched about 10 miles. We found two bodies, a little girl and a little boy. And then we finally came up here and we found the dad that we were looking for. The crash flooding in central Texas kills at least 80 people, more than a quarter of them children, as rescuers continue to search for the missing. We'll speak to a leading expert on forecasting and warning systems, former NOAA meteorologist Alan Gerard. Then Trump signs the budget bill into law after Republican Congress members pass it. On this vote, the Yaser 218, the Naser 214.

the motion is adopted. We'll look at the sweeping impacts of the new law with the nation's John Nichols, and what's in it for the fossil fuel industry? We'll talk to investigative reporter Antonio Yuhas, then Gaza. I don't wish for a truce. I wish for a complete ceasefire. A truce just means the war will resume later. We hope for a total ceasefire so the bloodshed stops entirely.

Could there be a truce? Prime Minister Netanyahu is in Washington today to meet with President Trump. We'll speak with Dr. Farozoz Sidwa. He's volunteered in Gaza, writes, hospital attacks in Gaza and Israel, what counts as a war crime? All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Mimi Goodman. President Trump signed his sweeping tax cut and spending bill into law on the 4th of July,

capping a month's long push that saw just five Republican lawmakers' break ranks to oppose the legislation. The historic bill includes some $1 trillion in federal cuts to Medicaid over a decade, expected to result in some 17 million people losing health insurance. It makes the largest ever cuts to food assistance benefits, could cause the closure of nursing homes and rural hospitals across the United States. We'll raise housing and energy costs will supercharge Trump's crackdown on immigrants, all while extending Trump's 2017 tax cuts for the rich and delivering massive new tax benefits for the wealthiest Americans. The Congressional Budget Office says it'll add $3.3 trillion to the national debt by 2034.

New York Congress member Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez spoke out against the bill ahead of its final passage in the House Thursday. This bill is a deal with the devil. It explodes our national debt. It militarizes our entire economy and it strips away health care and basic dignity of the American people for what to give Elon Musk a tax break and billionaires the great. treaty taking of our nation. We cannot stand for it and we will not support it. You should be a shame. We'll have more on Trump's historic law after headlines. Search and rescue missions are continuing in central Texas where the death toll from catastrophic flooding has reached 82 people with dozens still missing. In the most devastated area, Kirk County, at least

40 adults and 28 children died in the flooding. Among those still missing are at least 10 girls from Camp Mystic and all girls summer camp in the banks of the Guadalupe River, which officials say swelled and rose some 26 feet in under an hour Friday amidst torrential downpours. Survivors and rescue workers have described harrowing scenes as people clung to trees and took refuge on rooftops to avoid being swept away by the floods. This is Ilda Mendoza, who joined other volunteers to help search for victims. We found two bodies, a little girl and a little boy, and then we finally came up here and we found the dad that we were looking for.

And today we came back because we haven't found the wife. Questions are mounting over local authorities' failure to prepare and warn residents ahead of the disaster. Texas officials have pointed the finger at federal authorities, the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management claimed during a weekend press conference, the National Weather service did not give proper warning of the catastrophic flash floods. Go back and look at your own forecast, and the amount of rain that fell in this specific location was never in any of those forecasts.

Experts say staff shortages at local national weather service offices and the lack of a local severe weather warning system may also have been part of the problem. On Sunday, President Trump issued a major disaster declaration for Texas activating FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which Trump has. vowed to phase out after this year's hurricane season. On Sunday, reporters questioned him about those plans. Are you still planning to phase out FEMA? Well, FEMA is something we can talk about later.

But right now, they're busy working, so we'll leave it at that. Meanwhile, Texans are bracing for more severe rains in the coming days and hours. We'll have more on the Texas floods with a former NOAA climatologist. after headlines. The Trump administration scrub government websites have congressionally mandated reports on the climate, making it harder for state and local governments to plan for heat waves, forest fires, floods, and rising seas. Federal law requires the executive branch published the U.S. National Climate Assessment every four years, along with a yearly update for Congress. Yet last week, websites hosting the assessment went dark. Climate scientists have

condemn the Trump administration censorship. University of Illinois professor Donald Wobbles, who worked on all five previous national climate assessments told inside climate news, quote, climate change is one of the most serious issues humanity has ever faced and for us to not take that seriously as this administration is doing, it's criminal, he said. Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have killed at least 24 people so far today following another bloody weekend that saw scores of Palestinians slaughtered. Among the dead are at least six people killed when Israel bombed a medical clinic in Gaza City housing displaced Palestinians. At least 15 others were wounded. Separately, Doctors Without Borders, Medicine-Saintire, known as MSF,

is condemning the killing of Abdullah Hamad, a former MSF worker shot dead by Israeli forces July 3rd. Colleagues say Dr. Hamad was part of a group of Palestinians seeking to let flower from an aid truck and Khan Yunus when Israeli forces attacked without warning, killing at least 16 people. Dr. Hamad is the 12th member of Doctors Without Borders killed by Israel's military since October 23. Meanwhile, a U.S. and Israeli backed aid distribution organization that's been widely condemned by the international community resumed its operations today after again suspending its work

Sunday. The so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation claimed without evidence two U.S. contractors were hurt and attacked by Hamas at one of its sites Saturday. The claim came as GHF security guards continued near daily attacks on starving Palestinians lining up for aid at overcrowded distribution sites with at least 750 Palestinians killed in nearly 5,000 others wounded in such assaults since May. This comes as a former GHF security guard and whistleblower has described how he witnessed American co-workers using machine guns to open fire on Palestinians who pose no threat. The former God asked to remain anonymous as he spoke to the BBC. When this guy was shooting into this group, this man dropped to the ground and was motionless.

than the other contractor who was staying there was like, damn, I think you got one. And then they laughed about it. I brought this to the attention of the leadership directly. I was like, I don't. And then the leadership said to me, well, you have no way of knowing that that person was hit with a bullet. Maybe they tripped. Maybe they were tired and they passed out. The contractor said guards were told to open fire if they felt uncomfortable,

with instructions to, quote, shoot and ask questions later, unquote. The guards reportedly described starving Palestinians in line for food as, quote, the zombie horde, unquote. Israeli warplanes have bombed three ports in a power plant and parts of Yemen controlled by Houthi fighters. Sunday's attacks were the first by Israel and Yemen in nearly a month. They came as a Houthi spokesperson said the group had fired missiles targeting Bangurian airport to Israeli seaports and a power station in southern Israel.

The Houthis say they'll continue attacks until Israel lifts its blockade on Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived in Washington, D.C. for talks with President Trump. It's Netanyahu's third trip to Washington since Trump's inauguration in January. Once again, the United States will not enforce an international criminal court warrant seeking Netanyahu's arrest for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza. Ahead of the meeting, Trump predicted there's a good chance Israel and Hamas will reach. a deal on a new U.S. promoted Gaza's ceasefire framework, which Trump has called his final proposal for the Palestinians. It calls on Hamas to release 10 living and 18 dead Israeli hostages. In exchange, Israeli forces would withdraw to a buffer zone along Gaza's borders

and allow significant amounts of aid to be brought in by the United Nations, Red Crescent, and other NGOs. The plan would still allow Israel to resume its assault on Gaza after initial 60-day truce. Indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas are continuing in Doha. Police in London arrested 29 protesters as they gathered in Parliament Square Saturday to support Palestine action. Hours after a ban against the direct action group came into effect. Among those arrested was Reverend Sue Parfit, an 83-year-old retired Anglican priest who was arrested for displaying a sign reading, I oppose genocide. I support Palestine action, unquote. Eight men removed from the U.S. and May were handed over to South Sudan Friday after the

Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration can transfer expelled immigrants to third countries with which they have no ties. The men had been held in limbo on a U.S. military base in Djibouti, after a lower court judge ruled they should not be sent to South Sudan, a country the U.N. warns, could be on the brink of another civil war. Only one of the eight people is from South Sudan. The others are from Latin America and Asian countries. The U.S. military is sending 200 Marines to help ICE terrorize immigrant communities in Florida. It's part of a move announced by Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth last month

that will see hundreds more U.S. military personnel deployed to southern states, including Texas and Louisiana. The public feud between President Trump and Elon. Musk continued to deepen after Musk announced he's forming a new political party, the America Party, following the passage of Trump's tax cut and spending bill. Musk objects to the bill's projected increase of the U.S. debt by $3.3 trillion over the next decade. Tesla shares took a nosedive following the news of Musk's new political venture. On Friday, Trump was asked by a reporter if he tried to deport Musk, to which Trump replied,

we'll have to take a look, adding, quote, Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon, President Trump said. And in Philadelphia, some 9,000 city workers are entering their seventh day on strike, sanitation workers, 9-1-1 dispatchers, and school crossing guards are among those demanding a fair wage that keeps a pace with inflation and the soaring cost of living. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. The death toll from the catastrophic flooding in central Texas has reached 82 people. Dozens are still unaccounted for following flash flooding over the weekend. The Guadalupe River rose some 26 feet in less than an hour Friday amidst torrential downpours.

The rain followed a long drought in the region that left the soil bone dry and increased the potential for flooding. Among the missing are at least 10 girls who attended Camp Mystic located on the banks of the river. In Kerr County, the most devastated area, at least 40 adults and 28 children have died. This is Kerrville resident Scott Walden, describing the terrifying moments before he was swept almost 200 feet by raging floodwaters. About 6.30 in the morning or 6 o'clock in the morning, we heard some thumps. I had a shed around the corner, and the shed started. started banging against the house. And my wife jumped up, and she looked out the back,

and she said, there's a river back there. And so we ran to the front, and by the time we grabbed two dogs and a set of keys, the water had risen, covered four motorcycles, and floated a Jeep, and then flooded a big truck. Rescue workers and volunteers are continuing their search for the fourth day. questions and anger amounting over local authorities' preparedness warnings ahead of the disaster as well as the current and future role of federal authorities. Experts say staff shortages at local offices of the National Weather Service and the lack of a local severe weather warning system, which the state wouldn't fund, may have been part of

the problem. President Trump has said he plans to phase out FEMA by the end of this year's hurricane season and shift those responsibilities to states. A reporter asked Trump about his plans for FEMA Sunday. Are you still planning to phase out FEMA? Well, FEMA is something we can talk about later, but right now they're busy working, so we'll leave it at that. Trump was also asked if the federal government should hire back any of the meteorologists that have been fired in recent months, to which President Trump said, quote, I wouldn't know that and I would think not, unquote.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration's 2026 budget promises to dismantle critical scientific research programs that could improve early warning capabilities and upgrade technology. That's according to our next guest, who knows these programs extremely well. Dr. Alan Gerard is the CEO of balanced weather and a retired NOAA meteorologist with more than three decades of experience. He's the former head of the Warning Research and Development Division of the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory. He's been following the flooding closely on his substack, balanced weather. Welcome to Democracy Now. Alan Gerard.

Thank you so much for being with us. This is absolutely devastating. It looks like well over 100 people have died. About a quarter of them are children. We just heard Trump's response, both on not hiring meteorologists that have been fired and not clear whether FEMA will continue. Yet we hear local officials saying how desperate they are to continue to work with the National Weather Service. Can you talk about what took place and the fact that part of the severe flash flooding was caused by a drought? yeah so we'll start with the flash flood the that area of the country is very vulnerable to flash flooding due to a number of factors partially just due the proximity of the gulf and the moisture that can come up from there and then also that that soil in central texas which is also very hilly when when there's a prolonged drought becomes almost like concrete so the heavy

rainfall just runs off into these river basins that, you know, that runs through the hill country and can create these massive floodwaves like what we saw, unfortunately, on the South Fork of the Guadalupe. And can you talk about the National Weather Service? In a moment, we're going to talk about the new law, the budget law that went into effect. But the National Weather Service and the depletion of jobs and what is missing, what most importantly, as we look forward, what is needed? Yeah, so the National Weather Service, you know, like a lot of federal agencies, went through a significant loss of staff back in the spring with federal buyouts under the plans for Doge and the Office of Personnel. management. And a number of experienced staff were lost. The office in Austin, San Antonio,

which is the office that was responsible for the flash flood warnings in this case, have lost two of their most senior staff as part of that. Their warning coordination meteorologist who's responsible for the outreach to emergency management and the science and operations officer who oversees the operations training of the meteorologist. staff. So obviously those are critical positions. I will say that it does appear like overall for the actual event when it occurred, the warnings went out as they should have that the office was staffed appropriately. But it is definitely a concern overall, you know, how well the staff overall would have been prepared given those losses and how well they'll be prepared going forward

as we, you know, still have all of hurricane season to deal with. And then kind of from a longer-term perspective, as you mentioned, the 2026 presidential budget proposal would make significant cuts to NOAA, including completely eliminating NOAA's research line office, the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. And obviously, if that were to happen, all of this research that's being done to try to improve warnings for events like this, would be terminated. In fact, isn't this weather research lab in Norman, where you are, Norman,

Oklahoma, in the crosshairs of the cuts at the federal level, where you worked as you were former head of the warning research unit there? Yes. The division that I was in charge of actually does a lot of research to improve flash flood warnings. The system that the National Weather Service uses to in real time estimate the probability of flash flooding and help issue their warnings was developed here in our division at the National Severe Storms Lab. And under the current presidential budget, it would be closed along with all of the other NOAA weather and climate labs. I mean, from the heat dome that we're seeing in this country and in Europe, I was just in Geneva, it's just scalding in Spain, the fires outside Barcelona. Can you end by

talking about how serious the threat of climate change is right now to the planet, beginning right there in Texas and this horrific flash flooding event. that has killed looks like, well, over 80, probably over 100, half a quarter of them children? Yeah, as someone that's been doing this for 35 years, I'll admit that early in my career, I was a little skeptical about how much climate change would actually impact the weather events that I would see in my career. But after doing it for three decades and seeing the research and actually watching the weather every single day and seeing the increase in, frequency of these

type of events it's a huge concern for me and I you know that's part of the reason why even in retirement I'm doing the substack trying to speak out about this because I'm extremely concerned about

the you know the threat of climate change and having more increased flash floods, wildfires, heat waves and regardless of the politics of it. We need to be prepared. And really my focus is just trying to improve our resilience and our ability to be prepared for these kind of events. And obviously, I strongly believe

that having a robust NOAA and a robust national weather service, a robust research program from NOAA is an important part of all of that of keeping us as safe as we can be as the climate continues to change. This final point, Alan Gerard, Elon Musk's own AI bot GROC also blamed the rising death toll in Texas and cuts made by the Trump administration and Doge, right? Doge that was run by Elon Musk, saying, while absolute proof of counterfactuals is impossible, evidence strongly suggests yes, pre-cut NWS national weather service models accurately predicted similar floods, e.g. Vermont 2023, 2025 cuts reduce staff and balloon launches by 25 percent, leading to underestimated rainfall forecast for Care County. Experts, including Exnoa heads, say this delayed warnings

preventing Kamp Mystic evacuation and contributing to the 24 deaths. Sources, PBS, NPR Guardian. Your final 30 seconds, Alan Gerard, on Democracy Now today. Not to contradict Grock, but I will say that this event did have quite a bit different than like the Vermont event that it's cited. This was a very small scale event that was very difficult for the computer models and for humans to really forecast very far in advance. Having said that, there is no question that the weather service is being left in a more vulnerable state. And whether it was this event or whether it's going to be with future, you know, hurricane flood events like this,

we're needlessly putting ourselves into increased danger by these cuts to NOAA and the Weather Service and NOAA research and hopefully, you know, this is a horrible tragedy that, you know, it's really unspeakable. But if anything positive could come out of it, maybe it will be a reconsideration of some of these cuts. Well, I want to thank you so much for being with us from Norman Oklahoma, Alan Gerard, retired NOAA. That's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meteorologist, former head of the Warning Research and Development Division of the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory, runs a substack balanced weather.

Up next, we'll speak with the nation's John Nichols about how Republicans just voted to do immoral and irreparable harm to the United States with a new Trump budget law and how the fossil fuel industry will benefit. Finally, we'll talk about what's happening in Gaza as the Prime Minister of Israel meets with President Trump for the third time in Trump's second term. Stay with us. Stand behind his drunken amp. Stand behind his light of love.

Hear him yow his bloody tongue. Here I'm yellow blood in war Do you believe in his sweet sensation Do you believe in second chance Do you believe in rapture bay Do you believe in rapture by Thirst and Moore performing at Smith College years ago? This is DemocracyNow. Democracy Now.org, the war and peace report. I'm Amy Goodman. President Donald Trump signed his sweeping.

tax and spend bill into law on July 4th. After a month's long push that saw just three Republicans in the Senate and two in the House break away to oppose how it slashes the social safety net while extending tax cuts to the rich and ballooning the deficit. That left room for the measure to pass with the final vote mostly along party lines. Vote. The Yaser 218, the Naser 214, the motion is adopted. As House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that the measure had passed, he was surrounded by Republican lawmakers who mimic Trump's thumbs-up pose and danced to his unofficial anthem YMCA that played in the chamber.

to the YMCA, I'm sure they can help you. What critics are calling Trump's big, ugly bill includes some $1 trillion in federal cuts to Medicaid and could kick 17 million people off health care. It makes the largest ever cuts to food assistance benefits could cause the closure of nursing homes in rural hospitals across the country, raises housing and energy costs, and supercharges Trump's crackdown on immigrants, while extending Trump's tax cuts for the rich and delivering massive new tax benefits

for the wealthiest Americans. New York Congress member, Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, said Democrats will campaign against Republicans who voted for the bill. There have to be consequences to these votes, and we have to decide if this is just a joke or just for TV or if this is our real lives. And I hope people vote like it's our real life.

Since Thursday's vote, TV ads are already running in Switzerland, districts currently represented by Republican supporters of the budget package, like Congressmember David Valadeo in California's 22nd congressional district where more than 60 percent of constituents reportedly rely on Medicaid. Republicans in Congress promised not to cut Medicaid, but then the bill is passed. It's the biggest cut to Medicaid in history, and Congressman David Valadeo just voted for it. more than 13 million Americans could lose health care, seniors, veterans, and children with disabilities.

Why'd he do it? To give another huge tax break to billionaires and big corporations. Tell Congressman Valadeo, we can't afford to have our health care taken away. Not now, not ever. For more, we're joined by John Nichols, National Affairs correspondent for the nation. His new piece is headlined Republicans just voted to do immoral and irreparable harm to the United States. the GOP chose to betray both morality and economic common sense by approving Trump's one big ugly bill. John, welcome back to Democracy Now. Can you talk about the significance of what took

place? I mean, interestingly, while the tax cuts go into effect immediately, is this correct? The Medicaid cuts will happen after the midterms. That's exactly right. This bill was drawn as a political document. There's no question of what Donald Trump and the Republicans in congressional leadership wanted to do. They wanted to do what Republicans have done in every circumstance where they've gotten the White House in recent decades, and that is a massive tax cut for the wealthy. In this case, roughly three point, I hope I've got the number right.

It keeps kind of moving up and down. but, you know, it's in the, you know, multiple trillions of dollars over the period of what we're talking about here. But they also had to figure out some ways to, quote unquote, pay for this. And as you suggest, they put the tax cut for the wealthy up front. I mean, that's, that's going to come across the board. And then they put a lot of damaging, you know, almost poison pills into the document as regards all of these safety net programs. And so a lot of the cuts will come over time. People won't feel them immediately. And yet, this is the bottom line in states across the country, not according to liberal Democrats, not according to progressive think tanks, but according to

Republicans who are on the ground in these states and one Republican in the U.S. Senate, Tom Tillis, this is going to have a devastating impact on Medicaid, on access to health care, so that we will get to a point where roughly 5% of Americans are at threat of losing their health care. That's a massive, massive shift. In addition, you've got roughly 11.8, 12 million people at risk of losing SNAP anti-hunger benefits. And when we look at all the numbers here, because of the way that the tax cuts are massively weighted toward the wealthy. You have members of Congress who are pretty serious analysts of all this, telling us that roughly 40 percent, I'm going to underline that,

40 percent of Americans will end up worse off under this. They won't get a significant tax cut. They will lose health benefits. They will lose anti-hunger benefits and a lot of other benefits as well. this is the most massive transfer of wealth upward in American history. And yet, it's designed to create a circumstance where Republicans can run in 2026 and claim that they didn't do the damage. I'll give you one more set of facts that are just useful.

This comes from Governor Andy Bashir in Kentucky. Kentucky is a state that votes quite Republican in federal elections. Bashir is a Democrat, but he's had to work. with a Republican legislature. He's a very kind of facts and numbers guy. He says this is the worst piece of federal legislation in his lifetime. He says that 200,000 Kentuckyans, this is just one state, 200,000 Kentucky will lose health care. 20,000 health care workers will lose their jobs, and as many as 35 rural hospitals are now in danger of closing. In that, one state, and that doesn't even take in the devastating impact to nursing homes, especially in

small towns. I want to ask you about the Republican Congress member, Derek Van Orden, of Wisconsin, who voted for Trump's budget bill, even as he called on your governor, Wisconsin, Governor Tony Evers, to sign the state budget before Trump signed the federal budget bill until law on July 4th. He wrote in a letter, quote, delaying the state budget enactment beyond July 3rd, risk losing vital opportunities for the state's health care system in the Wisconsinites who rely on it, health care and rural health care in particular is vital to us in Wisconsin. We cannot leave anything on the table. Explain what's going on here. Sure. This new law has all sorts of draconian components to it that are incredibly

damaging to the way in which states have set up their health care systems. Remember, states across the country get federal funding and then they establish a state-based health care system for working people who can't afford the high cost of health care. And those systems often have an intermingling of federal and state money. The way that what this bill does, it created a circumstance where states that didn't have a budget locked in with a program for spending that state and federal money by July 1st ran the risk of or by, you know, before the bill was passed, I should say, before the federal. bill was passed, ran the risk of losing substantial amounts of money. So to give you an example,

in Wisconsin, Governor Tony Evers, knowing that this was indeed a real risk, signed the bill after 1 a.m. the other day. Literally, it was up into the middle of the night. So as soon as it got through the legislature, they signed the new Wisconsin budget. And that is because this federal bill as it implements is going to make it dramatically harder for the states to establish and maintain health care programs for working people who can't afford. And if I can just give you one more factoid on that, if we can use that word, Tom Tillis, the senator from North Carolina, Republican senator from North Carolina, a former Republican legislative leader, said what this bill does is sort of kind of blow apart the systems that states have set up to establish their health care programs.

And, John, just very finally, you had Lisa Murkowski saying, what's good for Alaska is not necessarily good for the country. This bill's not good for the many Americans in the country. They got carveouts right to get them to say that was Murkowski, Thune himself, the Senate majority leader in South Dakota. They got carveouts to protect their, for example, rural hospitals. They did in some cases, but I will emphasize to you that while there were some techniques, some tricks kind of put in here to help rural hospitals, they will not be sufficient. And more damaging here, not discussed at nearly the level it should have been, is rural nursing homes. And the way that this bill is written, it poses a dramatic threat to nursing homes across the country.

There is a real possibility that millions of families that go through that devastating challenge of trying to figure out how to care for an elder or a person with disabilities are going to be put into one of the most devastating circumstances that the government has ever imposed on folks as regards health care. John Nichols, want to thank you for being with us, National Affairs correspondent for the nation. His new piece will link to at DemocracyNow.org. Republicans just voted to do immoral and irreparable harm to the United States, speaking to us from Madison, Wisconsin. at the news conference following Trump's so-called big, beautiful bill, Republican speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, answered a question from Rolling Stone reporter Antonia Juhas about how the law's gutting of environmental and climate justice funding from the Inflation Reduction Act would impact rural Louisiana.

This was Johnson's response. I think a lot of the estimations about what this legislation would do in a negative manner to communities in my state or any other are far overblown. I can tell you that this bill is going to be a great thing for everybody around the country, my constituents especially. What's good for Louisiana is good for America. We've got great tax policy here. I think they're going to feel this pretty quickly. Wages will rise. I think household income will go up.

I think the job participation rate will increase dramatically. I think unemployment will be low. we're going to duplicate what we did in the first Trump administration. Remember, at the first two years, y'all have heard me say a thousand times. It's objectively true. We had one of the greatest economies in the history of the world, and we're going to do that again, except this time, much more comprehensively. We did tax cuts and regulatory reform, and that brought about a resurgence of the U.S. economy. That's about, that's what's going to happen here. It's about to happen on steroids. And we can't wait for that to happen. This is jet fuel for the economy, and all boats are going to

rise. So that was House Speaker Johnson's response to reporter, Antonio Yuhas is doing just published a piece for Rolling Stone magazine. One of the groups who will see their funding cut is inclusive Louisiana. Antonio reports the group received half a million dollar grant with local partner groups, Louisiana Bucket Brigade and Rural Roots. The grant was awarded through an Inflation Reduction Act Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant program that provides financial assistance to groups working to address local environmental or public health issues in their communities. The grant terminated in May by the Trump administration. This is an ad they had made for their campaign, imagined St. James Parish. For too long, petrochemical plants have been poisoning our people.

And with the approval of the St. James Parish government, building more facilities that spew toxic chemicals into historically black communities. But now we are reclaiming our future. Together, we can imagine a pollution tree St. Jane Parish. and we can build an inclusive economy. What can you imagine? Tell us at Imagine.compan James Parrish.org. Pay for by Inclusive Louisiana.

For more, we are joined by Antonia Yuhas in Washington, D.C., where she followed the Budget Bill Negotiations Award-winning long-time investigative journalists covering oil and energy and regular contributor to Rolling Stone magazine. Her latest piece, their fighting polluters, Trump's tax bill guts their funding. Across Louisiana communities are bracing for the tax bills, massive cuts to critical funding for local community organizing and resilience. Among her books is The Tyranny of Oil. Antonio, welcome back to Democracy Now. We just have a few minutes before we talk about what's happening in Gaza.

And we wanted to ask you, you got in that last question to the House Speaker. Explain what you were asking about and his response. Yeah. So I had been traveling across rural Louisiana to investigate the impacts of the tax bill on environmental and climate justice and environment more broadly. And I had asked the speaker, what would he say to those communities that are going to be cut off now as a result of the tax bill? And you heard his lengthy response. The facts are that this bill zeroes out to the best extent that it could do, the inflation reduction. Act, Biden's signature climate bill. It includes the zeroing out of environmental and climate justice grants that some 800 of them and programs that went to help local frontline communities confront polluters in their area. This bill has been called the worst environmental bill in U.S. history. You started with the Texas floods. We know that the climate crisis kills. We also know that we have remedies, cut fossil fuels, transition to localize renewable energy, and support

frontline communities. Those programs have essentially been erased to the best extent that they could in this tax bill to remove tax incentives that would help us support solar and wind energy, manufacturing tax breaks for consumers, producers. Those were entirely stripped away to cut out that financial support for the solar and wind transition. Tax breaks billions of them to the fossil fuel industry. And remember, this bill extends all of those tax cuts from 2017, which had already brought billions of dollars to the fossil fuel industry and just gives them new benefits. One of the perks that Lisa Murkowski got for voting for the bill was opening up the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to Oil and Gas drilling. There's other

provisions that reduce the tax, the royalties that the U.S. would get from drilling in public lands. So a big giveaway and an opening the door to more production. It provides more tax breaks to the fossil fuel industry. It eliminates rules, for example, that we're trying to address methane emissions. It's a Christmas tree for the fossil fuel industry. It's a frontal assault on environmental and climate justice, and it will set us back significantly unless we take action to confront the climate crisis. It was one big additional boondoggle for the fossil fuel industry and to harm local environmental and climate justice organizing and our national and international attempts to confront the climate crisis. Antonia, the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA,

put 139 workers on leave after they publicly criticized Trump's environmental policies and signed a declaration of dissent last week. Many of them high-level people in the EPA were given like 10 minutes to leave their offices. Talk about what this declaration of dissent was. So I interviewed, I've been interviewing for months, environmental protection agency staff. The, so the Trump administration has been working through the Doge process, the EPA to gut environmental climate, environmental justice rules. It's been losing in court left and right in those efforts. They've been found to be illegal. So therefore, the administration is trying to use or did use, excuse me, the tax bill to achieve through that bill what it was losing through the courts. EPA employees working on environmental justice, working on climate, working on protecting our air, our water, protecting us from pollution, have been trying to speak out.

They've been put on administrative leave. Many also accepted the early buyouts because they didn't want to have to deal with this administration. Others have been increasingly speaking out, and this letter that came out was the largest organizing of those EPA employees to, to state their opposition to what was happening, and the Trump administration then put 144 of them on administrative leave. And we will link to that letter, that declaration of dissent at DemocracyNow.org. Antonio Yuhas, thanks so much for being with us. Longtime investigative journalists will link to her Rolling Stone piece. They're fighting polluters.

Trump's tax bill guts their funding. Next up, we'll talk about Gaza. Could there be a truce, as the Israeli Prime Minister meets with President. Trump in D.C. today will speak with Dr. Faroz Sidwa, who's volunteered in Gaza and writes hospital attacks in Gaza and Israel, what counts as a war crime. Stay with us. So, by Fatumata Jawa. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org.

I'm Amy Goodman. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived in Washington, D.C. for talks with President Trump. It's Netanyahu's third trip to Washington since Trump's inauguration in January. Once again, the U.S. will not enforce an international criminal court warrant seeking Netanyahu's arrest for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza. Ahead of the meeting, Trump predicted there's a good chance. and Hamas will reach a deal on a new U.S. promoted Gaza ceasefire framework, which Trump is called

his final proposal for the Palestinians. Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have killed at least 24 people so far today following another bloody weekend that saw scores of Palestinians slaughtered among the dead. At least six people killed when Israel bombed a medical clinic in Gaza city housing displaced Palestinians. At least 15 others were wounded. Separately, doctors without borders, medicine salt frontier, known as MSF, is condemning the killing of Abdullah Hamad, a former MSF worker shot dead by Israeli forces July 3rd. Colleagues say Hamad was part of a group of Palestinians seeking to collect flour from an aid truck on Han Yunus when Israeli forces attacked without warning, killing at least

16 people. Dr. Hamad is the 12th member of Doctors Without Borders killed by Israel's military since October 2003. Attacks on health facilities and medical workers in Gaza have been repeated and defining aspect of Israel's assault on Gaza. The World Health Organization reports 94% of hospitals in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed over the past 20 months, despite the fact hospitals are supposed to have protections under international law. In May, the Safeguarding Health and Conflict Coalition reported attacks on health care facilities worldwide. have become more frequent over the last decade, and in 2024, a quarter of all the attacks

and health facilities worldwide occurred in Gaza. Israel almost always justifies attacks in hospitals by accusing Hamas of militarizing these facilities, and incredible 609 health care workers in Gaza have been killed. Our next guest has witnessed the consequences of these attacks firsthand, Dr. Faroes Sidwa is a trauma, general, and critical care surgeon who volunteered in March at NASA Medical Complex in Han Yunis, Gaza, with Med Global. Last year, he volunteered at the European Hospital during Israel's assault on Gaza. His new piece for the Counts on Farm Relations, Think Global Health, is co-authored with attorney Leonard Rubinstein. It's headlined, Hospital Attacks in Gaza and Israel, what counts as a, war crime. Well, Dr. Faroz Sidwa, what counts as a war crime? Explain what has happened after what,

in the latest news, we hear about this health care worker, this doctor who has just been killed online for food, and the director of the Indonesian hospital, the leading cardiologist, just killed as well in Gaza. Yeah, Dr. Sultan. Actually, at this point, if I'm correct, I hope I'm right about this, but I'm pretty sure at this point that the director of every hospital north of the Netsirim corridor, so in the northern half of Gaza, has either been killed or is in Israeli detention. The reason Lenin and I wrote this article is because we hadn't really seen anything that brought together the fact that the attacks on health care in Gaza are really a defining feature of the U.S. Israeli attack on the terrorist. and it's so widespread as to be really kind of unique in history. So talk about the story of your 16-year-old patient, Ibrahim, the story you tell in your piece

for the Council on Foreign Relations. Sure, yeah. On March 18th, that's when the widespread bombing of Gaza resumed. since the January 19th ceasefire. And the last operation I did that day was in a 16-year-old boy named Ibrahim. He had injuries to his colon and rectum. I operated on him, stopped him from dying.

And by March 23rd in the evening, he was ready to go home. And I walked, I was on my way down to his room. We lived on the fourth floor of the hospital in the men's surgical ward at that time was on the second floor. And on my way down the stairs, his room exploded. the Israelis fired a probably a drone-fired missile into his room because they wanted to kill the other fellow in the room, a 56-year-old man who was also wounded and in the hospital receiving treatment named Ismail Barham.

They were distant cousins from what I understand, so the family or the nurses had put them in the same room to make family visits easier and things like that. Well, you know, that's a pretty shocking crime for a few reasons. Firstly, the Israelis said that Ismail, the target of the attack was Hamas's prime minister in Gaza. Well, okay, nobody thinks you can blow up a hospital to kill Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. That's just completely insane. Nobody would ever make such a claim. And of course, if Hamas did that, probably all of Gaza would be nuked. So there's no situation where you can treat people this way. Furthermore, it's completely illegal under international law. Wounded combatants who are receiving treatment at a hospital are not targeted. of attacks. In fact, they're specifically protected class of people under international law. And the Geneva Convention, so I think it's Article 19 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, if I'm remembering correctly, specifically state that the presence of wounded combatants or their sidearms is not considered an act harmful to the enemy in a hospital if they're receiving treatment there. So even if you thought that this man was a combatant, which again is

ridiculous, even if somebody were to claim that, it's just completely outrageous to think that he can be attacked while in a hospital. So that's, you know, there's two war crimes right there. Next, the firing of explosive weapons into a surgical ward packed to the brim with people, just, you know, the mass casualty on March 18th alone, we saw 221 patients. The, just packed to the brim with sick and wounded patients, with health care staff, and with a 16-year-old wounded boy in the same room. And it's just, there's no scenario where that satisfies their role.

requirement of international law to make all feasible precautions, not to destroy the hospital, not to kill health care workers, not to hurt patients, et cetera. So that's also a war crime. And then thirdly, just such reckless firing into a hospital that you almost kill an international health care worker like me. Again, I was two minutes away from the room. This is just all outrageous behavior. And it's not something that we should be supporting. You talk about the Iranian bombing of Bersheba and Israel and the horror people felt. And you say one war crime never justifies another, but Israeli leaders and their American supporters cannot fain outrage over Iranian war crimes when their own forces disregard the law with such impunity and constantly dissemble and obscure the truth while carrying out one of the most direct and systematic attacks. on a health care system in recent memory.

Can you talk about your conclusions from this? And then the significance of this conversation today, as Netanyahu meets with Trump, there's discussion of a possible 60-day ceasefire as Hamas and Israeli officials are meeting in Doha to supposedly hammer out a ceasefire. Yeah, it's important for people to realize the attack on Marks, March 23rd and the lies told to justify it, the mangling of international law told to justify it. None of that is unique. We give several examples in the piece if anyone wants to read it, but literally every attack on a health care facility in Gaza has been justified by just, it's just

either a total misunderstanding, I should say a willful misunderstanding of international law or just outright lies. And, you know, there have been some pretty extreme examples. Like, for one thing we didn't talk about in the piece was something else that happened on March 23rd, the same day Abraham was killed in his room. That's the day that the 15 paramedic civil defense workers and the U.N. worker were killed in Tel-S. Sultan near Rafa. The Israelis initially said that they fired on Hamas, you know, approaching them in an ambulance. Well, when they dug up the mass grave of those 15 paramedics a few days later, they found one of

their cell phones, and they found that absolutely nothing of the sort of happened. The guy had, I think his name was Rafat, he had, videotape the entire thing. And literally everything the Israelis had said was a lie. Well, okay, fine. Now the Israelis said, well, we have to investigate to appease people. The New York Times is saying, oh, maybe we lied about something. So they wrote up an investigation, which the Israeli media reported didn't even take account of the findings that the investigative team found when they did a scenario. They did a recreation of the scenario in the West Bank. They found that the what the commander had said was complete lies. They found that the commander literally

endangered his own troops just to go and destroy these ambulances for no reason. None of this was in the report. And furthermore, the complete misunderstanding of international law that you don't just get to attack ambulances because you think they might possibly pose a threat to you. This is completely outrageous. So this is a widespread problem. It's not just, you know, one example. And what it means for these ceasefire negotiations, it's difficult to say, but the problem with the ceasefire is that under no circumstances are Israel or the United States going to take, under no circumstances are they going to lift the blockade of Gaza? And the blockade of Gaza is exactly what led to October 7th. Well, okay, I mean, if we're just going to

put the Gazans back into a concentration camp and let them continue to languish and die there, that's not a ceasefire. That's just, you know, you can call it a piece of the graveyard if you like, but it's certainly not a step towards peace. I hope I'm wrong, and I hope the Trump administration has a miraculous turnaround, but I don't see that happening, unfortunately, unless Americans put pressure on it. And what do you want to see happen right now, Foros? You have Netanyahu coming for a series of days. He's meeting with President Trump today. He's meeting with Vance and Republican leaders tomorrow. He's meeting with Marco Rubio. What do you want to see come out of this meeting and what's happening in Doha, the Hamas, Israeli negotiators?

Well, just like under the Biden administration, I'd like the United States to be a country where the law matters. Benjamin Netanyahu is an accused war criminal, so should Donald Trump, so was Joe Biden. But the United States should be a place where we apply our laws to ourselves. That's the whole purpose of the law. it's completely illegal to continue to arm chronic and obstinate human rights abusers like Israel. And we should stop doing that. So, you know, I don't expect the Trump administration will all of a sudden think that the law matters, given its behavior. The Biden administration also never came to this reasonable conclusion.

But the American people don't have to accept that we live in a lawless country where the government can just do whatever it wants. It's not the case. We have the power to act. We have the power to pressure the administration. We have the power to pressure our own Congress people and senators. We have to leave it there. Dr. Furosid, why I want to thank you so much for being with us. Surgeon who volunteered in Gaza will link to your peace for the Council on Foreign Relations.