Jacques Leslie

Contributor: Salmon's comeback pits nature against Trump administration The Trump administration is using illegal funding cuts and questionable regulatory sleight of hand to divert water to farmers and away from tribes.

My latest L.A. Times op-ed: the triumph of salmon vs. Trump's sabotage.
www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Release of the complete Epstein file is to Trump what going to prison is for Netanyahu. Both prospects are so intensely resisted that making sure those things don't happen becomes the foundation of their policies. N. comes up with endless war; T. embraces a passel of harebrained schemes.

No One Was Supposed to Leave Alive Venezuelans deported by the Trump administration say they were tortured during their four months in CECOT.

This prison is the ultimate embodiment of Trump's (and Bukele's) sadism, ineptitude, and ruthlessness.
www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

Boston College Law School Magazine | The Tribal Victory of the Century With discretion and respect for Native Americans, a BC Law alum helps restore a river, its salmon, and its people to their rightful places.

A piece about the Yurok tribe's lawyer that was a pleasure to write. He's a graduate of Boston College Law School; thus the story in the BC Law School Magazine. With brilliant photography by Jordan Gale.
lawmagazine.bc.edu/2025/07/the-...

Fascinating, revealing conversation about the mostly unacknowledged conflict between agriculture of all kinds and a healthy climate and environment. We obviously need food to survive, but the way ag is conducted now won't work much longer.

A Win for Farmers and Tribes Brings New Hope to the Klamath In the long-contentious Klamath River watershed, an experiment that turned a barley field into a wetland not only improved water quality. It also offered a path forward for restoring populations of tw...

Here's my latest, a story about the Klamath River basin that, for a change, is upbeat. e360.yale.edu/features/kla...

Nuclear Energy Support Near Record High in U.S. Americans support nuclear energy and offer mixed views on fracking and offshore drilling, while a diminished majority prefer renewable energy development over more fossil fuel production.

The extraordinary elite propaganda effort on behalf of nuclear power has worked: public support for nuclear power is at record highs.

This took place during a period in which the only nuclear plant built in the US is 10s of billions over budget. Pretty impressive.

Please let us not try to overthrow the Iran regime, however odious it is. The U.S. might succeed in pulling off a coup, but it would lose the aftermath. Most people don't like having foreigners pick their governments for them. Whatever govt. emerges would be stained by its association with the U.S.

Opinion | Sports Stadiums Are Monuments to the Poverty of Our Ambitions

"Our stadiums are monuments to the poverty of our civic ambitions and our inability to summon the collective will to use the land we have for the things we need. They are distractions from our inability to build anything else." www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/o...

Opinion | A Hurricane Season Like No Other

The Trump admin is gambling that its laughably ill-suited but creepily telegenic cabinet members will not deliver up a catastrophe such as an epidemic fueled by lack of vaccinnation, an undetected hurricane, a gruesome plane crash... Not a bet I would take. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/31/o...

The #Trump admin's assault on Harvest is meant to show that if it can destroy Harvard, it can take down any other university. Leaders of other fields, particularly those Trump considers insufficiently supportive, such as, say, The New York Times, would be wise to get prepared.

Opinion | The $7 Billion We Wasted Bombing a Country We Couldn’t Find on a Map

"Half of Yemen’s children under 5 are malnourished — 'a statistic that is almost unparalleled across the world,' UNICEF says." www.nytimes.com/2025/05/17/o...

Another diversion manufactured by Trump to hold the public's attention, to make it look away from more damning developments. Holding the public's attention, in fact, is Trump's main skill. He generates one petty drama after another, and we all take the bait.

Naomi Klein: 'What They Want Is Absolutely Everything' The ‘Shock Doctrine’ author explains the dark logic of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s path of destruction and why billionaire oligarchs are so angry.

The indispensable Naomi Klein passes on some insights about our global predicament. www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Watchlist March 2025 - Civicus Monitor CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist: 5 countries where there has been a decline in civic freedoms

The U.S. is now on the Civicus monitor watchlist of repressive regimes for "unprecedented executive orders designed to unravel democratic institutions, rule of law, and global cooperation." monitor.civicus.org/watchlist-ma...

Contributor: DOGE and Trump quash a Klamath River basin comeback The president's slash-and-burn funding cuts are betraying California and Oregon tribes, farmers and salmon along the Klamath River.

Here's my latest L.A. Times op-ed, out today, on how the Trump administration's funding freezes and personnel layoffs have replaced hope and optimism in the Klamath basin with fear, uncertainty, and anger.
www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

#Trump will insist over and over that his tariffs are permanent right up until the moment when he decides they aren't. The current situation is so volatile that tariffs aren't likely to stay in place-- too many forces will align against Trump, including, I can even imagine, some elected Republicans.

In New England, Canadian hydropower has slowed to an ominous trickle Whether due to drought, prices, or politics, the weekslong disappearance of Canadian hydropower from New England’s grid exposes risks for the region.

"Hydro‑Québec’s main transmission line into New England stopped exporting any meaningful amount of power two days after President Donald Trump’s tariff on Canadian imports went into effect." www.canarymedia.com/articles/hyd...

If you ever wondered how the KGB manipulated foreigners and got them to repeat Soviet propaganda, spend some time listening to Steve Witkoff talk about his wonderful conversations with Vladimir Putin.

You want to know how bad Canadian-US relations have become? There's a serious discussion in Canada about developing nuclear weapons.
This is one of the US's longest, closest, and best ally. And in one month, Trump has destroyed that relationship. Insane and reprehensible.

This is shameful.

If it isn't obvious, you aren't safe in this Trump Administration. Dictators come after anyone and everyone deemed a threat, including their former allies and loyalists.

Your white skin, American accent, Christian background, Rust Belt zip code, and/or GOP voting record won't save you.

Canadian Who Was in an ‘American Pie’ Video Says ICE Held Her for 12 Days Jasmine Mooney, 35, said she was put “in chains” after immigration enforcement officers flagged her visa application paperwork. The former actress was finally allowed to return to Vancouver.

What an ugly, disagreeable, disreputable country we've become. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/u...

Opinion | A Story About Salmon That Almost Had a Happy Ending How tribal leaders, commercial fisherman and a few small environmental groups won an uphill campaign against dams.

Here's my latest, an 1,800-word piece for the New York Times' opinion section about the consequences of the world's largest dam removal project in the #Klamath basin and the calamity that the #Trump administration has abruptly and unnecessarily caused there.
www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/o...

Elon Musk told Joe Rogan, “The fundamental weakness of Western Civilization is empathy.”

All you need to know-- this guy should be kept a million miles from government.

America First should not put Russia second | George W. Bush Presidential Center

Interesting statement on Russia and Ukraine from leadership at the George W Bush Presidential Center.
www.bushcenter.org/publications...

USAID update, with Dr. Atul Gawande and Dr. Jeremy Faust. February 24, 2025. An in-depth and up-to-date deep-dive on where things really stand in the Trump administration's assault on USAID, which has long been one of the United States' greatest assets.

The abrupt dismembering of USAID is beyond appalling, as Gawande explains in this grim, powerful interview. The Trumpies who've perpetrated this should be aware that they will be remembered for their cravenness, their blatant disregard for human life. insidemedicine.substack.com/p/usaid-upda...

It was past time for someone to step up and draw a line, as so far few Democrats have, and these prosecutors may have done that, modeling appropriate action in the face of spreading authoritarianism.

Trump babbling nonsense at the National Prayer Breakfast said "The water comes down from the northwest parts of Canada, I guess, but the Pacific Northwest. And it comes down by millions and millions of barrels a day and uh, I opened it up. It wasn't that easy to do. But I opened it up and it's pouring down."

Donald Trump hallucinating and babbling complete nonsense at the National Prayer Breakfast.
There is zero water coming from Canada to California, and nothing he's said or done changes that. He's
"opened up" nothing. He must think because Canada is north of the US that it's "uphill."

Murphy: "We need to act like a real opposition party in the middle of a constitutional and democracy crisis. That means we should not be moving forward nominees or legislation in the Senate. Ds should not be giving votes to nominee or legislation in the Senate until Rs get serious about this crisis"