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Five countries hold 70% of world’s last wildernesses, map reveals

Just five countries hold 70% of the world’s remaining untouched wilderness areas and urgent international action is needed to protect them, according to new research.

Researchers from the University of Queensland (UQ) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) have for the first time produced a global map that sets out which countries are responsible for nature that is devoid of heavy industrial activity.

It comes ahead of the conference of parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Egypt in November where signatory nations are working towards a plan for the protection of biodiversity beyond 2020.

Conservationists are calling for a mandated target for wilderness conservation that will preserve the planet’s vulnerable ecosystems.

The UQ and WCS study, published in the journal Nature, identifies Australia, the US, Brazil, Russia and Canada as the five countries that hold the vast majority of the world’s remaining wilderness.

The paper comes after the team of scientists produced data in 2016 that charted the planet’s remaining terrestrial wilderness and in 2018 examined which parts of the world’s oceans remained free from the damaging impacts of human activity.

They found that more than 77% of land – excluding Antarctica – and 87% of oceans had been modified by human intervention.

‘We Have Less Time Than We Thought’: Alarming New Study Shows Oceans Have Retained Far More Heat Than Previously Believed

Offering a stark warning that humanity may have even less time to drastically cut carbon emissions than the United Nations suggested in its latest alarming report on the climate crisis, new research (pdf) published in the journal Nature on Wednesday shows that Earth’s oceans have retained 60 percent more heat each year over the past 25 years than scientists previously believed.

“We thought that we got away with not a lot of warming in both the ocean and the atmosphere for the amount of CO2 that we emitted. But we were wrong,” Laure Resplandy, a geoscientist at Princeton University who led the new study, told the Washington Post. “The planet warmed more than we thought. It was hidden from us just because we didn’t sample it right. But it was there. It was in the ocean already.”

The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change argued in its report released earlier this month that humanity must cut carbon emissions in half by 2030 in order to avert climate catastrophe by 2040—but that timeframe was based on previous and possibly conservative estimates of global warming.

As the Post’s Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis noted, “higher-than-expected amount of heat in the oceans means more heat is being retained within Earth’s climate system each year, rather than escaping into space.”

“In essence,” they added, “more heat in the oceans signals that global warming is more advanced than scientists thought.”

‘We’ve Never Seen Anything Like This’: Unprecedented Early Voting Gives Progressives Hope

President Donald Trump has traveled the country in recent weeks telling crowds in states including Texas, Florida, and Arizona that a vote for Republican politicians is a vote for his agenda—and high early turnout among typically Democratic groups suggests that anti-Trump voters are taking in that message as well.

Early voting turnout is breaking records and vastly exceeding expectations in several closely-watched states, with Democrats hopeful that enthusiasm among young people, African-Americans, and Latino voters will lead to Democratic victories and deliver a strong message of resistance to Trump.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida, told the Brennan Center for Justice, sharing research showing that voters in North Carolina, Georgia, Minnesota, Texas, Florida, and Nevada have cast twice as many ballots so far as they did four years ago.

Across the country, more than 22 million Americans have already voted in state and federal elections, with six days left to go until Election Day—compared with 83 million total voters who went to the polls in the 2014 midterms. Tom Bonier, CEO of the political data firm TargetSmart, suggested that the high turnout is a result of new levels of enthusiasm for—and against—candidates.

“While early vote has consistently increased over the last decade, early indications are that we’re seeing more than an incremental increase in voter participation this cycle,” wrote Bonier in a Medium post on Wednesday.

In Texas, where residents have started voting in a number of races including one for Republican Ted Cruz’s Senate seat, turnout among voters under the age of 29 has increased 508 percent, while black and Latino voters are going to the polls at more than double the rate they did in 2014.

Young Voters Push Peers To The Polls

Political experts say more than half of Florida’s registered voters are made up of the youngest generations – millennials and Generations X and Z – and they could potentially seriously influence next week’s midterm election.

But historically, this group is less likely to actually cast a vote.
With one week to go until the midterm election, some younger voters are pushing their peers to early voting.

Isabella Fernandez spent her Tuesday afternoon on the University of South Florida Tampa campus encouraging students to take advantage of early voting at the Yuengling Center, where anyone who is registered to vote in Hillsborough County can cast a ballot through Sunday, Nov. 4.

A member of NextGen America, she says the advocacy group – which is nonpartisan but generally supports progressive candidates – spent the past few months canvassing neighborhoods around college campuses encouraging young people to vote.

“We registered over 50,000 students and people all over Florida for the upcoming election,” Fernandez said. “So now we’re just following up with them and making sure they get to the polls.”

Fernandez said their surveys indicate the top five issues younger people care about when casting their ballots are the cost of college, affordable healthcare, racial equity and justice, climate change and gun safety.

U.S. says the time to end the Saudi-backed war in Yemen is now

The Trump administration has launched its most concerted effort yet to pressure Saudi Arabia to end the conflict in Yemen amid growing opposition in Congress to continued U.S. military support for the kingdom’s war there.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in recent days have said the time has come to halt more than three years of conflict between Houthi rebels and a government recognized by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the West. U.N. officials have warned that the war has left half the population of Yemen, one of the world’s poorest countries, on the precipice of famine.

But the proposals put forth by Pompeo and Mattis are burdened by strategic limitations.

Mattis called for a cease-fire in which the rebels would pull back from Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia and start negotiations within 30 days. But he also said Saudi Arabia had a right to defend itself against Houthi missiles, which U.S. officials say have been supplied by Iran.

Pompeo proposed that the rebels first stop firing missiles at Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and that Saudi Arabia then stop airstrikes that have killed thousands of civilians.

“It is time to end this conflict, replace conflict with compromise, and allow the Yemeni people to heal through peace and reconstruction,” Pompeo said.

Dire Warnings for Other States (and the Planet) as Big Oil Pushes Sneaky “Nuclear Option” to Protect Profits via Colorado Ballot

If you don’t live in Colorado, you may not have seen the folksy television ads, mailers, and door hangers aimed at drumming up support for Amendment 74, a simple-sounding measure that would radically alter the state’s constitution to give fossil fuel giants the power to sue state and local governments for imposing regulations that threaten their dirty profits.

But while the heated fight over Amendment 74—which is on the ballot in the Nov. 6 midterm elections—has received virtually zero national attention, environmentalists and journalists reporting on the industry-backed proposal are warning that it could provide a playbook for Big Oil to skirt health regulations on a country-wide scale, potentially dooming the kinds of ambitious climate policies that scientists say are necessary to avert planetary catastrophe.

“If Amendment 74 is successful in a swing state like Colorado, oil and gas companies will have birthed a new template that could be replicated in other locales,” notes Capital & Main journalist David Sirota, who on Tuesday published a deeply reported piece on the amendment and its potentially devastating consequences in the Denver-based Westword. “It is a model that could block all future state efforts to reduce fossil fuel extraction, carbon pollution, vehicle emissions, and climate change.”

Amendment 74, argues Sirota, is “the most dangerous state constitutional amendment in modern American history.”

New Research Exposes “Stealth Politics” of America’s 100 Richest Billionaires

While some of the most famous ultra-rich Americans—such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and the Koch Brothers—have very public profiles and readily disclose where they stand ideologically or on key issues, new research reveals that a cabal of the U.S. billionaires largely operates in the shadows as they use their vast wealth and influence to maintain their status and undermine democracy.

In a piece published by the Guardian on Wednesday, Northwestern University professors Benjamin I. Page, Jason Seawright, and Matthew J. Lacombe lay out the findings of their “exhaustive, web-based study of everything that the 100 wealthiest U.S. billionaires have said or done, over a 10-year period, concerning several major issues of public policy.”

The trio of researchers found that “both as individuals and as contributors to Koch-type consortia, most U.S. billionaires have given large amounts money—and many have engaged in intense activity—to advance unpopular, inequality-exacerbating, highly conservative economic policies.”

Their research, also detailed in their forthcoming book Billionaires and Stealth Politics, shows that despite spending tons of money over the past decade to advance policies that safeguard and even expand their wealth, “billionaires who favor unpopular, ultraconservative economic policies, and work actively to advance them (that is, most politically active billionaires) stay almost entirely silent about those issues in public.”

“Billionaires have plenty of media access, but most of them choose not to say anything at all about the policy issues of the day. They deliberately pursue a strategy of what we call ‘stealth politics,'” the researchers explain. “This sort of stealth politics,” which enables wealthy individuals to stay off the radar of the general public and avoid political accountability while wielding significant influence over politicians and government institutions, “is harmful to democracy.”

The sums the oil companies are investing are so large that they may well overwhelm science and common sense by Bill McKibben

In the wake of the devastating new climate report — and of devastating hurricanes, droughts and floods — the oil industry has been making a few small noises about how it might want to change its course. BP’s chief executive, for instance, recently called for a “different, more innovative, collaborative path”; Exxon won widespread coverage for setting aside $500,000 each of the next two years to support some kind of carbon tax.

In case you were wondering, these apparent concessions turn out to be green wash and hooey — all the proof you need can be found in the spending reports on some of the most important ballot measures around the country. Forget the blue wave: Big Oil is sloshing a crude tsunami across the country instead, and in the process trying to bury some of the most innovative ideas for energy progress.

In Washington state, for instance, Measure 1631 offers one of the first serious plans for a price on carbon. Drawn up by a wide coalition of groups from across the state, it calls for a modest tax to be used for renewable energy development. It’s drawn support even from the local business community. A Seattle entrepreneur named, um, Bill Gates, for instance, backed the proposed law, calling climate change “the toughest problem humanity has ever faced.”

But the oil industry isn’t interested. BP alone has spent close to $13 million to beat the measure; the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers association, of which Exxon is a member, is kicking in $1 million. That is, an Exxon-affiliated group is spending as much to beat a carbon tax in one state as Exxon is theoretically spending to back one for the whole country. The fossil fuel industry has raised enough to break every Washington record for election spending — oh, and there are also exactly $275 in “small contributions” listed in the campaign finance reports for the no-on-1631 campaign.

All that money means total superiority in advertising. It also means that, slowly but surely, the widespread lead 1631 enjoyed when the campaign began is being whittled away — not by argument but by constant fearmongering.

‘Energizer Bunny’: As He Campaigns for Reelection, Sanders Preps for a Second Presidential Run

On a sunny Sunday in mid-October, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) reflected on just how much the national policy debate has shifted in recent years.

“I have been through many, many states throughout this country,” he told a couple hundred Vermonters gathered in an event barn at Williston’s Isham Family Farm. “And what I am enormously proud of is that many of the ideas that we led with right here in the state of Vermont — ideas that three years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago were seen to be radical and extreme — are now being adopted by cities and states and politicians all across this country.”

Sanders ticked through the list: a $15 minimum wage, tuition-free public college and the proposal that has animated him throughout his 28 years in Congress, universal health care.

“Last poll that I saw,” he said, “70 percent of the American people support a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program.”

What Sanders didn’t say — and didn’t have to say to the crowd of knowing supporters — was that the senator himself has been, to a certain degree, responsible for that transformation.

“He’s the most popular politician in America,” said Middlebury College’s Bill McKibben, an outspoken Sanders supporter. “And in our legislative process, popularity is a strong currency that you can use to advance important goals.”

Said Phil Fiermonte, a longtime Sanders aide who retired last year, “He’s kind of like the explainer-in-chief. He can lay things out for people so they really get it.”

As Sanders campaigns for a third term in the U.S. Senate, he is doing so from a position of power and influence that few anticipated when he last sought reelection in 2012, well before his improbable 2016 presidential bid.

“He went from being perceived by many at the national level as a bit of a gadfly to being seen as a very serious contender for the presidency,” said veteran political operative Bill Lofy. “That’s a significant transformation over the course of a relatively short period of time.”

Democrats close campaign by hammering GOP on health care

Democrats are pinning their hopes on health care as a winning message in the final days of the midterm campaign, saying they will not be distracted by President Trump’s attempts to make the election about immigration.

When Trump this week proposed ending birthright citizenship, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) responded by hammering Republicans on health care. Meanwhile, the House Democrats’ campaign arm recently launched another wave of ads targeting GOP lawmakers for their ObamaCare repeal votes.

“Remember that we close on health care and corruption and they can close with whatever toxic racist stew they want,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) tweeted on Tuesday.

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While Trump is focusing on immigration issues like birthright citizenship and a “caravan” of migrants making its way to the U.S. border, Democrats say they will not be dragged into a debate that distracts from health-care issues leading up to Election Day.

“Clearly, Republicans will do absolutely anything to divert attention away from their votes to take away Americans’ health care,” Pelosi said on Tuesday.

Democrats have been pounding away at Republicans, highlighting their attempts to dismantle ObamaCare and its protections for people with pre-existing conditions. That messaging is a stark change from previous years when the 2010 health law was a liability for Democrats on the campaign trail.

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— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) October 31, 2018

The Beto Effect: How O’Rourke’s Campaign For Senate Could Help Other Texas Democrats

Beto O’Rourke may well lose his bid for Senate, but win his effort to reshape politics in Texas.

The three-term Congressman from El Paso is drawing huge crowds, raising a ton of cash and impressing even the most jaded campaign observers. But he’s still behind in the polls, Republicans are voting early at a faster clip than O’Rourke’s fellow Democrats, and even his biggest fans harbor doubts that he can break the nation’s longest losing streak for Democrats.

Still, look down-ballot and there are reasons for Democrats to hope. O’Rourke has inspired legions of political newcomers with his optimistic message. Many of them could well vote for other Democrats on the ballot. Even if his campaign comes up short, O’Rourke’s coattails could help carry Democrats in the eight Texas House districts the non-partisan Cook Political Report lists as in play.

“I think he has pretty good coattails. All of our ticket is not as strong as he is,” said Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Dallas-area Democrat.

From across the aisle, Republicans offer begrudging respect. “The amount of money he has, it’s obviously going to elect a lot of races, from House seats down to judgeships,” one senior Republican said. “By turning out voters for himself, he’s turning out voters for other Democrats.”

On Boycotts, Academic Freedom, and the Struggle for Justice in Israel-Palestine

hen the young Palestinian-American Lara Alqasem was finally allowed to enter Israel after being detained at the airport and threatened with deportation, who won? Liberal Zionists, many of whom had championed her case, felt they had cause to celebrate. You see, they could now tell the world, Israel is not (yet) the bastion of build-the-wall intolerance that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, like his buddy in the White House, has wanted to make of his country. On October 16, two days before the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision, Jeremy Ben-Ami, president and founder of J Street, had an op-ed in Haaretz under the title “The Ban on Lara Alqasem Is a Gift for BDS, and a Disaster for Israel.” J Street, which opposes the movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), was naturally pleased that Alqasem had distanced herself from her earlier activities on behalf of BDS. It took the court’s decision to let her in as “a strong sign of the continued vitality of pro-democratic forces in Israel.”

How much vitality there is or isn’t among pro-democratic forces in Israel is, indeed, a crucial question. When I interviewed the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, of Tel Aviv University, he said that he himself had initially opposed BDS, and had written an op-ed in Haaretz to say so. He had changed his mind, he told me, when he realized how very weak the Israeli left is, and is likely to remain for the foreseeable future. If the Israeli left was not getting its act together, if there was no prospect of its persuading Israel even to end the occupation of the West Bank, this was not just a sad judgment on the left. It meant something much more important: It meant that the Palestinians had no chance of receiving justice from any pro-democratic swing inside Israel. It was that realization, Sand said, that pushed him over into the pro-BDS camp. Only international pressure, he concluded, can possibly move Israel to change. Domestic pressure is effectively nonexistent. No doubt that was why Palestinian civil society had decided in the first place to launch BDS, a direct appeal to international opinion.

In These 5 Races, Climate Change Has Taken Center Stage

Earlier this fall, the world’s top climate scientists gave humanity about 10 years to avoid a future that really sucks. With the midterm elections right around the corner, that warning means voters are effectively deciding which candidates to trust with the keys to the climate. If voters are sufficiently worried about warming, that anxiety might help determine who is put in office.

According to Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, worry is a stronger predictor of policy support than other emotions. “We found that it’s not fear, it’s not anger, and it’s not disgust or guilt,” he explained. “Worry doesn’t hijack, doesn’t overwhelm, rationality. It can really spur it.”

So just how worried about the planet’s future are voters in the nation’s tightest congressional races? Grist created a map overlaying competitive elections, as identified by The Cook Political Report, with climate concern data from Yale’s 2018 Climate Opinion Maps.

These toss-up elections are spread throughout the country. Some are sprawling rural districts, others are comprised primarily of dense cities or metro areas. (Keep in mind that congressional districts vary in size, but each holds roughly the same number of people.) Each district varies in what percentage of its constituents report being worried about climate change—represented from yellow (not that worried) to red (pretty worried).

Interestingly, even in those districts where folks seem less concerned about climate change, a majority of people worry about it. Most of the seats in play are currently held by Republicans. And while several Democrats have doubled down on environmental policies, like renewable energy, climate change is a bipartisan issue in many of these communities.

Look closely at the map, and you’ll see a handful of neck-and-neck races in places chock full of climate-worriers. These communities range from the beaches of Miami and Southern California to the suburbs of Houston. Grist examined five of these highly climate-concerned toss-up districts to see what local factors may shift the balance of power in Congress.

Republican Candidates Have No Idea What ActBlue Is – But they sure do hate it.

It would be incorrect, at this point, to call ActBlue Democrats’ secret weapon—there’s nothing secret about it. The Democratic fundraising platform, founded 14 years ago as a way to facilitate small-dollar online giving, has directed more than $1 billion to Democratic candidates this cycle. More than any other online tool, it has powered a “green wave” of progressive fundraising and helped candidates for the House and Senate—including first-time candidates who entered politics without a well-established local donor base—out-raise long-tenured Republicans in dozens of races. Beto O’Rourke, Randy Bryce, even Heidi Heitkamp—they’ve all benefited from a simple tool that lets supporters give a few bucks with just a few clicks.

ActBlue is technically a PAC, but it doesn’t work like one. You could think of it instead as sort of like PayPal for politics. Rather than collecting money from donors into a centralized pot and then disbursing it in large sums to candidates the PAC supports—the way most PACs work—ActBlue simply directs donors’ money where they want it to go. So donations via ActBlue are not PAC donations in the traditional sense; they’re individual donations that have been processed through ActBlue. “We provide the infrastructure for campaigns and organizations to fundraise online, but we don’t fundraise on behalf of anyone,” is how the group puts it. And campaigns love it, because ActBlue is really good at it.

That there’s no comparable tool on the right has been a subject of concern among conservatives for a long time. Since at least 2007, Republicans have talked about building their own ActBlue. Various efforts to do so have been tried and, for various reasons, have failed. But maybe the reason Republicans don’t have their own ActBlue is that they don’t even seem to know what it is.

Over the last few months, as Democratic candidates haul in increasingly large sums of cash via the fundraising platform, their opponents have struggled to turn ActBlue into a political bogeyman through a series of false claims about who uses it and how it works. They have described it as a leftist special interest group and as a way to launder illegal donations from foreigners. Most ominously, some conservatives have used it to inflame conspiracy theories about the liberal philanthropist George Soros, who was recently the target of an attempted pipe bomb attack.

Chicago Teachers Just Voted 98% to Authorize the First Charter School Strike in U.S. History

On Tuesday, teachers at 15 Chicago charter schools voted 98 percent to authorize a strike as they continue to bargain a contract with Acero Schools, the largest unionized charter network in the city. On Friday, four locations of the Chicago International Charter Schools (CICS) will take a strike authorization vote. And teachers at nine other Chicago charter networks are also in contract negotiations, and could similarly opt to take strikes votes in the coming months.

If no agreement is reached, Chicago could be home to the nation’s first-ever charter strike. Teachers have been inching closer to this possibility for the past two years, during which time eleventh-hour deals have narrowly averted strikes against at least three other charter operators.

That’s a stunning reversal from 2012, when Chicago charter operators bragged that, unlike unionized public schools, charters were unaffected by teacher strikes.

Since then, “Chicago has become the epicenter of charter union organizing in the country,” as Illinois Network of Charter Schools President Andrew Broy lamented in the Chicago Tribune last year.

What’s more, charter teachers are currently bargaining their first contracts as members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), which also represents the city’s 27,000 public school teachers. In March, the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers that represents more than 30 charters in the city, merged with the CTU in a bid to strengthen the hands of both unions.

“Our identity does not derive from our employer, it derives from our work,” says Chris Baehrend, the chair of CTU’s charter division. “I’m not a corporate representative, I’m a public educator.”

Want to Save the Climate? Break Up the Big Banks.

A stark new United Nations climate report warns that humans have about 12 years to slash global emissions by nearly half. Unfortunately, that’s going to be extremely challenging with deep changes to the global financial system.

Despite regularly claiming new commitments to “green finance,” the big banks continue to lend billions to the fossil fuel industry every year—including for the most extreme climate-damaging activities, like exploiting tar sands oils and burning coal.

Continuing to invest in fossil fuels goes against all of the evidence about what needs to be done to tackle climate change. An estimated 80 percent or more of the world’s known fossil fuel reserves need to remain in the ground if we’re to have any chance of avoiding catastrophic consequences, like rising sea levels and melting glaciers.

In place of fossil fuel finance, investments should be redirected toward renewable energy, cleaner industry, and more sustainable agriculture, among other priorities. That requires reforms to the Fed and the breakup of the biggest banks.

The scale of this change can seem daunting. But in a new report for the Institute for Policy Studies, I’ve identified several priorities for achieving a more climate-friendly financial system.

Racial gerrymandering kept Navajos from power. Is that about to change?

Republican-drawn voting districts left Native Americans voiceless despite their majorities. This election could bring sweeping change

New Mexico’s Deb Haaland vying to become 1st Native American woman in Congress

Democrat Haaland keeping money edge in US House race

Democrat Debra Haaland is maintaining her fundraising edge over her Republican and Libertarian opponents for an open U.S. House seat in central New Mexico.

According to new Federal Election Commission filings, the Laguna Pueblo member and former state Democratic Party chairwoman raised $159,954 during the first two weeks of October. Republican former state lawmaker Janice Arnold-Jones pulled in $21,510 and Libertarian Lloyd Princeton raised $444, reports show.

Haaland’s campaign reported having $143,028 cash on hand on Oct. 17. Arnold-Jones reported $30,104 cash on hand while Princeton had $625.

The filings come as Haaland is seeking to become the first Native American woman elected to Congress along with Kansas Democrat Sharice Davids.

All three candidates are vying to succeed Democratic Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who is running for New Mexico governor, in a district that has leaned Democratic in recent elections. Democrats consider the central New Mexico seat safe and it has been held by a Democrat since 2009.

Throughout the campaign, Haaland has repeatedly told voters that Congress “has never had a voice like mine” and vowed to make New Mexico — a state that relies on oil and gas revenues to fund education — 100 percent reliant on renewable sources of energy in the new future.

‘Idaho’s hope’: could Paulette Jordan be the first Native American governor in the US?

Paulette Jordan was not going to let her opponent have the last word.

The Democratic nominee for Idaho governor is a night owl and stayed in her office past 1am for her final marathon session of debate prep. Dressed in sweatpants and a running jacket and drinking yerba mate tea for energy, she rehearsed until she couldn’t any more.

On stage 16 hours later, when the Republican candidate, Brad Little, said Jordan’s “special interest” money came from Native American tribes, she didn’t let him finish.

“They’re not ‘special interest’,” said Jordan, a member of the Coeur d’Alene tribe, looking her opponent in the eye. “Tribes are called sovereign nations.”

“Oh, ‘sovereign nations’!” Little responded, throwing his hands up in the air.

“They are also individuals, human beings,” Jordan fired back.

It was a brief exchange, but one that stuck with Jordan, a 38-year-old indigenous woman vying to be Idaho’s first female leader and America’s first Native American governor.

“As someone who is part of the First Nations of this land, having been here for thousands of years, people forget that there were people here prior to their arrival,” Jordan said, later that night at a cocktail bar in Boise, where she was celebrating the debate with a small group of staff. “For him to scoff at that, to have this very arrogant mannerism towards it … it’s condescending and disrespectful to tribes.”

Jordan’s underdog campaign has shaken up politics in the west, bringing mainstream attention to disenfranchised communities and progressive policy ideas that GOP leaders typically overlook or treat with disdain. In the final week of the race in one of the reddest states in the country, her supporters and opponents are asking the same question: can she actually win?

Pipeline opponents stage Halloween protest in Montgomery County

Opponents of the Mountain Valley Pipeline organized a Halloween protest in Montgomery County Wednesday. More than a dozen protesters dressed as zombies blocked an access gate on Mt. Tabor Road leading to the pipeline right-of-way.

At one point, the protesters were lying on the ground and chanting “Don’t make us the living dead. Kill the MVP instead,” and “Cauldron boil, cauldron bubble, MVP’s in lot’s of trouble.”

Law enforcement officers responded to the site, but it’s unclear if they made any arrests.

A post on the Appalachians Against Pipelines Facebook page said the protesters blocked the construction site for over an hour.

A Pipeline, a Protest, and the Battle for Pennsylvania’s Political Soul

Mariner East would carry explosive chemicals dangerously close to people’s homes. Can the fight against it turn a heavily conservative region blue?

This is a new one. Defendants in a Kansas militia men case where racists conspired to plant a bomb in a mosque are trying to convince the court they deserve leniency because the president inspired their hatred with his anti-Islamic rhetoric. https://t.co/MJHYsesX4U

— Alex Bartos #resist #glovesoff (@itsreallyalexb) October 31, 2018

949,143 people have already cast a ballot in the general election who are voting for the first time. Among those voters, Democrats enjoy an 8% advantage, in terms of modeled partisanship. That's significant.

— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) November 1, 2018

It's time for Florida to have a governor who puts people ahead of special interests, and when I'm elected governor, that's a promise I can make. Thank you, @elizabethforma, I'm honored to have a fighter for working families by my side. pic.twitter.com/Q2Lt9Alka5

— Andrew Gillum (@AndrewGillum) November 1, 2018

Hot damn! Bernie walking another big group of people to the polls. He’s been all over this country campaigning for the democrats. Wait, what?! The democrats? He’s not even a democrat. Hm? Now, see how stupid that sounds? pic.twitter.com/3HO25IIimy

— loopy with glass half… (@Pa1Lauren) November 1, 2018