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Government facing up to $5 billion bill over carbon credits, Treasury reveals

The Prime Minister has doubled down on his insistence that the government will not spend billions of dollars offshore to meet New Zealand’s climate commitments.

Treasury estimates it could cost up to $5 billion to pay for the overseas carbon credits New Zealand needs to honour its Paris Agreement commitments.

An additional $1.6 billion may also be needed to pay for credits to meet a subsequent commitment, due by 2035.

The government was “gonna do everything we can” to honour the country’s Paris Agreement pledge to halve emissions by 2030, Christopher Luxon said.

“But just reassuring everybody, we ain’t shutting down farms and we certainly aren’t sending billions of dollars offshore.”

The Green Party said it was impossible for the government to meet the target with domestic climate policies alone.

It was time for Luxon be honest about whether the government was still committed to the Paris Agreement, and – if so – to explain how it would do that, co-leader leader Chlöe Swarbrick said.

“Are we genuinely, honestly going to meet the [target], do they genuinely, honestly commit us to doing that? Because if so, the reality is we will need to pay for offshore mitigation.”

New Zealand has the option of meeting its pledge to halve net greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 entirely with domestic policies.

However, the most recent analysis from the Ministry for the Environment showed that there was a shortfall of 84 million tonnes of emissions, that would need to be made up by paying other countries to offset their emissions instead.

Treasury has identified the potential cost of offshore credits to make up the gap as a specific fiscal risk to the government’s finances for several years now.

However, it has never put an official figure on the government books, because there was “no legal obligation” to meet the target and successive governments had not committed to any purchases.

A previous one-off analysis it prepared in 2023 put the cost at anywhere from $3 billion to $24 billion.

Last year, Treasury secretary Iain Rennie gave Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick an undertaking to update that analysis.

The new estimate narrows the range to $4.4b-$5 billion to meet the 2030 pledge, and $0.2-$1.6 billion to meet New Zealand’s next pledge to lower emissions by 51-55 percent by 2035.

That was based on the Ministry for the Environment’s 2025 emissions projections, with and without extra policies to reduce emissions.

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The Business Of Homelessness

Several months ago, I wrote an opinion piece questioning Miami Beach’s homelessness policies, the City’s compliance with state law, the effectiveness of taxpayer-funded programs, and the measurable outcomes residents were receiving for millions of dollars in public spending. The article was published by Miami’s Community Newspapers. Today, that article no longer exists on its website. Readers attempting to access it are greeted with a 404 error page.

I have no interest in speculating about who made that decision or why. What interests me is the larger question: why is there such resistance to a public debate about homelessness in Miami Beach? Because the questions raised in that article have never been answered.

For months, I have asked for a real discussion about homelessness in Miami Beach. Not a press release. Not a presentation. Not carefully crafted messaging. A debate. Policy against policy. Outcome against outcome. Fact against fact. Those opportunities have never been granted.

That alone should concern every resident and taxpayer.

When government is confident in its position, it welcomes scrutiny. It does not avoid it. It does not rely on talking points. It does not ask the public to accept conclusions without examining the facts. It engages, explains, and defends its decisions in full view of the people it serves.

Instead, Miami Beach continues to celebrate low point-in-time homeless counts as proof of success. That may make for a favorable headline, but it does not necessarily mean the problem is being solved. A point-in-time count is exactly what it sounds like: a snapshot. One night. One moment. It does not measure how many people return to the streets days later. It does not measure treatment outcomes. It does not measure recidivism. It does not measure whether people are actually escaping homelessness. It measures optics.

The uncomfortable reality is that Miami Beach has built a system that explains inaction instead of delivering results.

The City’s ordinance conditions enforcement on the availability of shelter and services. In practice, that means enforcement becomes optional. No shelter available means no enforcement. No enforcement means no compliance. No compliance means the problem continues. Florida law does not provide cities with an indefinite loophole to suspend action. The State made its expectations clear. Prohibit public camping. Enforce the law. Provide structured alternatives. Use available treatment resources. Intervene when individuals are in crisis.

More importantly, the State backed those expectations with funding, treatment programs, crisis stabilization resources, Baker Act authority, Marchman Act authority, and legal tools designed to address homelessness, mental illness, and substance abuse. The authority exists. The resources exist. The question is whether local government has the will to use them.

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US Begins Another Round of Attacks on Iran

On Wednesday night, US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced it was launching another round of attacks on Iran as Iranian media began reporting blasts across the southern part of the country.

The attacks marked the second day in a row that the US launched strikes on Iran and came after President Trump threatened more bombings. US War Secretary Pete Hegseth also said that the US would be attacking the Islamic Republic.

“CENTCOM will be busy tonight because President Trump said we will be hitting Iran hard, and we will be,” Hegseth told reporters outside CENTCOM headquarters in Florida not long before the strikes started.

On Wednesday morning, the president said on Truth Social that Iran has “taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price.” He also claimed in the post that Iran had been “completely defeated” despite its ability to launch missile and drone attacks across the Middle East.

In comments to reporters in the Oval Office later in the day, Trump was more explicit in his threat. “We hit them hard yesterday, and we’re going to hit them again hard today,” he said.

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A DOJ Brief Preposterously Insists That Trump’s ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ Was Politically Neutral

In a brief filed on Friday, Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. argues that a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s brazenly corrupt “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is moot because the Justice Department does not plan to implement the idea. Woodward also notes that the lawsuit, Floyd v. Department of Justice, is based on the premise that the fund was designed to benefit Trump’s supporters, excluding Democrats who claim they were victims of Republican “lawfare and weaponization.” And that, he says, is simply not true.

Trump himself cast doubt on both of those arguments in a Meet the Press interview that aired two days after Woodward filed his brief. The president suggested that the fund, which was part of a May 18 “settlement agreement” that resolved his lawsuit against the IRS, might not be dead after all. And he described the intended beneficiaries as people who “have been hurt so badly by radical-left lunatics” who “worked for the Biden administration and Sleepy Joe.”

As the contrast between Woodward’s arguments in court and Trump’s comments on TV illustrates, the Justice Department’s portrayal of the Anti-Weaponization Fund is completely divorced from reality. Woodward’s description of the fund, which he officially approved by signing the “settlement agreement,” glides over the reasons why it provoked the bipartisan backlash that persuaded Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to ditch the idea two weeks after announcing it.

The pretext for the Anti-Weaponization Fund was a lawsuit in which Trump preposterously claimed that IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn’s illegal leaking of his tax returns had caused “at least” $10 billion in damages. In addition to offering an improbable estimate of the injury he had suffered, Trump missed the statutory deadline for filing such claims. And even if he had filed his lawsuit on time, he would have faced the challenge of showing that the IRS was responsible for the crimes of a man it did not employ.

Despite those legal weaknesses, the Justice Department never mounted a defense. That failure underlined the blatant conflicts of interest created by the lawsuit, which pitted Trump against agencies he oversees in a case where both sides were represented by attorneys who work for him. The situation was so bizarre that Kathleen Williams, the federal judge overseeing the case in the Southern District of Florida, questioned whether it involved a genuine controversy between adverse parties, as required for the lawsuit to proceed.

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The White House’s AI Deal: Kill State Laws, Demand Your ID

The White House is dangling something the technology industry has wanted for years: a federal block on state AI laws and the price is a national age verification push that chips away at anonymous internet use.

The administration is negotiating a federal preemption of state AI laws in exchange for its support of key tech policy priorities from the Hill, according to Axios, and the bills it would back include the Kids Online Safety Act, the NO FAKES Act, and age verification requirements.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) is steering the talks. “Senator Blackburn is spearheading the negotiation with the White House to finalize legislative text of an AI preemption package that includes protections for kids, creators, and communities through the Senate version of KOSA, the NO FAKES Act, and age verification requirements,” a Blackburn spokesperson said.

The administration kept its own language vague. “The White House continues to proactively engage across government and industry,” a White House official said.

Strip away the framing and the age verification piece asks something concrete of you. To prove you are old enough, you upload a government ID, submit to a face scan, or let a service study your behavior closely enough to guess your age. None of those confirms age and nothing else. They confirm identity and they leave a record that outlives the check.

The internet that once let you be a username starts to demand your legal name, your face, or your documents.

The bigger trade sits underneath the child-safety language. States have been writing their own AI rules, some addressing how companies collect biometric data and automate decisions about residents.

Preemption would freeze that, removing one of the few places people have to push back on how these systems handle their data.

The maneuvering also signals which bill is fading. A bipartisan proposal from Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) and Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) isn’t the likely vehicle for AI policy in this Congress. That bill would preempt state AI laws for three years and require certain developers to address risks before releasing models.

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Why Do US Media Still Treat ADL as a Credible Source on Antisemitism?

More than a decade ago, a video (Mondoweiss, 8/7/14) showed Jodi Rudoren, then the New York Times‘ Jerusalem bureau chief, having a casual and friendly meeting with Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League. The cozy relationship in the video was telling enough, but when the video captured Foxman complaining that the “Arabs” had taken over a famous New York City hotel, and Rudoren shrugging it off, many skeptics viewed this as a window into the Times’ pro-Israel bias.

The recently deceased Foxman (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 5/12/26), famous for promoting the pro-Israel viewpoint and insinuating that critics of Israel were antisemitic, wasn’t Rudoren’s source in this video; they were pals.

Emmaia Gelman’s new book, The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State, is a history of the group, framing it not as a racial justice organization but as a deputy sheriff for the US empire. Gelman shows how the ADL crafts a narrative for the public that pushes Western imperialism rather than equality. In recent years, the ADL’s main focus has been smearing criticism of Israel or support for Palestinian human rights as Jew hatred. As the group (4/4/23) says, “anti-Zionism is indeed antisemitism.”

The book is loosely part of the #DropTheADL campaign, which encourages both progressives and schools to stop citing the group as a source on political extremism, because of its “racist and right-wing” track record. The movement has had limited success: The delegates of the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association, voted to sever ties with the ADL, a move that was overruled by the union’s governing board (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 7/21/25).

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Hegseth Threatens: Cuba Seeking Weapons Invites Confrontation

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth traveled to the US military base at Guantanamo Bay and threatened to attack the Cuban government if it acquired weapons that could strike the American military facility or homeland. 

“It would be unwise of the government of Cuba to try to procure or get access to the types of weapons that could reach this base or the American homeland,” Hegseth said on Wednesday. “They would be inviting the kind of confrontation not only do they not want but they could not stand. No country on Earth can match the capabilities of the United States of America.”

The War Secretary’s threat follows a report from Axios last month in which a US official claimed that Havana was attempting to secure weapons that could hit the US. A senior US official speaking with the outlet said that signals intelligence found that Cuba reached out to Russia for additional attack drones and is seeking to replicate Iran’s military strategy. Axios notes that the intelligence leak “could become a pretext for US military action.”

President Donald Trump has eyed regime change in Cuba since returning to office. Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio is a long-time advocate of replacing the government in Havana with one chosen by Washington. 

Trump has attempted to cause economic collapse in Cuba by strengthening sanctions and cutting energy sales to Havana. While the policy has caused more suffering in Cuba, there have been no mass protests against the government. 

Recently, Washington announced that former Cuban leader Raúl Castro had been indicted on murder charges. The White House previously used the indictment against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to justify attacking the country and kidnapping the leader. 

Hegseth told US forces at Guantanamo Bay, “No matter what, the Department of War is going to be prepared and postured for any possible contingency.” 

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Inflation rises to 4.2 percent in May, highest level in 3 years

The annual inflation rate increased to its highest point in three years as the cost of energy and other goods rose due to the Iran war, according to data released by the Department of Labor on Wednesday.

The consumer price index (CPI), a popular gauge of inflation, rose 4.2 percent over the past 12 months and 0.5 percent in May alone.

The CPI increase matched the Wall Street consensus and marks the first time that it has surpassed 4 percent since May, 2023, making it the highest rate since April of that year.

Energy prices rose 3.9 percent in May after having risen 3.8 percent in April and 10.9 percent in March, accounting for over 60 percent of the monthly all-items increase.

The Energy Information Administration reported that the average price for gas reached $4.49 in mid-May, compared to $4.09 in mid-April. In June, the national average has so far dropped to $4.15, according to AAA. 

The price of fuel has kept increasing as peace talks between the U.S. and Iran drag out, likely threatened by the latest exchanges, which could threaten an already fragile two-month ceasefire.

The food index also saw an increase of 3.1 percent over the past year, with a 0.2 percent rise in May. All other items saw a nearly 3-percent increase in the last year after also rising by 0.2 percent in May. 

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These Are The Six States Celebrating America 250 By Raising Your Gas Tax

The final countdown for America’s 250th birthday is on. Families will be planning road trips, parades, vacations, reunions, and cookouts to celebrate the greatest nation in history. But in six states, politicians have a different idea for the party: raise taxes.

Beginning July 1, drivers in California, Washington, Illinois, Maryland, Virginia, and Mississippi are scheduled to see higher state gas taxes. In other words, as the country prepares to celebrate casting aside a tax-heavy king in favor of freedom, these states will use the occasion to fatten government coffers one gallon at a time.

The worst offenders will be no surprise. California, Washington and Illinois  — we’ll call them the Axis of Glut.

Their governors are often the first to fake outrage when gas prices rise. They blame oil companies. They blame “price gouging.” They blame world events. They blame everyone except the politicians who keep piling taxes, mandates, and regulations onto every gallon drivers buy.

Yet these same states already have some of the worst gas prices in the nation, some of the highest gas taxes in America, and now they are getting ready to raise those taxes again.

California’s gas tax is already the highest in the country and is scheduled to climb again on July 1, from 61.2 cents to 63.4 cents per gallon, under the state’s annual inflation adjustment. The same report noted California’s average price for regular gasoline was nearly $6 per gallon in early June.

Illinois is no better. The state says its motor fuel tax will rise on July 1 because the law requires an annual inflation adjustment. Washington joined the club with a gas tax increase last year and then baked in automatic increases going forward. Starting July 1, 2026, the state’s fuel tax rises by 2% every year unless lawmakers change the law.

This is the dirty hustle behind inflation-indexed taxes. Politicians get to raise taxes without holding a press conference to admitting it. They pass the law once, then every year drivers get mugged by a formula.

As of June 8, the national average for regular gas was $4.164, down 38.2 cents in a single month. That is welcome relief for families, workers, small businesses and anyone trying to get through summer. But the national average would look even better if it were not being anchored down by tax-heavy states that treat drivers like a rolling ATM.

The problem is not limited to the six July 1 tax-hike states. Seven of the ten most expensive states for gas are run by Democratic governors. That is not a coincidence.

Taxes play a major role in the high-price reputation of many of these states. So do their regulatory regimes, special fuel rules, anti-energy policies and climate mandates that make fuel harder to produce, refine, transport and sell.

The result is predictable.

Families, small businesses, truckers, and farmers all pay more. Then the same politicians who helped drive up the cost pretend they are shocked by the bill.

That is not compassion. That is government gluttony.

Supporters claim the money goes to roads and infrastructure. But that excuse only goes so far. Every tax increase is sold as necessary. Yet somehow the burden always lands in the same place: on the people who drive to work, school, church, the grocery store or a summer vacation.

That is what makes the timing so perfect, and so insulting.

America’s 250th birthday should be a celebration of freedom, independence and the rejection of government overreach. The American Revolution was born from the idea that people should not be treated as endless revenue sources for rulers who never seem to have enough.

Nearly 250 years later, millions of drivers will pull into gas stations in California, Washington, Illinois, Maryland, Virginia, and Mississippi and get a reminder that some politicians still have not learned the lesson.

The country is moving toward a better energy future: lower prices, more production, more reliability and less punishment for the people who keep America moving. But these six states are choosing a different path.

America 250 should remind us why this country was born: because free people eventually get tired of being treated like revenue.

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