The US’s foreign broadcasters may soon be forced to become pro-Trump propaganda

If Trump’s first term is any indication, outlets such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe will face political inquisitions

The agency which oversees them,
the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM),
has a budget of nearly $1bn
and reaches 420 million people weekly in over 100 countries
– numbers that make America’s biggest domestic radio and TV networks look like small fry.

These outlets have long been a target for conservative critics who have felt that they are insufficiently patriotic or too kind to America’s adversaries.

But during his first term, Trump attempted to weaponize the networks in an unprecedented way,
turning them into propaganda outlets for his administration and its brand of far-right politics.

And his recent nomination of former Arizona gubernatorial candidate #Kari #Lake to head Voice of America suggests he wants to do it again.

Trump’s attack on the public broadcasters began in his first term when he sent conservative journalist #Jeffrey #Scott #Shapiro to be a senior advisor to the Office of Cuba Broadcasting,
which oversees Radio y Televisión Martí.

Shapiro accused the director of the office, the award-winning Puerto Rican journalist Maria Gonzalez, of being a Cuban spy
and forced a spurious security investigation to be initiated against her.

When Gonzalez later resigned her post, Martí’s coverage began to reflect far-right themes,
including calling George Soros a “a non-believing Jew of flexible morals”
and decrying the “Islamization” of Europe.

The same problems occurred on an even bigger scale when Trump appointed #Michael #Pack,
an ally of far-right figure Steve Bannon, as the head of the entirety of USAGM.

Pack forced out or initiated spurious loyalty investigations against journalists and executives,
and he also sought to influence coverage in the newsroom in a pro-Trump direction.

As a result, many journalists at Voice of America feared for their livelihoods and began to engage in self-censorship.

Like Shapiro, Pack also accused the journalists he oversaw of being spies,
and during his tenure he refused to renew the visas of foreign reporters working at Voice of America.

Because many of these journalists had reported critically on their own countries’ regimes,
they faced persecution if forced to return home.

But Pack shrugged off the idea that he had any responsibility for the safety of the brave journalists who made the existence of his agency possible.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/19/us-foreign-broadcasters-trump?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Pennsylvania is at a crossroads: The resources that fueled Pennsylvania’s past growth are plateauing or petering out.

“Coal employment has gone off a cliff,” said Seth Blumsack, who runs the Center for Energy Law and Policy at Penn State.

“You had an influx of natural gas jobs
— that growth has largely leveled off, as Pennsylvania hit this kind of steady state of gas production.”

This isn’t the first time Pennsylvania’s core economic drivers have waned.

Factories and steel mills took a beating in the 1970s and 1980s, as foreign producers competed in earnest with America’s industrial machine.
Plants that sustained whole towns closed down, with nothing to replace them.

The ironworks Andrew Carnegie built in 1875 still operates on the bank of the Monongahela River, but owner U.S. Steel is desperately trying to unload it to Japan’s Nippon Steel.

These conditions have created new opportunities for the #clean #energy #transition to take hold.

Political leaders like Democratic Gov. #Josh #Shapiro and business owners are embracing low-carbon industry as an economic development strategy for the energy-rich state.

Shapiro has pushed to strengthen the state’s outdated #clean #energy standard for #power #production,
and he signed a bill this summer to establish ground rules for developing #carbon-#sequestration projects.

His administration recently won $400 million in federal funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(“the second-largest federal grant in Pennsylvania’s history,” a spokesperson for the governor pointed out).

Pennsylvania will disburse that money in competitive grants to industrial entities proportional to their ambitions at carbon reduction;

The Shapiro administration wants the ensuing projects to slash statewide industrial emissions 10 percent by 2050.

Given the state’s long history of oil and gas, #hydrogen production is sure to loom large.

In the lower-carbon future, clean hydrogen could become the next key energy commodity.

Last year, Biden’s Department of Energy awarded seven proposed hydrogen hubs around the country roughly $1 billion each.

Pennsylvania, as Shapiro regularly points out, was the only state to win funding for two:

The Philadelphia-based hub is slated to produce hydrogen with nuclear power and renewables,
while the Pittsburgh-based hub will focus on turning fossil gas into hydrogen and stowing the ensuing emissions underground.

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy-manufacturing/can-energy-rich-pennsylvania-chart-a-path-towards-decarbonization