NEW YORK — Thousands of effusive marchers danced to club music in New York City streets Sunday as bubbles and confetti rained down, and fellow revelers from Toronto to San Francisco cheered through Pride Month’s grand crescendo.
New York’s boisterous throng strolled and danced down Fifth Avenue to Greenwich Village, cheering and waving rainbow flags to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall uprising, where a police raid on a gay bar triggered days of protests and launched the modern movement for LGBTQ+ rights.
While some people whooped it up in celebration, many were mindful of the growing conservative countermovement, including new laws banning gender-affirming care for transgender children.
“I’m not trying not to be very heavily political, but when it does target my community, I get very, very annoyed and very hurt,” said Ve Cinder, a 22-year-old transgender woman who traveled from Pennsylvania to take part in the country’s largest Pride event.
“I’m just, like, scared for my future and for my trans siblings. I’m frightened of how this country has looked at human rights, basic human rights,” she said. “It’s crazy.”
Parades in New York, Chicago and San Francisco are among events that roughly 400 Pride organizations across the U.S. are holding this year, with many focused specifically on the rights of transgender people.
One of the grand marshals of New York City’s parade is nonbinary activist AC Dumlao, chief of staff for Athlete Ally, a group that advocates on behalf of LGBTQ+ athletes.
“Uplifting the trans community has always been at the core of our events and programming,” said Dan Dimant, a spokesperson for NYC Pride.
San Francisco Pride, another of the largest and best known LGBTQ+ celebrations in the United States, drew tens of thousands of spectators to the city Sunday.
The event, kicked off by the group Dykes on Bikes, featured dozens of colorful floats, some carrying strong messages against the wave of anti-transgender legislation in statehouses across the country.
Organizers told the San Francisco Chronicle that this year’s theme emphasized activism. The parade included the nation’s first drag laureate, D’Arcy Drollinger.
“When we walk through the world more authentic and more fabulous, we inspire everyone,” Drollinger said at a breakfast before the parade.
Along Market Street, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) were spotted riding together.
In Chicago, 16-year-old Maisy McDonough painted rainbow colors over her eyes and on her face for her first Pride parade.
She told the Chicago Tribune she’s excited to “be united” after a tough year for the community.
“We really need the love of this parade,” she said.
On Saturday, first lady Jill Biden made an appearance at the Pride parade in Nashville, Tennessee, where she told the crowd “loud and clear that you belong, that you are beautiful, that you are loved.”
Many other cities held their marquee events earlier this month, including Boston, which hosted its first parade after a three-year hiatus that began with Covid-19 but extended through 2022 because the organization that used to run it dissolved under criticism that it excluded racial minorities and transgender people.
A key message this year has been for LGBTQ+ communities to unite against dozens, if not hundreds, of legislative bills now under consideration in statehouses across the country.
Lawmakers in 20 states have moved to ban gender-affirming care for children, and at least seven more are considering doing the same, adding increased urgency for the transgender community, its advocates say.
“We are under threat,” Pride event organizers in New York, San Francisco and San Diego said in a statement joined by about 50 other Pride organizations nationwide. “The diverse dangers we are facing as an LGBTQ community and Pride organizers, while differing in nature and intensity, share a common trait: they seek to undermine our love, our identity, our freedom, our safety, and our lives.”
Earlier Sunday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a bill that would make the state a “safe haven” for transgender youth and forbid law enforcement agencies from providing information that could undermine the ability for a child to get gender-affirming care.
NYC Mayor Eric Adams made a similar move this week, issuing an executive order preventing city resources from being used to cooperate with out-of-state authorities in detaining anyone receiving gender-affirming care in the city.
The Anti-Defamation League and GLAAD, a national LGBTQ+ organization, reported 101 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents in the first three weeks of this month, about twice as many as in the full month of June last year.
Sarah Moore, who analyzes extremism for the two civil rights groups, said many of the incidents coincided with Pride events.
Nevertheless, Roz Gould Keith, who has a transgender son, is heartened by the increased visibility of transgender people at marches and celebrations across the country.
“Ten years ago, when my son asked to go to Motor City Pride, there was nothing for the trans community,” said Keith, founder and executive director of Stand with Trans, a group formed to support and empower young transgender people and their families.
This year, she said, the event was “jam-packed” with transgender people.
President Joe Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday, a day after Russian mercenary forces reversed their plans to march on Moscow, Zelenskky said. The White House confirmed the call on Sunday afternoon.
Zelenskyy and Biden discussed “the course of hostilities and the processes taking place in Russia,” Zelenskyy said in a post on Twitter. “The world must put pressure on Russia until international order is restored.”
Tensions between Russian leadership and the head of the Wagner mercenary group leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, reached a boiling point over the weekend after Prigozhin accused the Russian military of firing on his forces and promised a “march of justice.” But by Saturday evening, Prigozhin had pulled back his forces, which he claimed hadoccupied the military command center at Rostov-on-Don, a major city in southern Russia.
Prigozhin was reported to have struck a deal with the Kremlin to leave Russia for Belarus, in exchange for Russia’s dropping criminal charges against him.
During their conversation, Biden and Zelenskyy also discussed “further expansion of defense cooperation, with an emphasis on long-range weapons,” as well as Ukraine’s air defense capabilities, Zelenskyy said.
According to the White House, the leaders discussed the tumult in Russia and Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive, and Biden “reaffirmed unwavering U.S. support, including through continued security, economic, and humanitarian aid.”
A little-known company that enjoys the backing of West Virginia’s top political leaders is in talks to turn one of the state’s largest coal plants into a clean energy behemoth.
Omnis Global Technologies, a California-based firm, says it would convert Pleasants Power Station to run on hydrogen, eliminating a major source of planet-warming greenhouse gases. It says the hydrogen will come from a plant next door where Omnis plans to produce graphite, a highly sought mineral for electric vehicle batteries.
The plan is as audacious as it is untested, underscoring both the promise and peril facing coal states as they look to new technologies to fill the gap left by a fading coal industry.
West Virginia leaders eager to save Pleasants Power Station, a top buyer of the state’s coal, include Republican Gov. Jim Justice and Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, who will face off next year in one of the country’s most-watched Senate races. The pair have embraced a residential construction and critical minerals venture that Omnis launched in the state during the last year.
But analysts who study the electricity and critical minerals markets have raised doubts about the proposal, saying they’ve never heard of Omnis and question whether its plans are technically feasible.
"This is a company that as far as we know has never run a coal plant, and they face the additional challenges of converting it in a way that appears unprecedented and untested," said Seth Feaster, an analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis who raised concerns about Omnis’ plans in a note earlier this month. The think tank has criticized attempted coal plant rescues in other states.
As the coal industry has contracted in recent years, states reliant on the fuel have turned to new clean energy technologies with little history of being implemented at commercial scale. In New Mexico, the city of Farmington backed a longshot plan to capture and store carbon at a retiring coal plant. The plan was ultimately abandoned after the plant shut down.
Wyoming is betting on nuclear to replace coal. A Bill Gates-backed startup is developing a nuclear facility using a new reactor design at one coal plant, and studying plans to convert five more coal plants to nuclear.
In West Virginia, Omnis says it is in negotiations to buy Pleasants Power Station from Energy Transition and Environmental Management, a Texas company that had bought the plant with the intention of demolishing it. The 1,300-megawatt coal plant shut down on June 1 after a concerted effort from West Virginia officials to keep it running.
“We believe in this enough that we’ve written a very big check to acquire one very large power plant,” Simon Hodson, who co-owns Omnis with his wife, said in an interview.
Hodson said his company has signed a letter of intent to buy the facility, has secured financing for the acquisition, and hopes to close on the deal by the end of June and take control of the plant by Aug. 1.
He declined to disclose the purchase price, and ETEM representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
The fate of Pleasants Power Station has already drawn the attention of Justice and state lawmakers. At their urging, the state Public Service Commission ordered West Virginia’s largest utility, FirstEnergy Corp., to examine buying the plant. In regulatory filings last month, FirstEnergy said it was holding off because Omnis was trying to finish its purchase of the plant from ETEM.
Hodson said Omnis intends to build a so-called quantum reformer next to the power plant. That facility would heat hydrocarbons at extremely high temperatures to produce synthetic graphite, and generate large quantities of hydrogen as a byproduct. In turn, the hydrogen would fuel Pleasants Power Station to produce electricity.
“We think there’s an opportunity to save the coal-fired plants by retrofitting them,” Hodson said. “We can’t keep shutting power plants down and not expect the cost of power to go up. We’re trying to preserve these plants wherever we can by producing two products.”
Hodson traces his roots to his family’s concrete business in Salt Lake City and claims to have developed the concrete technology used in the construction of One World Trade in Manhattan. He was the CEO of EarthShell Corp., which made biodegradable food packaging for McDonalds before filing for bankruptcy in 2007, citing an inability to secure sustainable long-term funding. Hodson said he left the company before it went under.
Omnis Global Technologies said it specializes in “developing, licensing, and commercializing innovative technologies to aid in the areas of clean and sustainable energy, affordable housing, organic farming, and biodegradable plastics,” according to a filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which would need to approve its purchase of Pleasants Power Station.
Graphite is one of the most sought-after materials used in electric vehicle batteries. The Biden administration is seeking to make a priority of domestic graphite production, which is now dominated by China. In 2022, the Department of Energy announced $2.8 billion in grants to makers of battery components, including several firms specializing in graphite production. Omnis is not on that list.
Hodson said his company has developed a form of pyrolysis — a process in which a hydrocarbon is heated at extremely high temperatures to make synthetic graphite — that the world’s largest graphite maker is using for applications in the steel industry. He declined to name the graphite company, citing non-disclosure agreements with vendors.
A critical minerals analyst greeted his claims with skepticism.
“I have never heard of Omnis or Simon,” said George Miller, a senior analyst at Benchmark Minerals Intelligence, a London-based research firm that tracks metals markets. China dominates both the mining of naturally occurring graphite and the production of synthetic graphite.
Pyrolysis and graphite are used for speciality scientific applications, Miller said. But he expressed doubt there is a large enough market to support its use by large graphite makers.
“I am not too sure about scalability for this,” Miller said.
Using hydrogen to fuel a power plant can be similarly tricky because it burns much faster and is less stable than natural gas. General Electric, Mitsubishi Power and Siemens Energy have reported demonstration projects, where they have blended natural gas with hydrogen to run existing gas plants. Mitsubishi is working on a project in Utah that aims to burn 100 percent hydrogen by 2045.
"The whole thing that is really mystifying to me," said Feaster, the IEEFA analyst. "Let's say you’re producing graphite, do you need a 1,300MW power plant to do the graphite production? That strikes me as oversized. ... The other companies that produce graphite aren’t buying power plants."
Hodson acknowledged the challenges facing other graphite makers and power companies, but said Omnis has technology to overcome the obstacles after spending 12 years refining its pyrolysis process. Pyrolysis normally generates large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, but Hodson said he has developed a way to eliminate those by heating the material at temperatures above 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Omnis also intends to use turbine technology that can burn 100 percent hydrogen developed by Zeeco Inc., an Oklahoma-based firm, Hodson said. A spokesperson for Zeeco, which describes itself a world leader in making low emission hydrogen-fired burners, confirmed in an email that it is working with Omnis and had sent a team to Pleasants Power Station to “confirm the viability of converting to hydrogen.”
“Zeeco plans to continue supporting the effort of designing and retrofitting this coal-fired plant so it can be operated on hydrogen if the ownership does, in fact, transfer to Omnis,” Zeeco spokesperson Carter Clancy wrote.
The analysts’ doubts haven’t dimmed Omnis’ reception among West Virginia’s most powerful leaders.
Omnis has launched a series of business ventures in West Virginia since the start of 2022.
Justice attended a groundbreaking ceremony in March 2022 for Omnis Building Technologies, which is building a $40 million facility to manufacture housing materials in southern West Virginia. When the governor sent out a news release announcing the plan, it included a statement from Manchin, who said Omnis was "revolutionizing the industry of residential construction."
In November, Hodson appeared at a public event with Justice to announce Omnis Sublimation and Recovery Technologies’ plan to invest $60 million in Wyoming County to extract rare earth minerals from coal waste impoundments. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican, called the announcement “exciting” and said "the jobs to be created with this partnership will bring even more opportunity to this region."
Hodson said he was originally drawn to West Virginia by its many coal waste impoundments, which he saw as a potential source of critical minerals. But he decided to expand Omnis’ investments to other areas after driving across the state. He called West Virginia one of the most impoverished societies he had ever seen.
“It’s worse than India, China, Africa. It’s terrible,” Hodson said. “They need jobs back.”
He said he subsequently approached Justice’s economic development team to explore potential investments in the state.
What level of due diligence the governor’s team conducted into Omnis’ track record is unclear.
When asked for background on the company, a Justice spokesperson sent a link to news releases featuring the company and governor. The spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up question about Omnis’ plan to convert Pleasants Power Station to run on hydrogen, which would deprive the state’s coal industry of one of its largest consumers.
A spokesperson for Manchin responded to similar questions with a one-sentence statement, saying, “West Virginia is an energy powerhouse and the continued operation of and re-investment into the Pleasants Power Station would help that legacy continue.”
A Capito spokesperson pointed to recent remarks in which the senator said, “We're going to do everything we can to help that community, that power plant, and hopefully keep that open in West Virginia.”
Pleasants Power Station has fought to stave off closure in recent years, as cheap natural gas prices, a rising tide of renewables and environmental regulations combined to squeeze coal facilities nationwide.
FirstEnergy, the plant’s former owner, proposed a plan in 2017 to transfer ownership of Pleasants Power Station from the company’s power generation subsidiary to its West Virginia utilities, which operate as regulated monopolies. Critics said the move appeared designed to shield the plant from competition in wholesale power markets. FERC ultimately rejected the plan.
Justice subsequently signed a $12.5 million tax break designed to keep the plant running. Pleasants Power Station was later included in the spinoff of FirstEnergy’s power generation business, which rebranded as Energy Habor.
Omnis’ plans for the facility have gotten an enthusiastic greeting in Pleasants County, where the power plant has long been the largest taxpayer and one of the area’s largest employers.
“They give me no reason to believe they are not only sincere, but they give me hope they can pull off something miraculous with the good Lord’s help,” said Jay Powell, a Pleasants County commissioner who said he had been in meetings with the company over the plant’s future in recent months.
Omnis’ would need federal approval to move forward with the acquisition of Pleasants Power Station. In a filing with FERC, the company asked regulators to approve the purchase by July 24.
For now, the plant is officially listed as mothballed by the PJM Interconnection, the region’s grid operator, through July 31. The designation has allowed Energy Harbor, which continues to operate the plant after its sale to ETEM, to retain Pleasants staff through the end of next month. The hope is those employees will retain their jobs when Omnis takes over, Powell said.
That would still leave a number of technical hurdles for the project to overcome.
Hodson said retrofitting Pleasants Power Station would require swapping out its burner for one that can burn hydrogen and installing a new air handling system to address emissions of acid-rain-causing nitrogen oxides. He estimated the retrofit would take nine to 12 months, and said the company would burn coal to generate power while the upgrades were made.
Eventually, the quantum reformer will produce 200,000 tons of hydrogen annually, enough for Pleasants Power Station to run at its full listed capacity, Hodson said. He acknowledged the doubts facing the company, saying Omnis will need a few more months to prove it can deliver.
"Then it will be done and it will be proven,” he said.
ISLAMABAD — The supreme leader of the Taliban released a message Sunday claiming that his government has taken the necessary steps for the betterment of women’s lives in Afghanistan, where women are banned from public life and work and girls’ education is severely curtailed.
The statement from Hibatullah Akhundzada was made public ahead of the Eid al-Adha holiday, which will be celebrated later this week in Afghanistan and other Islamic countries.
Akhundzada, an Islamic scholar, rarely appears in public or leaves the Taliban heartland in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province. He surrounds himself with other religious scholars and allies who oppose education and work for women.
In his Eid message Akhundzada said that under the rule of the Islamic Emirate, concrete measures have been taken to save women from many traditional oppressions, including forced marriages, “and their Shariah rights have been protected,”
Moreover, “necessary steps have been taken for the betterment of women as half of society in order to provide them with a comfortable and prosperous life according to the Islamic Shariah,” the message continued.
Lately, Akhundzada appears to have taken a stronger hand in directing domestic policy, banning girls’ education after the sixth grade and barring Afghan women from public life and work, especially for nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations
The message was distributed in five languages: Arabic, Dari, English, Pashto and Urdu. Akhundzada said the negative aspects of the previous 20-year occupation related to women’s wearing of the hijab and “misguidance” will end soon.
“The status of women as a free and dignified human being has been restored and all institutions have been obliged to help women in securing marriage, inheritance and other rights,” he added.
Despite initial promises of a more moderate rule than during their previous stint in power in the 1990s, the Taliban have imposed harsh measures since seizing Afghanistan in August 2021 as U.S. and NATO forces were pulling out.
They have barred women from public spaces, like parks and gyms, and cracked down on media freedoms. The measures have triggered a fierce international uproar, increasing the country’s isolation at a time when its economy has collapsed — and worsening a humanitarian crisis.
Akhundzada reiterated his call for other countries to stop interfering in Afghanistan’s internal affairs. He said the Taliban government wants good political and economic relations with the world, especially with Islamic countries, and has fulfilled its responsibility in this regard.
Akhundzada’s message also condemned Israel’s behavior toward the Palestinians and called on the people and government of Sudan to set aside their differences and work together for unity and brotherhood.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Major players in California’s health care field have reached a deal on how they want the state to spend $19 billion in proceeds of a renewed tax on insurance plans plus the federal funds that go with it — a development that followed months of private negotiations between bitter industry rivals, state lawmakers and the governor’s office.
The complex agreement, reported here for the first time, resolves a sticking point in budget talks that lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom have been working to resolve by June 30. It would impose a tax on health care plans in what those involved described as a once-in-a-generation investment into a system that serves nearly 16 million Californians. It’s a massive victory for the health care industry that came about through an alliance of powerful interests that are often avowed enemies in the statehouse.
The last three times California levied this tax on health plans, it used the money to balance the budget during economic downturns. Now, for the first time, much of the revenue will be spent to improve the state’s publicly subsidized health care system — and in a year when the state faces a $32 billion budget deficit.
After federal funds are factored in, the state will be able to spend north of $35 billion, said Jennifer Kent, a former administration official who helped the coalition propose a structure for the tax.
It would be the largest-ever investment in Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid system.
“We’re trying to serve a Medi-Cal program that’s the size of some states’ total population,” said Linnea Koopmans, CEO of the Local Health Plans of California, who was part of the coalition. “It takes an investment of this magnitude to have a meaningful impact.”
To pull it off, doctors and health plans, hospitals and organized labor, emergency services providers, safety net clinics and Planned Parenthood all had to get behind a single proposal while balancing the governor’s need to put money in the state coffers and the Legislature’s desire to spend on constituent priorities like keeping hospitals open.
They did it by meeting for two hours each week since November, debating spending details at the headquarters of the California Medical Association over lunch, where they filled the conference room whiteboards with calculations. Dustin Corcoran, the CEO of the medical association who chairs the coalition, said he’s even had dreams about the tax.
“There was a lot of sausage making,” Corcoran said. “It’s not always pleasant or fun, but we landed in a spot we can be really proud of.”
Health plans will be taxed based on how many people they cover, and that money is used to leverage billions more from the federal government, all while passing nearly no costs on to consumers. Historically, these taxes on managed care plans — the MCO tax — have been swept into the state’s general fund, used to balance the budget whenever times got tough.
But this year, nearly every health care advocate and elected official in the state was demanding the money stay in the health care system. California has added millions more people to Medicaid in recent years, and is adding more benefits as the state overhauls the program. But there aren’t enough doctors to see all those new members. The coalition pushed hard for the state to step in and raise reimbursement rates so that more physicians will treat Medi-Cal patients.
There need to be doctors to see people before they get to the emergency room, Corcoran said.
“The MCO tax in and of itself is not going to be a panacea for all of the shortcomings of Medi-Cal system," Corcoran said. “But it can go a long way in addressing those historical inequities.”
At one point, the Newsom administration wanted the bulk of the money to go into the general budget to fund existing priorities in Medi-Cal, like expanding the program to eligible undocumented immigrants. In May, he outlined a plan to boost reimbursement rates for some specialties, balance the budget and stash the rest of the money away to be doled out over the course of several years. That made legislators and industry leaders uneasy, worried the money would be gobbled up by other budget priorities later.
Some of the spending will start next year, but the bulk won’t start until 2025.
For the coming year, the deal hews closely to what Newsom proposed in May. Some of the money will be used to balance the budget, with $3.5 billion going into the general fund. Three specialties will get a boost to their reimbursement rates: Primary care, OBGYN and some mental health care services will start being paid 87.5 percent of what the federal government pays them through Medicare.
And $75 million will be used to create new residency slots for medical school graduates. California is a net exporter of med school grads, and these new residents will be focused in underserved areas, likely in the Central Valley, parts of Los Angeles and the Imperial Valley.
The deal includes money to bolster struggling hospitals, ease workforce shortages and entice more specialists to see Medi-Cal patients. It will be up to the Department of Health Care Services to determine who is in line based on where patients are having the hardest time getting care. The coalition leaders say they want to avoid a lobbying frenzy where each special interest jockeys to get themselves a pay increase.
“Instead of just coming to the Legislature for our individual needs, this is a way to really look at things in a more holistic way for patients,” said Jodi Hicks, the CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California and the vice-chair of the coalition.
The state would spend $300 million for behavioral health beds under the agreement — part of a push to stop cycling people in need of mental health care through jails and emergency rooms. California has a shortage of 6,000 mental health beds and is preparing to ask voters in 2024 to approve nearly $5 billion in bonds to build more.
The last time California tried to renew this tax, in 2016, it took a year of intense lobbying by then-Gov. Jerry Brown and his administration, who ultimately had to call a special session of the Legislature to get it passed.
Last year, the tax was set to expire with no plan to renew it. Over the course of seven months it became the biggest ever investment in Medi-Cal.
“This really feels like a victory,” Koopmans said.
GOP presidential candidates weighed in on the emerging security situation in Russia on Saturday, drawing into sharp focus their differing views on the Ukraine conflict and how they would handle foreign policy issues as president.
Former President Donald Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to warn, "A big mess in Russia, but be careful what you wish for. Next in may be far worse!"
“Biden will do about Russia whatever President Xi of China wants him to do," he added.
He further referred to China “wanting large portions of unpopulated land to have for their much larger population," calling the current conflict an “unthinkable opportunity” for them to move on Russia.
“This is one more piece of evidence that Russia is likely a paper tiger,” candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said in a Saturday morning interview on Fox News. “The idea that Russia has the capabilities that go for Poland or other parts of Western Europe looks increasingly farcical."
He also largely focused on China. "I think we need to keep our eye on the prize for the United States, which is deterring Chinese aggression. That's actually the top threat that we face from a foreign policy perspective,” he added.
The 37-year-old biotech executive said that the “core hallmark” of his foreign policy vision as president would be encouraging an end to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine on the condition that Russian President Vladimir Putin distance himself from Chinese President Xi Jinping. Without the support of Russia, Ramaswamy argued, Xi would have to “think twice before going after Taiwan.”
Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, however, chose a different tack, writing on Twitter that the United States should help Ukraine to establish a no-fly zone to protect civilians from the possibility of a Russian civil war.
“In complicated times when our adversaries are trying to displace us as a superpower, it’s common sense to defend the global order that has benefited us and to help our allies,” Hurd added. “Ukraine is not a territorial dispute and Vladimir Putin is a war criminal. It shouldn't be hard to admit this. Even the villainous [Yevgeny] Prigozhin knows this.”
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez struck a less pointed tone in his statement on the conflict on Saturday, calling on Twitter for “peace-loving people around the world” to pray for the “freedom-loving people of Russia.”
“The next few days will be crucial,” Suarez wrote. “Please pray for God to protect the innocent.”
