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Saturday, June 7, 2025

SEIU president among 44 arrested in Los Angeles ICE raids

 After a day of contention and little information about the nature of an immigration enforcement operation in Los Angeles, the Department of Homeland Security has finally released details about the joint operation conducted Friday morning.

Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) confirmed that it served four federal search warrants at three locations in L.A., alongside partner agencies, including the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration. KTLA has confirmed the locations were two clothing stores in downtown L.A. and a Home Depot in the Westlake District.

Federal agents load detainees into a vehicle following an immigration enforcement operation in downtown Los Angeles on June 6, 2025. (KTLA)

“Approximately 44 people were administratively arrested and one arrest for obstruction. The investigation remains ongoing, updates will follow as appropriate,” an HSI spokesperson said.

That single obstruction arrest was confirmed by US Attorney Bill Essayli as David Huerta, president of the California branch of the Service Employees International Union.

“Federal agents were executing a lawful judicial warrant at a LA worksite this morning when David Huerta deliberately obstructed their access by blocking their vehicle,” Essayli said on social media. “He was arrested for interfering with federal officers and will face arraignment in federal court on Monday.”

Essayli posted an image of the union leader handcuffed and placed in the back of a vehicle. Video of the purported incident that led to his arrest was also posted. It showed Huerta briefly standing near the front of an unmarked white SUV that was used in the operation before being pushed out of the way by a federal agent.

He is seen falling to the ground with several agents around him before he is presumably taken into custody while protesters and agents exchange shoves.


David Huerta, President of SEIU California, is seen following an arrest by federal agents in downtown Los Angeles on June 6, 2025. (US Attorney Bill Essayli)
David Huerta, President of SEIU California, is seen following an arrest by federal agents in downtown Los Angeles on June 6, 2025. (US Attorney Bill Essayli)

The arrest of Huerta, who union members said was also injured, was condemned by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who called Huerta a “respected leader, a patriot, and an advocate for working people.”

“No one should ever be harmed for witnessing government action,” Newsom added.

In a news release issued Friday evening, SEIU California said Huerta was treated at a local hospital for injuries he suffered during his arrest, but currently remains in federal custody.

He made the following statement through the union:

“What happened to me is not about me; This is about something much bigger. This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening. Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals. We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice. This is injustice. And we all have to stand on the right side of justice.”

SEIU President David Huerta is pushed by a federal agent to move away from an SUV that was used in an immigration enforcement operation in downtown L.A. (US Attorney Bill Essayli)
SEIU President David Huerta is pushed by a federal agent to move away from an SUV that was used in an immigration enforcement operation in downtown L.A. (US Attorney Bill Essayli)

SEIU is a union that represents social workers, nurses, state workers, janitors, doctors and security officers, among other positions. Boasting a membership of more than 750,000 members, the union promised to push back against ICE and the federal agencies that took Huerta into custody for “peacefully observing.”

In a post on the social media platform X, SEIU California wrote: “ICE picked the wrong side. The wrong state. The wrong person. and the wrong union. David Huerta stood up. And 750,000 SEIU workers are standing with him.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5338210-los-angeles-ice-raids-arrest-seiu/

Sabbath gasbags, June 8

 NewsNation’s ‘The Hill Sunday”: Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.); Rep. Sarah Elfreth (D-Ma); U.S. Chamber of Commerce chief policy officer Neil Bradley. 

ABC’s “This Week”: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy; House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).

NBC’s “Meet the Press”: Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.).

CNN’s “State of the Union”: “Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.); Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.).

CBS’ “Face the Nation”: National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett; Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.); Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas); Save the Children U.S. President and CEO Janti Soeripto.

“Fox News Sunday”: Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought; Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.); Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas).

Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures”: White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt; Secretary Of Interior Doug Burgum, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.); House Ways And Means Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.); Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). 

https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/5338710-sunday-shows-preview-trump-musk-spat-leaves-admin-reeling-big-beautiful-bill-hits-speed-bump/

Wood Pellets: America's Underrated Power Play

 by Darrell Smith, Executive Director of the U.S. Industrial Pellet Association via RealClearEnergy,

In an energy conversation dominated by buzzwords and breakthroughs, it’s easy to overlook the quiet, proven solutions that are already delivering results. Exhibit A: wood pellets.

These compact cylinders aren’t flashy or trend on social media. For the uninitiated, they are carriers of renewable carbon and energy, sourced from responsibly managed forests; a real, scalable, domestic resource that delivers energy security, climate value, and rural jobs while sustaining and growing forests. Wood pellets are emerging as one of the smartest plays in America’s energy and climate portfolio.

The Math Works

Let’s be clear: climate solutions need to scale. We need terawatts of clean power, gigatons of carbon removal, and a replacement for fossil carbon in sectors where options are limited. Think steel mills, cargo ships, aviation fuel, and cement plants — industries that can’t rely on solar panels and wind turbines.

Enter forest biomass. Every year, America’s 360 million acres of privately-owned forests grow more wood than we harvest. Driven by strong markets for wood products, these forests are powerful carbon sinks that have been growing since the 1950s when regenerative forestry practices became the norm.

Responsible forest management, the kind that thins out fuel for wildfires, not only keeps forests healthy but also supplies feedstock for wood pellets. These pellets burn clean, emit fewer particulates than coal, are carbon-neutral, and have the potential to be carbon-negative when sourced sustainably. In other words, we’re turning forest byproducts into a strategic asset instead of a forest fire risk and ensuring more investment into our nation’s forests.

Valued at $1.75 billion, the U.S. led the world last year in wood pellet exports — heating homes and decarbonizing power grids from Cambridge to Copenhagen. That’s not just a climate win. It’s a geopolitical and economic one. Furthermore, there are ample opportunities to increase use domestically.

 The Digital Surge: Data Centers Meet Biomass

Data centers are growing at breakneck pace. From streaming to AI, every click and query demands energy. These facilities already consume nearly 3% of global electricity, and that figure is climbing fast. In the U.S. alone, data center energy demand is expected to double by 2030.

While tech companies make pledges to run on “100% renewable,” achieving this goal is challenging. Intermittent renewables like wind and solar can’t always deliver the 24/7 baseload power data centers require. Wind and power are not the silver bullet many had hoped, because expensive batteries must be manufactured and installed to account for their lack of reliability. Meanwhile, wood pellets offer a firm, dispatchable, renewable fuel that can complement the grid and provide the consistent power backbone data infrastructure needs, without the carbon price tag of fossil fuels.

Speed is also a challenge. AI infrastructure is being developed on start-up timelines, but the grids meant to supply power are often hampered by multi-year planning cycles and limited capacity. Utilizing the existing biomass fleet or retrofitting coal-fired power stations to run on sustainable biomass bypasses these time-intensive and costly barriers. These sites are already grid-connected, often already have relevant permits, and crucially a coal-to-biomass conversion can be completed in under two years.

A Carbon-Negative Future? Biomass is the Feedstock

There’s another dimension to this story. Biomass isn’t just an energy source; it’s a carbon solution. Engineered carbon removal technologies like Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) require a steady, sustainable feedstock to function at scale. That feedstock needs to be renewable, reliable, and available today. Wood pellets fit that bill.

When wood pellets are used in BECCS systems, they generate power and remove CO₂ from the atmosphere at the same time, locking it away underground or turning it into usable materials like concrete, fuels, or even long-lived bioplastics. That’s negative emissions. Not net zero. Below zero.

With private markets pouring billions into carbon removal innovation, the need for biogenic carbon is accelerating. Whether it’s carbon-negative electricity, sustainable aviation fuel or green hydrogen, they all have one thing in common: they start with a reliable renewable carbon stream. Wood pellets and woody biomass are poised to play a major role in supporting these emerging technologies.

Missing the Forest for the Trees

Despite all this, woody biomass, like all energy, eventually finds itself in the crosshairs. Critics claim it’s just “burning trees,” a false narrative that ignores both the science and the forests. Sustainable biomass doesn’t chop down protected, old-growth forests. It’s sourced from working forests, the type that are deliberately selected and sustainably managed to produce our dimensional lumber and furniture. Except biomass utilizes the lowest-value fiber that comes off these tracts.

As America’s pulp and paper industry has declined, shuttering dozens of mills and shedding thousands of jobs over the last decade, wood pellets have offered a new market for low-value wood. This fiber has little economic value and without a buyer will often rot, burn, or get landfilled. Using this wood isn’t deforestation, it’s responsible forest stewardship. In fact, without reliable markets like biomass, private landowners will sell and convert their forests for more lucrative returns like agriculture, golf courses, and residential developments.

Investing in Rural America

The benefits of the wood pellet industry go beyond carbon math. This is a sector that brings real jobs to rural America. It supports forest owners, loggers, truckers, and working forests. This is climate action with a hard hat, not a hashtag.

If we’re going to win the climate war, we have to include the states in America’s wood basket where trees grow, people work the land, and decarbonization isn’t an abstract ideal.

Wood pellets are real, scalable, renewable and a true American resource.

In a world increasingly distracted by hype, maybe it’s time we doubled down on solutions that deliver quietly, reliably, and sustainably. One of the smartest is hiding in plain sight — in our forests.

https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/wood-pellets-americas-underrated-power-play

'ECB Has Won Battle Against Inflation in the Eurozone, Villeroy Says'

 The European Central Bank has succeeded in bringing inflation under control after a surge driven by the end of the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the head of France's central bank said Friday.

The ECB Thursday lowered its key interest rate to 2% from 2.25%, its eighth cut since June 2024. That move followed figures that showed the annual rate of inflation was 1.9% in May, below the ECB's 2% target.

The central bank's economists expect inflation to average just 1.6% next year, before rising back to 2% in 2027.

"We have won the battle against inflation in Europe," Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau said in a television interview.

Eurozone prices rose sharply after the invasion of Ukraine sent energy and food prices soaring, and inflation hit a high of 10.6% in October 2022. The ECB responded by raising borrowing costs from July 2022, taking its key rate from a negative half a percentage point to a peak of 4% in September 2023.

Speaking to reporters Thursday, ECB President Christine Lagarde was more hesitant about declaring victory.

"Victory laps are always nice, but there is always another battle," she said.

Some economists worry that the next battle might be to stop inflation falling well below the 2% target, a return to the challenge the ECB faced in the decade leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic. That could again be a problem if Europe faced a long trade conflict with the U.S. that delivered a severe blow to growth.

Villeroy, who is a member of the ECB's governing council, said he does not view a long period of falling prices as a threat.

"I don't believe in the opposite disease of deflation," he said. "I don't think it's a threat today. If there were ever a risk, we would have the means to act against this threat of deflation. We have done so successfully in the past."

The ECB signaled Thursday that it is close to the end of its sequence of rate cuts unless the eurozone economy suffers a bigger blow from tariffs than its economists anticipate.

https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/currency/EURO-US-DOLLAR-EUR-USD-4591/news/ECB-Has-Won-Battle-Against-Inflation-in-the-Eurozone-Villeroy-Says-Update-50176786/

Conservative Colombian Presidential Candidate Uribe Shot In The Head In Bogota Event

 Conservative Colombian senator Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot in the head on Saturday in an apparent assassination attempt. There was no immediate confirmation from the authorities on the status of his condition.

The 39-year-old senator is a member of the opposition conservative Democratic Center party, founded by former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. The two men are not related.

 

The party described the attack as serious, but did not disclose further details on his health.

Unconfirmed video showed the capture of the alleged assassin.

Colombia's presidency issued a statement saying the government "categorically and forcefully" rejected the violent attack, and called for a thorough investigation into the events that took place.

Uribe's mother, the journalist Diana Turbay, was killed in 1991 during a rescue operation after she was kidnapped by Pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel.

 https://www.zerohedge.com/political/conservative-colombian-presidential-candidate-uribe-shot-head-bogota-event

Menopause drug might prevent breast cancer too

 A drug intended to treat menopause symptoms could double as breast cancer prevention.

New research from Northwestern University in Illinois found that Duavee, a Pfizer-made drug, “significantly reduced” breast tissue cell growth, which is a major indicator of cancer progression.

A phase 2 clinical trial included 141 post-menopausal women who had been diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), also known as stage 0 breast cancer, according to a press release from Northwestern.

This non-invasive breast cancer affects more than 60,000 American women each year, often leading to an outcome of invasive breast cancer.

The women were separated into two groups — one received Duavee and the other took a placebo for a month before undergoing breast surgery.

Duavee is a conjugated estrogen/bazedoxifene (CE/BZA) drug, which combines estrogen with another medication that minimizes the potential harmful side effects of the hormone.

“The key takeaway from the study is that CE/BZA slows the growth (proliferation) of cells in milk ducts of DCIS that expressed the estrogen receptor significantly more than placebo,” Dr. Swati Kulkarni, lead investigator and professor of breast surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, told Fox News Digital.

New research from Northwestern University found that the drug Duavee “significantly reduced” breast tissue cell growth, a major indicator of cancer progression.Marko Geber – stock.adobe.com

Another major finding is that the quality of life did not differ significantly between the two groups, but patients who took the CE/BZA reported fewer hot flashes during the study, she noted.

“This would be expected, as the drug is FDA-approved to treat hot flashes.”

Kulkarni presented the study last week at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in Chicago. 

The women in the study were separated into two groups — one received Duavee and the other took a placebo for a month before undergoing breast surgery.Gorodenkoff – stock.adobe.com
Those who took the drug reported fewer hot flashes during the study.fizkes – stock.adobe.com

The findings are preliminary and have not yet been published in a medical journal.

“What excites me most is that a medication designed to help women feel better during menopause may also reduce their risk of invasive breast cancer,” said the doctor, who is also a Northwestern Medicine breast surgeon.

Women who face a higher risk of breast cancer — including those who have experienced “high-risk lesions” — and who also have menopausal symptoms are most likely to benefit from the drug, according to Kulkarni. 

“These women are typically advised against standard hormone therapies, leaving them with few menopausal treatment options,” the release stated. 

Study limitations

The researchers said they are “encouraged” by these early results, but more research is required before the medication can be considered for approval as a breast cancer prevention mechanism.

“Our findings suggest that CE/BZA may prevent breast cancer, but larger studies with several years of follow-up are needed before we would know this for sure,” Kulkarni told Fox News Digital.

Dr. Sheheryar Kabraji, chief of breast medicine at the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York, was not involved in the study but commented on the findings.

“What excites me most is that a medication designed to help women feel better during menopause may also reduce their risk of invasive breast cancer,” Dr. Swati Kulkarni said.sarayutsridee – stock.adobe.com

“While intriguing, this study is highly preliminary, and more research will be needed before we can conclude that conjugated estrogen/bazedoxifene (CD/BZA), a form of the hormone estrogen commonly prescribed to address symptoms of menopause, prevents invasive breast cancer or is effective at reducing cancer risk,” he told Fox News Digital.

Kabraji also noted that the study focused on reducing levels of one specific protein, “which does not always predict reduced recurrence of breast cancer.” 

“This study did not directly show that CE/BZA treatment reduces the risk of DCIS recurrence or development of invasive cancer,” he noted. 

According to Kulkarni,”larger studies with several years of follow-up are needed” to confirm that the drug prevents breast cancer.Science RF – stock.adobe.com

“Importantly, however, patients who received this therapy experienced no worsening of quality of life, and saw improvement in vasomotor symptoms, such as hot flashes. If found to be effective in preventing breast cancer, CE/BZA is likely to have fewer side effects than current medications used for breast cancer prevention.”

Lead researcher Kulkarni emphasized that this medication is not for the treatment of invasive breast cancer or DCIS.

“Right now, we can say that women who are concerned about their risk of developing breast cancer can consider this medication to treat their menopausal symptoms,” she added.

https://nypost.com/2025/06/07/health/menopause-medication-might-prevent-breast-cancer-and-treat-hot-flashes/