Top Stories — Wednesday, September 10, 2025
What is trending in the USA today? Here is Breaking News:
- Climate 'Ideology' Hurts Prosperity, Top U.S. Officials Tell Europeans — nyt News
- 5 takeaways from the producer price inflation report with another key reading on tap — CNBC
- Facing Israeli Assault, Many in Gaza City Say Fleeing Again Is Worse — nyt News
Climate 'Ideology' Hurts Prosperity, Top U.S. Officials Tell Europeans
Source: nyt News • Published: 9/10/2025, 10:00:12 PM
Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum defended the Trump administration's pivot away from renewable energy in Italy on Wednesday, saying their plans to sharply expand U.S. fossil fuel exports were crucial to "peace and prosperity."
The secretaries are swinging through Europe this week on a mission to secure contracts to sell more American fossil fuels and lobby the European Union to loosen environmental regulations that they have said are too onerous.
Mr. Wright said he and Mr. Burgum would be in Brussels on Thursday to discuss the European Union's requirements that oil and gas companies limit leaks of methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases, and a law requiring companies to prevent adverse human rights and environmental effects in their production process.
"There are a number of non-tariff barriers that are I think are problematic," he said, speaking at a news conference in Italy.
The United States is currently the world's biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas as well as the largest producer of oil. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Europe has largely replaced its purchase of Russian fuels with American ones, while heavily investing in wind and solar power. Renewable energy has taken off in Europe in part because many countries see it as a way of not having to rely on anyone else for their supply when they themselves don't have significant reserves of fossil fuels.
But European policymakers have also taken the threat of climate change much more seriously. The European Union has a law that mandates a 55 percent reduction in its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and zeroing them out by 2050.
Mr. Burgum said that such "climate ideology" had infiltrated Western policymaking and required reversal if Western countries were to compete with adversaries on artificial intelligence, which he cast as a more pressing concern than climate change.
"What's going to save the planet is winning the A.I. arms race. We need power to do that and we need it now," he said. "We need to worry about the humans that are on the planet today. The real existential threat right now is not one degree of climate change."
Climate change is primarily driven by the burning of fossil fuels, which releases planet-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. There is broad scientific consensus that each tenth of a degree of global warming amplifies natural disasters such as droughts, hurricanes and wildfires, and could lead to trillions of dollars in economic losses.
Tensions between the United States and Europe over energy policy have been ratcheting up in recent weeks. As part of the European Union's trade deal with the Trump administration, the 27-country bloc agreed to purchase $750 billion of American energy, mostly oil and gas, over the course of President Trump's term in office. That would require more than tripling energy trade, which many analysts said was infeasible as a practical matter.
Nevertheless, Mr. Wright and Mr. Burgum pointed to purchase agreements that they had overseen at the Gastech energy-industry conference they were attending in Milan.
Mr. Wright, a former gas executive, has been particularly combative in his stance on climate change, recently saying that efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions were "silly" and that in terms of people's quality of life were "not incredibly important."
This year Mr. Wright handpicked a group of people who reject the scientific consensus on climate change to write a report downplaying global warming. Hundreds of the world's top scientists gathered by the United Nations have found that greenhouse gases from the burning of coal, oil and gas are heating the planet and already having profound effects on communities by increasing the frequency and intensity of heat waves, wildfires, drought, floods and other extreme weather.
To avoid those worsening effects, those scientists say that a rapid transition from deriving energy from coal, oil and gas to nonpolluting sources is necessary.
Mr. Wright said that if renewables could not compete with fossil fuels in the global marketplace, then those industries should be left to wither. He did not mention that the U.S. government plays a significant role in the success of fossil fuel companies through subsidies and diplomatic pressure.
Solar power, he said, "has a future," but wind power, particularly offshore wind, Mr. Burgum predicted, would not survive the removal of subsidies. He repeated a claim that numerous offshore wind projects in the United States had been approved "though a very fast, ideologically driven permitting process," despite the fact that all went through a longer process than the ones the Trump administration is fast-tracking for fossil-fuel and mine development.
Max Bearak is a Times reporter who writes about global energy and climate policies and new approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Read the full story at nyt News.
5 takeaways from the producer price inflation report with another key reading on tap
Source: CNBC • Published: 9/10/2025, 9:47:18 PM
The producer price index, a gauge of costs at the wholesale level in the U.S. economy, posted an unexpected 0.1% decline in August. Here's what to know:
"Tomorrow's CPI will carry more weight, but today's PPI print essentially rolled out the red carpet for a Fed rate cut next week. After last week's jobs report, though, the market was already expecting the Fed to begin an easing cycle, so it remains to be seen how much of a near-term impact this will have on sentiment" — Chris Larkin, managing director, trading and investing, E-Trade from Morgan Stanley.
"The worst-case scenario on inflation isn't playing out. The doves will be happy to see the year-over-year number back below 3 percent. Combined with the weak jobs data recently, this keeps us on track for rate cuts. However the speed and intensity might depend more on the big consumer index tomorrow morning." — David Russell, global head of market strategy at TradeStation.
"Inflationary pressure in PPI appears to be muted overall. ... We see nothing in this report (or its implications for core PCE) that would dissuade Fed officials from cutting 25bp in September and proceeding to cut 25bp at each upcoming policy meeting." — Citigroup economist Andrew Hollenhorst.
Facing Israeli Assault, Many in Gaza City Say Fleeing Again Is Worse
Source: nyt News • Published: 9/10/2025, 9:43:42 PM
Liam Stack and Abu Bakr Bashir
Liam Stack reported from Tel Aviv and Abu Bakr Bashir from London.
Elham Shamali, like hundreds of thousands of Gaza City residents, faces an agonizing choice. She can flee with her family — again — to suffer the uncertainties and indignities of displacement, or risk defying Israel's evacuation orders ahead of what is expected to be a full-scale assault on Gaza's largest city.
Ms. Shamali, 47, fled her home in the city once before during the war that began nearly two years ago, but she returned when the southern part of Gaza began to feel too dangerous.
This time, she said her family would move to a different Gaza City neighborhood that she thought might fare better in an Israeli offensive, but insisted they would not leave the area altogether.
"We know if we leave, we will never return," said Ms. Shamali, who was a university professor before the war.
Many of her neighbors felt the same way.
In recent days, she said, she had seen them prying valuable construction materials off their homes before heading south.
"I saw people carrying window frames and doors," she said. "Stuff that suggests they know they won't be back."
Israel has portrayed Gaza City as a Hamas stronghold and said it must take full control of the city to rout the group's fighters there.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military ordered the entire population to evacuate Gaza City as it prepares for an offensive that it said will take full control of the city. It has already taken over about 40 percent of the city and bombed several high-rise towers. On Wednesday, the military struck another tower that it said was being used by Hamas.
Residents of the city, much of which has already been reduced to rubble, said in interviews that they cannot, or will not, leave. Some do not trust Israel to let them return if they flee. Others cannot afford to leave, or worry that they or their loved ones could need medical care that might be unavailable if they left.
Nearly all of the city's residents have been forced from their homes and shelters at least once already during the war, many of them multiple times, and do not believe that any place in the territory is safe.
"I cannot leave Gaza City to go to the south. I just cannot," said Dr. Bakr Gaoud, a physician at Al Nasser Children's Hospital, where his son, Saif Eldin, 11, has been receiving treatment for epilepsy. "Almost all the drugs he needs are missing, but things in the south will be much worse."
Last week, Israel began telling civilians to leave for what it called a "humanitarian zone" in the southern coastal area of al-Mawasi.
Earlier in the war, the Israeli military instructed civilians to go to that same general area. But al-Mawasi, which was thinly populated before war, lacked the shelter, sanitation, water, food distribution and medical care needed to absorb masses of people.
And Israel conducted airstrikes there repeatedly, killing dozens of people in what it had labeled a safer zone. Israeli officials said they were killing Hamas fighters.
For those who have decided to remain in Gaza City, a feeling of dread set in as they watched panicked neighbors begin to pack up what remained of their belongings.
Hidaya al-Falouji, 30, said she and her four children would stay. She said their home in nearby Jabaliya was destroyed earlier in the war by a strike that killed her husband and brother. When they had to leave the building's ruins behind to move into a tent, she felt like she had "abandoned" both her home and her life before the war.
"I cried all along the way," said Ms. al-Falouji, whose youngest son is now three. "I will not leave. I will not abandon Gaza. Either I die here, or I remain steadfast in my city."
The memory of privation and violence during earlier evacuations looms large for many who said they would stay in Gaza City.
Mohamed al-Najjar, 36, said he remained haunted by his experiences in the south, where he lived for a year earlier in the war with his wife and two children. The area was as bleak and ruined as the north, and he said they eventually returned to Gaza City because the south had "no resources, no infrastructure and no safety."
Fleeing Gaza City is too costly for many residents, and Palestinians say there is little room in al-Mawasi for them all to live.
To get there, Gazans must either walk or pay for transportation at inflated wartime rates. Once they arrive, they have to rent space in a building for thousands of dollars per month, or buy the materials to build a tent. To build the tent, they often must pay rent on a tiny plot of land. Food and medicine are scarce, and what is available is sold at sky-high prices.
Mr. al-Najjar said it would cost about $1,000 to go back to al-Mawasi and build a new tent there.
If he were to leave now, he would never see the city as he knows it again — even if he did come back.
"I am very worried this time if they manage to push us to the south, we might never be able to return," said Mr. al-Najjar, who works as a photographer for Palestinian news outlets that are unaffiliated with Hamas. "And if we return, Gaza City will be completely flattened."
Ms. Shamali shared his concerns. Her family does not have the money to get to al-Mawasi, and "the south is not safe at all," she said.
"The army has been killing people in the south just like in the north, so what is the point?"
She said they will seek safety in a neighborhood of Gaza City that is further to the west than their current shelter, betting that area will be safer during the coming offensive.
When her family fled before, they expected they would only be displaced temporarily, said Ms. Shamali, who taught at a university in Gaza City before the war. They no longer believe that.
For Dr. Gaoud, the most important thing has been to stay close to the hospital so he can keep treating the wounded, but also so that his son might receive care. He said he has lost 18 family members during the war, including his brother and nephew last month. He does not want to lose anyone else.
Two weeks ago, the family's home in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood was destroyed. They were forced to move to a tent by the beach, where he said he listens to the sound of explosions at night with his wife and two children.
"But it is not too far from the hospital where I can still take care of my child," he said. "As long as I am at the children's hospital, I have a better chance to help him."
Liam Stack is a Times reporter who covers the culture and politics of the New York City region.
Read the full story at nyt News.
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