 Welcome to Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. In Sudan, a 72-hour ceasefire appears to be largely holding, though. There are reports of scattered gunfire and shelling in the Capitol cartoon. Sudan's army and the paramilitary rapid support forces agreed to begin the three-day truce at midnight following two days of negotiations brokered by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. At least 459 civilians have died since fighting between the rival factions of Sudan's military junta broke out on April 15, though the true toll is certain to be far higher. Water, food, medicine, electricity and communications remain in short supply. Damage to sanitation systems have spawned fears of waterborne diseases like cholera, as some residents have been forced to drink water directly from the Nile River. This is Rawan Awalid, who left her family behind in cartoons as she fled to Egypt. I left behind my brother, my family, the rest of my aunts and my friends. Yes, I survived, but I'm still worried about those I left behind. The situation is extremely catastrophic. There are no hospitals. Fifty-five hospitals are out of service. This is very bad. I don't know how they are living. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization is warning of a high risk of biological hazards in Khartoum after fighters seized control of a national laboratory holding pathogens, including measles and polio virus. Ukraine's military has advanced onto the eastern bank of the Nipah River in the Kharson region as part of a long-anticipated spring counteroffensive against Russian forces. A spokesperson for Ukraine's military refused to confirm the reports, but said heavy Russian shelling in the region had injured civilians and destroyed dozens of buildings, including a school. China's foreign ministry has walked back comments by a senior Chinese diplomat questioning the sovereignty of Ukraine and other former Soviet states. Lushai, China's ambassador to France, said on Friday, the nation's, quote, do not have an effective status in international law, unquote. That prompted several nations, including Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, to summon Chinese envoys to explain Beijing's official position. In a statement, China's foreign ministry said Lushai's comments were not a political declaration but an expression of personal points of view during a televised debate, unquote. We'll have more on this story after headlines. A new report finds worldwide military spending rose to an all-time high of over $2.2 trillion last year, largely driven by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The United States accounted for nearly 40 percent of total military spending, even though it's just over 4 percent of the world's population. The U.S. also remained the world's largest arms exporter by far. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will run for re-election in 2024. Biden made the official announcement this morning with a three-minute campaign video posted on social media. So far, Biden and Harris faced two Democratic primary challengers, self-help author Marianne Williamson, who also ran in 2020, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer, anti-vaccine activist, and son of the former U.S. Attorney General and assassinated 1968 presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy. CBS News reports RFK Jr. was convinced to run by Trump's former campaign manager Steve Vannon, who believes he will be a useful chaos agent in the 2024 race. Fox News announced Monday the cable network and its far-right primetime host, Tucker Carlson, quote, agreed to part ways, unquote. His departure was effective immediately. Interim presenters are replacing Carlson, who has not commented about the reason for his firing. The surprise departure of the top-rated host comes after text messages from Carlson were revealed in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News for airing false claims of a stolen election that was just settled last week for over three-quarters of a billion dollars. Later in the broadcast, we'll look at how Tucker Carlson has been a singular force driving Fox News' extremism, meanwhile CNN's fired news anchor Don Lemon, ending his 17-year tenure at the network. Lemon was accused of sexism after he recently said 51-year-old Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley was past her prime. And Variety reported earlier this month, Lemon had a history of threatening and mocking female snappers at CNN. In Atlanta, Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis has revealed she'll announce this summer whether she's filing criminal charges against Donald Trump and others over Trump's effort to overturn Joe Biden's victory in Georgia in 2020. Willis wrote in a letter to law enforcement she expects to announce possible criminal indictments between July 11th and September 1st and is asking for heightened security and preparedness. Here in New York, jury selection has begun in a civil trial against Donald Trump, brought by author E. Jean Carroll. The former magazine columnist alleges Trump raped her in a dressing room in a department store in the mid-90s. Carroll can bring the case decades later, because New York opened a one-year window on statute of limitations for adult survivors of sexual assault. The judge in the civil case has ruled two other women who say they were sexually assaulted by Trump can take the stand as well. The chair of the Senate Finance Committee has asked Texas billionaire and conservative activist Harlan Crowe to provide Congress with a detailed list of undisclosed gifts and payments benefiting Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, including private real estate transactions and the use of Crowe's private jet and super yacht. In a letter sent to Crowe Monday, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden wrote, quote, The secrecy surrounding your dealings with Justice Thomas is simply unacceptable. The American public deserves a full accounting of the full extent of your largesse towards Justice Thomas, including whether these gifts comply with all relevant federal tax and ethic laws, unquote. Meanwhile, Bloomberg News is reporting Justice Thomas failed to recuse himself from a 2005 Supreme Court decision to reject a case that benefited the Tramell Crowe Residential Company, a real estate firm named after Harlan Crowe's father that was partly owned by the Crowe family. Harlan Crowe was CEO and chair of the board at the time. In North Dakota, Republican Governor Doug Burgum has signed into law near total ban on abortion that would only allow people to get the procedure in cases of rape or incest during the first six weeks of pregnancy. The legislation is one of the most severe anti-abortion measures in the country. Reproductive rights advocates say most people don't even know they're pregnant at six weeks. In Montana, protesters rallied inside the state Capitol Monday and supported Democratic transgender state representative Zoe Zephyr after Republican lawmakers blocked her from speaking on the House floor for a third day. Zephyr raised her microphone into the air as her supporters interrupted proceedings for nearly half an hour, leading to the arrest of at least seven people. Yes, we'll come to order. Sergeant of Arms, will you please clear the gallery? Republicans have denied Zephyr's repeated request to debate on proposed anti-trans legislation after last week she told them they would have blood on their hands if they banned gender-affirming health care for trans children and youth. Meanwhile in Tennessee, Grammy-winning rapper and singer Lizzo invited dozens of drag performers on stage during a concert in Knoxville Friday night, protesting Republicans' efforts to ban public drag performances in the state. Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee signed the measure into law last February, but it was blocked by a federal judge the following month, arguing it was too vaguely written. President Biden Monday welcomed Tennessee Democratic representatives Justin Pearson, Justin Jones and Gloria Johnson to the White House for a discussion on gun reform. The lawmakers became known as the Tennessee Three. After facing Republican-led expulsion votes from the state legislature for supporting recent student protests calling for gun control, after six people, including three nine-year-old students, were killed in a mass shooting at a Nashville elementary school in March. Pearson and Jones, who were the only two formally expelled, were unanimously reappointed to the Tennessee House of Representatives by local officials in Memphis and Nashville earlier this month. This is Justin Jones speaking Monday from the Rose Garden. We lifted this issue above the partisan divide. This is not left or right. We talked to the president about how this is a moral issue, an issue of conscience, an issue in the South where we are trying to build multiracial democracy and challenge these extreme forces that, rather than passing an assault weapons ban, they assaulted our democracy as we saw when we were expelled from the state legislature. In Pennsylvania, the trial for the man accused of killing 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 began Monday. The mass shooting was the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history. In Kentucky, the Carroll County Sheriff's Office has hired the former Louisville police detective who fired the shot that killed 26-year-old black emergency room technician Breonna Taylor in her own home during a no-knock raid in March 2020. Miles Cosgrove was fired from the Louisville Metro Police Department in January 2021 for violating use of force procedures and failing to use a body camera. In northwestern Pakistan, at least 17 people were killed. More than 50 others wounded Monday as a pair of explosions tore through an ammunition depot run by Pakistan's counterterrorism office in the Sabat Valley. Most of the dead were police officers, though at least four were civilians. A police spokesperson said the blast was triggered when ammunition caught fire likely due to an electrical short circuit. And the 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize recipients have been announced. In Brazil, the indigenous leader Alessandra Corop won for leading a campaign against the mining giant Anglo-American, safeguarding 400,000 acres of Amazon rainforest. It was a huge victory. We realize that we are like little ants. When the little ants join forces, we get stronger, and we got stronger until we won the battle against Anglo-American. Here in the United States, environmental activists and fourth-generation shrimper Diane Wilson also received a Goldman Prize for winning a historic $50 million settlement in a case against Formosa plastics for dumping toxic waste on Texas' Gulf Coast. The 2019 civil settlement was the largest in the history of the Clean Water Act. This is Diane Wilson. Formosa makes a trillion pellets or nurdles a day. And they lose a lot of the powder in the pellets through tin storm water outfalls. And so Formosa was discharging this plastic everywhere. And they have been doing this for 27 years. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now! dot org, The War and Peace Report. Coming up, Professor and economist Jeffrey Sachs on the growing influence of China around the world. Stay with us. This is Democracy Now! Democracy Now! dot org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in New York, joined by Democracy Now! co-host Juan González in Chicago. Hi, Juan. Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. China is facing criticism in Europe after China's ambassador to France questioned the sovereignty of former Soviet states under international law during a television interview. The Baltic countries, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, condemn the remarks and summon Chinese envoys to explain Beijing's official position. The Chinese Foreign Ministry walked back, the ambassador's comments, saying, quote, China respects all countries' sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. The diplomatic spat comes as China is making headlines across the globe, though maybe not so much in the United States for its diplomatic efforts. In late February, China released a 12-point peace plan to end the war in Ukraine. On March 10, Iran and Saudi Arabia announced they would restore ties as part of an agreement brokered by China. Days later, in mid-March, Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva, to talk about Ukraine, trade, and moving away from the U.S. dollar. Xi Jinping then met with French President Emmanuel Macron in Beijing. During Macron's visit, she spoke about the roles of China and France in world affairs. The world today is undergoing profound historic changes. As permanent members of the UN Security Council and major countries with the tradition of independence, China and France, as promoters of the multi-polarization of the world and the democratization of international relations, have the ability and responsibility to transcend difference in restraints, adhere to the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnerships between China and France of stability, reciprocity, development, and progress, practice true multilateralism, and maintain world peace, stability, and prosperity. While in Beijing, the French president Emmanuel Macron suggested France and European nations should not become a vassal of the United States when it comes to Taiwan. France supports the single China policy in the search for a peaceful solution to a situation for that matter. It's Europe's position. It's a position that has always been compatible with the role of an ally, but it's precisely why I'm stressing the importance of strategic autonomy, ally doesn't mean being a vassal. It's not because we do things together that we can't think alone, that we're going to follow the people in that are the toughest in a country that's allied with us. When we look at the facts, France has lessons to be received from no one, be either in Ukraine and Sahel or in Taiwan. China's continued its diplomatic outreach by offering last week to hold talks between Israel and Palestine. To look more at China's recent diplomatic actions, we're joined by Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He's also served as adviser to three UN secretaries general and currently serves as a Sustainable Development Solutions Advocate under Secretary General Antonio Guterres. His latest article, published, is headline, The Need for a New U.S. Foreign Policy. Professor Sachs, thanks so much for being with us. All of the diplomatic gestures of China, you know, the meeting with Macron in Beijing, with Lula in Beijing, brokering this deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia, now offering not only to negotiate between Ukraine and Russia but Israel and Palestine, this hardly gets attention in the United States media. And around the world, the headlines are far more—there are far more headlines about this. Talk about the significance of this, and if you see a direct parallel between all the headway that China is making and increasing U.S. hostility towards China. Thanks, Amy, very good to be with you. And, indeed, this is a crucial topic. And as President Xi Jinping said in that meeting with Macron, this is a—it is a historic watershed that the world is living through right now. What China is after, if we view it from China's perspective, is what was also said true multilateralism and what that means or true multi-polarity, another term that they use. And that means they don't want a U.S.-led world. They want a multi-polar world. And the basis of that is that the United States is 4.1 percent of the world population. China is 17.5 percent of the world population. China's economy is comparable to the U.S. economy, and, indeed, China is the lead trade partner for much of the world. So China is saying, we're there to alongside you. We want a multi-polar world. We don't want a U.S.-led world. And while the United States sometimes talks about a rule-based order, the fact of the matter is that the U.S. grand strategy—if we can use that term of the grand strategists of the U.S. state—see our grand strategy in the United States as being dominance. And I often refer to an article that I think is very clear, succinct, and revealing by a former colleague of mine at Harvard University, Robert Blackwell, and esteemed ambassador of the United States who wrote in 2015, and I'll quote from the article, since its founding, the United States has consistently pursued a grand strategy focused on acquiring and maintaining preeminent power over various rivals, first on the North American continent, then in the Western Hemisphere, and finally globally. Well, China doesn't want the United States to be the preeminent power. It wants to live alongside the United States. Blackwell, writing in 2015, said China's rise is a threat to U.S. preeminence, and he laid out a series of steps that the Biden administration actually is following, almost step by step. What Blackwell laid out already back in 2015 is that the United States should create, quote, new preferential trading arrangements among U.S. friends and allies to increase their mutual gains through instruments that consciously exclude China. There should be a technology control regime to block China's strategic capabilities, a buildup of, quote, power political capacities of U.S. friends and allies on China's periphery, and strengthen U.S. military forces along the Asian rimland, despite any Chinese opposition. This has become the Biden foreign policy. China knows it. China really is pushing back. But what's very important and interesting to understand, and we've seen it clearly in the dynamics involving the Ukraine war. Most of the world also does not want the U.S. as the global preeminent power. Most of the world wants a multipolar world and is therefore not lined up behind the United States sanctions on Russia and so forth. And this was also the message of President Lula visiting China, saying to President Xi Jinping, we, as Brazil, also want multi-polarity, true multi-polarity. And we want peace, for example, in the Russian-Ukraine war that is based on not a U.S. perception of dominance, a NATO enlargement, but rather a peace that reflects a multipolar world. This is real. This is happening all over the world. And the fact of the matter is, the reason why this is a historic watershed is that the underlying economics and technological change have made it so. The U.S. is no longer the dominant world economy. And the G7, which is the U.S., Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Japan, is actually smaller than the BRICS countries in economic size, which is Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. So we really are, in fact, in a multipolar world. But in ideology, we're in a conflict. Jeffrey Sachs, I wanted to ask about that. You mentioned the BRICS, the BRICS bank that is now in China. And President Lula has named Dilma Rusev as the head of the BRICS bank. It's important in terms of this multipolarity in the world economies, the potential for even the creation of alternative major currencies to the dollar as a result of the BRICS alliance. The impact of that on world affairs. This is a big deal. And in fact, the United States is withdrawing. It doesn't know it necessarily. Our politicians don't understand this. But our politicians are withdrawing from the world financial and monetary scene and opening up the space for a completely different kind of international finance. I'll give you an example. The U.S. was the creator of the World Bank. But now the U.S. Congress won't put new money into the World Bank. And because of that, the World Bank is actually a quite small institution. It's got a big name. But it's a quite small institution in the financial scheme of things. The U.S. won't put more money in. The Congress says, no, why should we waste our money internationally and so forth? And we get a lot of hubbub about that. So China and the rest of the BRICS say, OK, we'll make our own development bank. And they established the new development bank or sometimes called the BRICS bank based in Shanghai. And that's just one of the institutions that is really changing the scene. There's the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, AIIB, based in Beijing, in fact. There is, as President Lula said, and it's happening also in the context of the Ukraine War, a move away from the use of the dollar, which the United States has thought, well, that's our ace in the hole. That is our ultimate hold on things because we can use sanctions. We can use our financial control to keep other countries in line. But other countries are saying, eh, not so much. We'll trade in Renminbi. We'll trade in Rubles. We'll trade in Rupees. We'll trade in our own national currencies. And they're quickly setting up alternative institutions to do this. The United States doubles down. We will confiscate your reserves. We will, if you don't follow. And the other countries are saying, you know, if you want to go through the UN and get really multilateral rules, we're with you. But if you want to just impose the rules, we won't follow along. And so we have this very funny expression called a rule-based international order. The United States government uses it every day. But what does it mean? Who writes the rules? And what most of the world wants, in fact, is rules written in a multi-polar or multilateral setting, not rules written by the United States and a few friends and allies. I wanted to ask you. You've been an advisor to the United Nations quite often. The issue of how much longer the permanent members of the Security Council can keep the number to five, because clearly Brazil and other countries of the global south have been saying the UN needs to be informed. And countries from Latin America, specifically Brazil and Africa, should have representation on the UN Security Council permanent members. Yes. You know, the P5, the permanent five, which is the United States, China, Russia, France and the United Kingdom, was the World War II Victor group in 1945. They wrote into the rules of the UN, incidentally, that they would be the permanent Security Council members and have a veto over any change in the UN Charter. So it's really a group that gave itself power that the other 188 countries of the world look on and say, what is this? We need change. I would say the country that is most amazed and frustrated by this, in fact, is India. India is now the most populous country in the world. The United States has 335 million, roughly, in the population. Britain, France, roughly 60 million, India, 1.4 billion, not on the Security Council, a nuclear power, a world superpower, the president of the G20 this year, really not happy about that. Brazil, the largest economy of South America, similarly not on the Security Council. So this has been an issue for more than 20 years. The P5, in various ways, have blocked particular countries, but added up, the P5 have said, you know what, this is our club. We want to stay as the permanent five. But I think as we really face the reality of a, it's not just a post-U.S. dominated world, but actually a post-Western dominated world, because it was the U.S. as the dominant power among the so-called West, which means the U.S., Britain, European Union, and honorary Western membership, Japan, let's say. But we're post-Western as well as post-U.S. in dominance. And these international institutions will need to change, or they won't function in the 21st century. And if they don't function, it's actually a disaster for us. If they didn't exist, we'd have to make them, because we need them to function. So we also need to renovate them. I wanted to talk about China negotiating these various agreements. Let's turn to Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva, speaking before his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. What does Putin want? Putin can't keep Ukraine's territory. Maybe we don't even discuss Crimea, but he will have to rethink what he has invaded. Also Zelensky can't have everything he wants to demand. NATO will not be able to set itself up at the border. So this is something we have to put on the table. I think this war has dragged on for too long. Brazil has already criticized what it had to criticize. Brazil defends each nation's territorial integrity. So we disagree with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Because it looks like Ukraine is on the verge of a major counter-offensive against Russia. And in order to do this, needs massive support from Western countries, meaning military weapons. Can you talk about what China's role is here, the peace plan it has put forward, but also these other deals that China is helping to negotiate, like the successful rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and then what they're suggesting about Israel and Palestine? President Lula uttered in a few words the core of this issue that most of our media dare not explain to the American people. And that is the expansion of NATO. This is a war fundamentally about the U.S. attempt to expand a U.S. military alliance to Ukraine and to Georgia. Georgia is a country in the Caucasus, also on the Black Sea. The U.S. strategy, going back decades, has been to surround Russia in the Black Sea with Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia. All NATO members surrounding Russia and its naval fleet in the Black Sea, with a naval fleet that has been the Black Sea naval fleet of Russia since 1783. Russia has said this is our red line, and it has said that for decades. And it said this clearly in 2007 before George W. Bush Jr. had the, I'll call it, the harebrained idea to announce in 2008 and force NATO to announce that Ukraine will be a member of NATO. And this is what President Lula was saying and what President Xi Jinping of China has been saying. We can't have a war that is essentially a proxy war between Russia and the United States over the expansion of the U.S. military alliance right up to a 1200 kilometer and more border with Russia, which Russia views, and I would say understandably views as a fundamental national security threat to Russia. Keep some space, keep some distance. That's President Lula's meaning. That's what China means when it says in its peace plan. We want a peace plan that respects the security interests of all parties. What that is is codeword for saying make peace and the war, but don't expand NATO right up to the border. The American people have not heard an explanation of this all along. It's shocking to me because as a close observer of this for 30 years, this has been the cause of its belly. And yet our newspapers won't even report the background to this. But this is why China, South Africa, India, Brazil are saying we want peace, but we don't want NATO expansion as the meaning of so-called peace. We want the big superpowers to give each other some space and some distance so that the world isn't on a knife edge. That's exactly what President Lula was saying. And it's exactly what the meaning of the Chinese peace initiative is to say yes, absolutely make peace, protect Ukraine's sovereignty and its security, but no to NATO expansion. But the Biden administration won't even discuss this issue. That has been the major failing and the reason why we have not been able to get to the negotiating table, in my opinion, even when Zelensky said in March 2022, maybe not NATO, maybe something else. Russia and Ukraine were close to an agreement and the United States intervened with Ukraine and said, hmm, we don't think that's a good agreement because the U.S. neocons, so-called, have been pushing for NATO enlargement as the core of this issue. But this goes back to the more general point for us, which is that what is at stake in Ukraine and over Taiwan and many other issues, from the point of view of China or Russia or other countries, including Brazil, now Saudi Arabia, Iran and others, is whether the U.S. does what it wants to do or whether the U.S. respects some limits based on what other countries say, well, this is what we think, so that we need true multi-polarity, not U.S. dominance alone, rules written by all of us, not rules written just by the United States. And Jeff Sachs, we only have a few, about a minute left, but I was wondering if you could comment on the parallels between this expansion of NATO further and further east in Europe. This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, of President Monroe declaring to all the European powers that the Western Hemisphere was off limits to them attempting to move their forces and their militaries into Latin America. And for these past 200 years, Latin America has essentially been the major sphere of influence of the United States. And yet here we are saying that Russia has no right to declare that its immediate, the countries on immediately its borders cannot welcome in NATO troops. Well, I guess a little empathy would go a long way. It would have spared us actually a lot of wars. But for Americans, it would be useful to think, suppose Mexico made a military alliance with China, with the United States saying, well, that's Mexico's right. What are we going to do about it? Or might there be actually an invasion in short order or something like that? I would strongly advise to China and Mexico, don't try it at home. Don't experiment with this. But the United States government refuses that empathy, because in other words, refuses to put itself in the position of the other side. That's the fundamental arrogance of thinking that you determine the rules of the world. The problem with arrogance is not only the comeuppance from it, but you can't you stumble into terrible crises that you don't even understand, because the United States has not been allowed, the public has not been allowed to even think from the perspective of the other side. So the analogy is is actually a very, very clear analogy. It is what China and Russia and others say all the time is, why have those double standards? Why don't we actually deal with each other with mutual respect, not with the rules that you write? We want to thank you, Jeffrey Sachs, for joining us, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, president of the U. N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network. We'll link to your new article, The Need for a New U.S. Foreign Policy. Professor Sachs was speaking to us from Cordova, Spain. Next up, we look at the firing of Tucker Carlson at Fox News. Stay with us. And this is Democracy Now! Democracy Now!.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzales as we turn to the firing of Tucker Carlson. On Monday, Fox News announced that it, quote, agreed to part ways with its most popular host. It remains unclear why Fox fired Carlson, who is known for promoting far-right and white nationalist ideas and guess. Over the years, Carlson embraced the racist, great replacement theory and other anti-immigrant views, compared the January 6 insurrectionists to sightseers who are peaceful, orderly and meek. Carlson also recently called on Texas Governor Greg Abbott to pardon a man who was just convicted of murdering a Black Lives Matter activist. Tucker Carlson's firing came a week after Fox agreed to pay $787 million in the largest media defamation suit in this country to settle a suit by dominion voting systems for airing false claims about the 2020 election. Emails and text releases part of the lawsuit show Carlson repeatedly criticized Fox management, as well as Donald Trump, who he privately described as a demonic force, a destroyer. Other messages showed Carlson privately did not believe Trump's lies about the election, but he never told his audience this. Carlson was also named in a new lawsuit filed by former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg, who's described a cultural sexual harassment and general misogyny at the network. Carlson's top producer Justin Wells was also fired Monday. In 2017, Blake Neff, one of Carlson's top writers on the show, resigned after it was revealed he had written deeply racist and homophobic remarks in online white supremacist forums and message boards. For more, we're joined by Madeleine Pelts, Deputy Director of Rapid Response at Media Matters, where her two new pieces are headlined with Tucker Carlson out, other Fox extremists now have the spotlight, and Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News. Here's a brief look at his hatred and conspiracy theories. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Madeleine. If you can start off by talking about what you understand, I mean, all of this, obviously, increased Fox's viewership. They did not take him off the air before. This comes right after this three-quarters of a billion-dollar settlement with Dominion. Talk about what you understand happened. It's difficult to oversee the impact that this will have on the cable news universe in terms of what led to this stunning decision. There's a number of factors floating around in the air. Media reporters have given disparate reports over the last 24 hours, but I imagine that it has at least something to do with the Abby Grossberg lawsuit. You can see that on air, his treatment of women, of the Me Too movement, of speaking up about sexual harassment, has been met with derision and mockery, and so it would make a lot of logical sense for that to be a attitude that was reflected behind the scenes. But again, Tucker Carlson was a kingmaker at Fox News in the Republican Party, and the Murdoch stood behind every single outrage cycle that happened as a result of his on-air racism. And so if we know one thing, it wasn't his on-air commentary, and I think that we will learn more in the coming days about what exactly happened behind the scenes. And could you expound a little bit about his influence on the Republican Party? Absolutely. I think you can see it in how some of the Senate nominees shook out in the 2022 midterms. He was a singular force in driving the candidacy of J.D. Vance. That he has been a rallying point for the Republican Party's opposition agenda under the Biden administration. But under the Trump administration, he had this unique ability to speak to what was going on in the White House and influence it via his primetime show. There were times where segments not only led to Trump tweeting in direct response in real time, but also issuing directives for his administration via Twitter. And as you mentioned with the segment on Greg Abbott's pardon and also Abbott sending National Guard troops to the border, both of those were driven by Tucker Carlson. And there is simply no one who has allowed, who in the past six, seven years has been able to exert that type of influence over the Republican Party and it creates a major vacuum in the right-wing media ecosystem. And Madeline Peltz, if you can talk about anything before this was a rally who went down over sexual harassment. And then you have Tucker Carlson. If you can talk about the other people, now there's going to be rotating hosts, but it seems anyone in that position increases the visibility of Fox News that this isn't a singular issue of one man, however white nationalist, racist, anti-immigrant, xenophobic he was. Yeah. I mean, in terms of the sexual, you know, this alleged culture of sexual harassment, this is an issue that extends back to the founding of Fox News set from the very top. Roger Ailes was forced out after it was revealed that some women who worked under him described as a reign of terror via sort of sexual blackmailing, hiring of private investigators to quash their complaints. So it's part of a larger culture at Fox News in terms of the future of the 8 p.m. hour. In many ways, Tucker Carlson got lucky. The 8 p.m. hour at Fox News is an institution in and of itself largely because of the legacy of Bill O'Reilly. And Tucker just stepped into those shoes. And so he sort of had a built-in floor of an audience. And that will continue with whoever takes over the 8 p.m. hour. With that said, the bench is very shallow within Fox News. There are not a lot of people who, from where I'm sitting, are in a position to step into this legacy hour. With that being said, the digital right-wing media sphere is extremely overcrowded and has a number of viral personalities that could come in from the outside. And in the meantime, the rotating host model is something that they instituted for the 7 p.m. hour when Martha McCallum was fired. And they maintained a rotating host for, I think, I believe over a year, at least a year. And so it could be a long time before someone steps up. But within Fox News, there's simply no one who can come close to the influence that Tucker Carlson has had over the last few years. Well, I wanted to ask you, last night, Donald Trump had his first TV appearance since Carlson's ouster. And he did it on Newsmax, a right-wing rival of Fox News. As we head into the 2024 elections, is this a sign that there's going to be a growing battle between these right-wing outlets? I think that Newsmax is attempting to take advantage of the moment. It's the same thing that happened when there was backlash to the Fox position, specifically the Arizona call in the 2020 election. There was a slight bump in ratings for alternative right-wing news channels like Newsmax and One American News. And that was not something that held. And so I think that, given the Newsmax's own volatility with regard to their carriage over the last few months, they're just trying to insert themselves into the headline of this massive story in media. And I don't think that it's something that is really going to stick. I think that Donald Trump's comments on Newsmax last night and his praise of Tucker Carlson in general deference to Fox shows the continued power that the network has, that this famously unrestrained figure, former president, did not bring down his most inflammatory commentary on Fox News for Tucker Carlson but sort of staked out a wait-and-see position. And so I think that that's also telling. Well, Madeline Peltz, I want to thank you for being with us. Deputy Director of Rapid Response at Media Matters will link to your pieces with Tucker Carlson out, other Fox extremists now of the spotlight, and Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News. Here's a brief look at his hatred and conspiracy theories. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. In addition to announcing his bid for reelection in 2024 today, President Biden has signed an executive order establishing an Office of Environmental Justice within the White House. Biden unveiled his plan at a ceremony in the Rose Garden Friday just ahead of Earth Day. Environmental justice will be the mission of the entire government woven directly into how we work with state, local, tribal and territorial governments. This is an order that directs the federal agencies to address gaps in science and technology. For example, there's a lot we still don't know about the quality of people's wastewater or the air they're breathing. Environmental groups welcome the announcement, but caution Biden remains a major supporter of fossil fuels, having approved drilling projects in federal land faster than Trump did during his first two years in office. For more, we're joined in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the Roundhouse. That's where the New Mexico legislature is housed. We're joined by Jade Begay, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the NDN Collective. She's on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. She's speaking to us today in her personal capacity, a citizen of Tusuque Pueblo and also Diné and Southern Hewt. We welcome you to Democracy Now, Jade. Can you talk about this office that has been set up? And if you could comment on President Biden announcing his campaign for reelection today. Yeah, good morning, Amy. Great to be here. Well, it's this entire executive order is really exciting. I'm really excited about what it means for our tribes and moving us from an era of consultation to an era of consent. I'm excited about what this means for strengthening our regulatory processes, which have impacts on the projects that you mentioned, the harmful projects that we're seeing approved. Hopefully with this order, we'll see the regulatory process mean more justice for our communities as far as the office. We're excited that that is happening. It's never, that's never been done before and it signals to us that environmental justice is not just a program or not just a proclamation. There's going to be real people working on this day in, day out in the White House, making sure that there's accountability, making sure that there's transparency and making sure that there's real teeth to this executive order. As far as the announcement around the reelection bid, I just, I feel, I feel excited to motivate the people I work with because really we know what's at stake and I think as far as my own personal opinions go, there's one option here. And does this executive order from what you can tell have any real or strong enforcement mechanisms and how would it, for instance, affect the exposures to toxins in the tribal communities where you are in the Rio Grande basin? Yeah. So it definitely does. I kind of want to broaden out. So, you know, projects, as Amy mentioned, there have been harmful projects approved by this administration. And I think a couple of things can be true at one time. Yes, those actions have been taken. Also, the administration just took the strongest action it can take to embed environmental justice into the DNA of the entire federal government. So now, with this executive order, and this is the part that I'm really excited about, is that federal agencies have to think about, analyze, do research on cumulative impacts for new projects and also their own operations. Prior to this executive order, when a new project or new infrastructure like a power plant or a pipeline was proposed, the agency only had to do research or analysis on the pollution and emissions of that project in isolation, not accounting for all the emissions and pollution of the past or present. So with this new order, they have to take into account all pollution past, present, future. And that's really going to lead to seeing some more justice and seeing less sacrifice zones, especially in my community. And in terms of the response of Republicans, some key Republican leaders saying this is basically more government ways to direct it at this effort, your response? That's an interesting response. I haven't really paid attention to what Republicans are saying. But the fact of the matter is, Republicans are steadfast working on their HR1, this Energy Savings Act, which is essentially trying to dismantle some of our bedrock environmental protections like NEPA. When we really, especially frontline communities like the community I come from and the communities impacted first and worst by environmental injustice need those regulations and policies strengthened. And that's what this executive order does. Well, Jay Begay, we want to thank you very much for being with us, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the NDN Collective on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council speaking to us in her own capacity. She's a citizen of Tessucque Pueblo, also Southern Ute and Dine. We thank you so much for being with us from the Roundhouse, the capital building in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And that does it for our show. Democracy Now is produced with Rene Fels, Mike Burke, Dina Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Sheikh Maria Tarasena, Tammy Warnoff, Trina Nideras, Amal Kovte, Marias Dugio, John Hamilton, Robbie Karan, Honey Mesud and Sanji Lopez, our Executive Director, Julie Crosby. Special thanks to Becca Staley, John Randolph, Paul Powell, Mike DeFilippo, Miguel McGuera, Hugh Grant, Dennis Moynihan, David Prude and Dennis McCormick. To see our shows and podcasts, video or audio, you can go to democracynow.org. You can also get our daily digest. Just go to democracynow.org to sign up. Also, to see the various topics we cover throughout the years, our 27 years, you can go to democracynow.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. Thanks so much for joining us.