More than two-thirds of UN member states, 141, voted in favour of the resolution on Wednesday, with eight voting no and 28 abstaining.
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Ralph Regenvanu, the minister for climate change from Vanuatu, which championed the case, described the vote as a victory for “communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis”.
“Today the international community affirmed that climate change is not only a political and economic challenge, but a matter of law, justice, and human rights,” Regenvanu said in a statement.
“For vulnerable countries like Vanuatu, this resolution is deeply significant because it confirms that no State is above its obligations to protect people, future generations, and our planet.”
The historic ruling from The Hague-based court in July last year found that states have a legal obligation to act on the “existential threat” of climate change.
The case was the biggest ever to be considered by the ICJ’s 15 judges, who reviewed tens of thousands of pages of written submissions and heard two weeks of oral arguments before delivering their verdict.
The case came to the court at the request of the UNGA after a resolution led by Vanuatu was adopted by consensus in March 2023.
Wednesday’s vote, by contrast, attracted a number of objections, with Belarus, Iran, Israel, Liberia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Yemen voting no.
“We are strongly urging Vanuatu to immediately withdraw its draft resolution and cease attempting to wield the Court’s Advisory Opinion as a basis for creating an avenue to pursue any misguided claims of international legal obligations,” a copy of the cable seen by Al Jazeera stated.
Wesley Morgan, a fellow with the Climate Council, an Australian nonprofit, said the vote confirmed states had a legal duty to act on climate change.
“This landmark resolution is a massive victory for Vanuatu and the Pacific leaders who have spent decades fighting for survival on the frontlines of the climate crisis and a warning for Australian governments,” Morgan said in a statement.
“For far too long, fossil fuel heavyweights have treated climate action as a political choice, but the UN General Assembly has now confirmed it is a binding legal duty,” he added.
Former Fox News host and ex-Trump advocate Tucker Carlson is feeling remorse for the role he and others played in publicly promoting Donald Trump as a candidate and as the president.
“In very small ways, but in real ways, you and me and millions of people like us are the reason this is happening right now,” Carlson said Monday on his podcast, “The Tucker Carlson Show.” He was chatting with Buckley Carlson, his brother and a former Trump speechwriter, about the erosion of conservative values within the Republican Party under Trump.
“I do think it’s a moment to wrestle with our own consciences,” Carlson said. “You know, we’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be, and I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people. It was not intentional, and that’s all I’ll say.”
After nearly 10 years of yammering nightly about the greatness of Trump, Carlson picks now to cut the conversation short?
There’s a lot more to say, but this time, it’s about Carlson’s too-little, too-late mea culpa. His claim that he did not intentionally mislead the public is in itself misleading. While Carlson promoted Trump and the Big Lie ad nauseam on his prime-time Fox News show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” he was privately disparaging the president and discrediting Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
His off-camera thoughts were revealed when internal communications between Fox staffers went public in 2023 due to Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News for knowingly broadcasting false claims that its machines rigged the 2020 election. Texts and emails from Carlson and other high-profile hosts suggested they knew Trump’s election fraud claims were unfounded, yet they still pushed the “rigged” narrative on air.
In one such example, Carlson texted that Trump needed to concede, and agreed that “there wasn’t enough fraud to change the outcome” of the election, according to the filing. Yet three nights later, he was on air claiming that there were “legitimate concerns” about election integrity. There were several more communications from Carlson where he expressed doubt about Trump’s claims. But in the public eye, he continued to assail the election results and the legitimacy of Biden’s win.
The Fox News host also privately scorned the first Trump presidency as a “disaster,” then turned around and stumped for Trump in 2024, praising him as a “national leader” at the Republican National Convention and campaigning with him in Arizona just days before the election.
If that’s not intentionally misleading the public, then what is?
Perhaps Carlson should have heeded his initial instincts about Trump. Before gaining notoriety with his Fox show, he posted on the website Slate about Trump in 1999, referring to him as “the single most repulsive person on the planet.”
Today the podcaster is among a growing number of right-wing influencers who have turned on their former leader. Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones want to push Trump out of office by invoking the 25th Amendment. Carrie Prejean Boller, who was a Trump-appointed member of the Religious Liberty Commission up until February, simply called him an “evil psychopath”.
Carlson has criticized the Trump administration’s decision to go to war in Iran, calling it “absolutely disgusting and evil” in March, and later said it was the “single biggest mistake” of Trump’s presidency. And when Trump demanded on Truth Social that Iran “open the F—– Strait, you crazy bastards,” Carlson said the post was “vile on every level” and “the most revealing thing the president has ever done. … Who do you think you are? You’re tweeting out the F word on Easter morning?” Carlson said in his podcast.
But Carlson is hardly the only American with buyer’s remorse. A recent NBC poll found that Trump is facing the lowest job approval rating of his second term, largely due to strong disapproval of how the president has handled inflation and the cost of living. Carlson, unlike the rest of the country, rode the MAGA wave to prosperity. His show kicked off in 2016, within weeks of the election, and he rose to prominence on the fervor of Trumpism. Supporting Trump was a family business. From his brother, a Republican operative who previously wrote speeches for Trump, to his son, who worked until recently in Vice President JD Vance’s press office.
Now Carlson is making his way back into the conversation by opposing the man he once claimed to revere.
He is asking for forgiveness for backing a faulty product, while also claiming to be a victim of its beguiling charms. “You and I and everyone else who supported him … you wrote speeches for him, I campaigned for him. We’re implicated in this for sure,” Carlson told his brother on the podcast. “It’s not enough to say, ‘Well, I changed my mind,’ or ‘Oh, this is bad. I’m out.’”
True, that’s not enough. Carlson should apologize for misleading the public, intentionally.
Bruno Mars tickets running for $2,000 and ones for SZA costing $600 caught California lawmakers’ attention. They’re advancing two bills targeting the resale market.
Earlier this year, tickets to see SZA perform at the Crypto Arena in Los Angeles were selling for $600 the day before they officially went on sale at $35 a piece.
In San Francisco, tickets to see Sam Smith at the newly renovated Castro Theater went on sale for $120, only to be quickly snatched up by scalpers and resold for upwards of $600.
Those are some of the stories that California lawmakers are citing as they advance two plans to change the ticketing landscape. One caps the extent to which resellers can mark up the original ticket price while the other prohibits resellers from selling tickets they don’t yet own.
Democratic Assemblymembers Issac Bryan of Culver City and Matt Haney of San Francisco are each carrying bills that they say would protect consumers from fraudulent and deceptive ticket sales.
Both measures are backed by the ticket market’s dominant seller, Beverly Hills-based Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster. Its support has some worried that the bills will help the company crush its competitors and jack up prices.
A federal jury in New York this week found that the company illegally acted as a monopoly in a victory for, among others, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who with colleagues in other states sued the company two years ago and kept going after federal prosecutors settled. Live Nation is now awaiting penalties.
Despite these headwinds, the ticket bills are sailing through the Legislature.
Supporters say the legislation has nothing to do with the antitrust case against Live Nation and helps consumers. Opponents disagree.
“The state Legislature should really be standing up for consumers instead of advancing bills that are there to help a monopoly that has been caught on record calling its fans stupid and has bragged about robbing them blind,” said Jose Barrera, national vice president for the far west region at the League of United Latin American Citizens, a civil rights advocacy group.
Ticketmaster’s competitors in the online resale market are lobbying against the measures, a sign that they view the proposals as a threat to their business.
Jack Sterne, StubHub’s head of policy communications, wrote to CalMatters, stating, “Passing laws that hand the Ticketmaster monopoly more power and don’t actually make tickets more affordable is the last thing California’s leaders should do.”
But Stephen Parker, executive director of the National Independent Venue Association, which is co-sponsoring the bills, argues that they will regulate the marketplace to better protect fans by limiting price gouging and encouraging the face value — or below face value — exchange of tickets.
“Ultimately, that is what these bills will do, in addition to making sure that the tickets are actually real,” he said. “That is a good thing for California consumers. It’s a good thing for artists and it’s a good thing for these small businesses and nonprofits that make up the independent stages across the state.”
A Live Nation spokesperson said in a statement to CalMatters, “The resale lobby constantly tries to change the subject by pointing fingers at Ticketmaster, even though it has less than 25% of the resale market. This has nothing to do with anyone’s monopoly, but rather is about protecting fans from scalpers and the resale sites that cater to them.”
The company has spent roughly $165,000 on lobbying efforts this legislative session, including to support Bryan’s bill.
‘Unlikely allies’
Bryan’s Assembly Bill 1349 would ban the sale of speculative tickets — or tickets that are not in the possession or ownership of the people who list them online. In an April hearing, Bryan said the bill protects consumers from predatory mark ups.
“This bill is so important that, after our introduction, it brought unlikely allies together,” Bryan said, according to the CalMatters Digital Democracy database. “In fact, this bill brought the Giants and the Dodgers together, brought the National Independent Venue Association and Live Nation together. It brought Kendrick Lamar and Kid Rock together. It brought Isaac Bryan and Donald Trump together.”
Several secondary ticket sellers are fighting the measure, including StubHub, SeatGeek and Vivid Seats. The three companies have spent roughly $1.1 million dollars on lobbying efforts this legislative session, which included opposition to Bryan’s bill.
People watch fireworks during Bad Bunny’s halftime show from a parking garage outside Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara on Feb. 8, 2026. Photo by Jungho Kim for CalMatters
Opponents including Robert Herrell, executive director for the Consumer Federation of California, argue that the bill strengthens Live Nation Ticketmaster’s grip on the ticketing and live entertainment industry. According to them, the measure would give Live Nation complete control over the ticket even after it has been purchased — meaning, for example, that consumers could lose the ability to sell it or give it away.
“There’s no consumer choice in the matter,” said Herrell. “They can keep people out of shows if they want to. There have been situations where, if you bought a ticket on the secondary market, you’ve been denied entry into a show.” Proponents say Herrell and other opponents are mistaken. They say they are not trying to prevent transferability but rather, they want to protect fans from speculative costs.
“We want those rooms full,” said Ron Gubitz, executive director of Music Artists Coalition, which is co-sponsoring both bills. “So you have to be able to transfer a ticket. We just want it to be in a way that’s safe, trustworthy and not creating this run on the market that exists now.”
Gubitz pointed to a recent Bruno Mars concert, where tickets were on StubHub for $400 to $2,000 before they were on sale through Ticketmaster.
“That’s crazy,” he said. “That’s a speculative ticket that Bryan’s bill is trying to stop. That shouldn’t happen. It’s not fair to anybody, except for the secondary (market). It seems great for them.”
Price caps in a free market
Haney’s Assembly Bill 1720, also known as the California Fans First Act, would put a 10% cap on resale event ticket markups, inclusive of the ticket fees. In other words, a reseller could not charge more than 10% higher than the original ticket price.
In an interview with CalMatters, Haney said artists, independent venues and downtowns are currently being “screwed over and exploited” by scalpers and brokers.
“We can’t allow the status quo to continue if we want to ensure Californians have access to affordable tickets to see their favorite artists or if we want independent venues or the broader landscape of musicians and artists to thrive in our state,” he said.
Haney rejected the idea that his bill would strengthen the Live Nation Ticketmaster monopoly, saying that the company is one of the biggest operators and profiteers of the secondary ticket market and would therefore be subject to the same restrictions as any other platform or broker.
“I don’t think it’s a free market to allow folks to come in and buy up all these tickets and then create scarcity and then you’re now required to buy your ticket at a much higher price from someone who had nothing to do with the event,” he said. “This is not something we would ever allow for airplane tickets or even dinner reservations.”
The bill has been criticized by opponents like Diana Moss, vice president and director of competition policy at Progressive Policy Institute, who said price caps notoriously distort the market, describing them as “anti-consumer, anti-competitive and anti-artist.”
“If you shut down the resale market with price caps then guess what? Ticket buyers have no place to go but right back to Ticketmaster,” said Moss. “If (Live Nation) succeed(s) in decimating the resale market, then they steer millions and millions of fans back to their own ticketing platform where they charge monopoly ticket fees and where fans are hostage to their glitchy online platform and all of their data, privacy and security concerns that we always hear about in the news.”
Those concerns didn’t stop the bill from passing out of the Assembly Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports and Tourism last week with a 6-1 vote. The bill also passed out of the Assembly Committee on Privacy & Consumer Protection on Thursday with a 9-4 vote.
Mihalovich is a California Local News fellow for CalMatters.
