Hello and welcome to the Ekō newsletter. Today we’re covering the Macron government, Signal vs Germany, how data centers are polluting their environments, and illegal mining in the Amazon.

Can Macron survive?

French President Emmanuel Macron, after eight years and seven governments, might finally be out of time. He’s facing calls for snap elections from his allies, just weeks after the last government fell.

One such ally, Edouard Philippe, was Macron’s first prime minister in 2017. He’s one of those calling for new elections, calling negotiations underway for a new government a “distressing political game.” Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu resigned on Monday.

France’s leadership role in the EU means that whoever is in charge of the country has outsized influence on how European legislation and the EU holds companies accountable. A shift in leadership could have implications on corporate power, leading to stalling, diluting, or reversing regulations.

Marine Le Pen, the far right leader of the National Rally, is calling for Macron to resign and feels bullish about her party’s chances. National Rally President Jordan Bardella said the party is “ready to govern.”

“I am calling on him to dissolve the National Assembly,” Le Pen said of Macron. “We are at the end of the road.”

The last French elections were in June 2024, and the next are not scheduled until July 2027. Snap elections would push that timetable forward by eighteen months.

Macron plans to appoint a new prime minister rather than call an election. It’s a strategy that might continue to face pushback.

(Le Monde) (Politico) (Jacobin) (the New York Times)

In other news

Illegal gold mining in the Amazon resulted in the loss of 140,000 hectares of Peruvian rainforest, according to Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project and Conservación Amazónica. The miners are disregarding environmental protections and polluting the region’s waterways.

“They are poisoning our rivers—it’s the water that we drink.”—Roberto Tafur Shupingahua, Loreto.

(The Guardian)

The EU regulation known as “Chat Control” could force Signal out of the market, and the messaging app is appealing to Germany to use its swing vote to stop the measure from becoming law. In a statement, Signal Foundation President Meredith Whittaker warned that “the latest Chat Control proposals would require mass scanning of every message, photo, and video on a person’s device, assessing these via a government-mandated database or AI model to determine whether they are permissible content or not.”

Whittaker added that “given a choice between building a surveillance machine into Signal or leaving the market, we would leave the market.”

(Signal) (The Record)

Data centers are spewing toxins into the environment, public health advocates say, warning that the tech infrastructure is increasing the level of PFAS forever chemicals. It’s just the latest concern from environmental groups, who also cite the industry’s reliance on water and its warming to nuclear energy as reasons to keep tabs.

“We know there are PFAS in these centers and all of that has to go somewhere.”—Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, Earthjustice attorney

(The Guardian) (Financial Times)

Here’s your campaign of the day.

Ireland is known as an ally to the Palestinian people—and the government is currently debating a bill that would ban on imports from settlements on stolen land in the region.

A products and services trade ban is already in place in Spain, Slovenia, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

But corporate pressure and lobbying from the US and Israel are threatening to derail the process—your voice matters.

Add your voice

PS: In case you missed it earlier, here's the original email about this new project:

For more than a decade, we’ve kept you informed about ways we can use our collective power to push back against corporate abuse and corruption. And we’ve had a massive impact, filing shareholder resolutions, changing policies, buying and protecting forests, and more.

Now, we’re offering a different way to keep up to date on Ekō’s campaigns and mission. It’s called Ekō News, and it’s a new project on the newsletter platform Substack.

To launch it, we’re working with Eoin Higgins, a US-based journalist whose work has focused on corporate corruption and power. His book, Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left, delves into how Silicon Valley’s conservative lean has led to a takeover of alternative media—and offers a history of characters like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and others.

Ekō News will publish twice a week, giving a digest of stories we’re following about corporate (mis)behaviour, and taking a deeper dive into one story or character from the news. We’ll also interview people making change and show you the impact of our work together.

Please sign up today—we hope to see you there. (It’s free, but we’d love support for the new initiative and there will be an option for a paid subscription, too.)