Italy is still a signatory of the Paris Agreement, as of July 2025
"After the United States, Italy is also withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement," says a July 9, 2025 post shared thousands of times on X.
The account, "Update News," portrayed itself as media and shared a photo of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to accompany its claim.
On July 18, the account was suspended.
Similar posts circulated widely across social media platforms and in various languages, including French, Dutch, Turkish and Spanish.
On his first day back in the White House in January 2025, Trump announced the United States would leave the Paris Agreement, which is managed by the United Nations climate change body and aims to keep global average temperature rise below a critical threshold (archived here).
Under the far-right Brothers of Italy party, Meloni's government has repeatedly criticized multi-lateral climate agreements. She said the European Green Deal should be revised and could lead to deindustrialization, while her administration has sought to transform Italy into a "gas hub" for the Mediterranean.
But online claims that the country withdrew in July 2025 from its commitment to reduce its emissions are not supported by governmental sources and have not been reported by credible media outlets, AFP found.
Like most European Union member states, Italy was in the first batch of signatories of the accord in April 2016, after the treaty's adoption in December 2015 (archived here).
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's ratification page and the United Nations treaty collection page are both publicly available and show Italy as a signatory, as of July 21, 2025 (archived here and here).
A search for notifications pertaining to withdrawals from the Paris Agreement yielded results for the United States -- which officially withdrew from the accord January 27 -- but not for Italy.
"We have not heard anything about Italy withdrawing from the Paris Agreement," Leandro Vigna, data partnerships and outreach manager for the nonprofit Climate Watch, told AFP in a July 16 email.
The group, which collects data on countries' progress in their climate targets established for the Paris Agreement, still displays the nation on its platform.
Keyword searches of the Gazzetta Ufficiale della Repubblica Italiana, a governmental resource that publishes Italian legislation, as well as the Italian government website and the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research did not surface any relevant announcements about a withdrawal of the country from the treaty, either.
In 2025, the European Commission -- of which Italy is a member -- reiterated its intent to make the bloc's economy carbon neutral by 2050 and promised to stick with targets set so far, including a 90 percent cut to greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.
AFP reached out to an Italian government spokesperson for comment, but no response was forthcoming.
Other climate debunks can be found here.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
6 minutes ago
- USA Today
I asked Truth Social AI to fact-check Trump
This newsletter, Translating Politics, was created to help readers sift through Donald Trump's always chaotic and often deceitful rhetoric during his second term as president. Today, we have a little high-tech help for that task, thanks to a new AI chatbot that started operating last week on Trump's social media platform, Truth Social. I used this tool, known as Truth Social AI, to fact-check posts Trump made this week on Truth Social. But first, let's ask our chatbot assistant if Trump has a history of lying. 'Yes,' Truth Social AI responded, 'Multiple major fact-checking organizations and news outlets have documented a sustained pattern of false or misleading public statements by Donald Trump over many years, including during campaigns, his presidency, and post-presidency.' Now let's turn to Trump's claims on Truth Social, where he posted on Aug. 11 that 'Tariffs are making our country strong and rich!!!' Truth Social AI didn't agree, telling me 'Broad tariffs do not make a country 'strong and rich' in the aggregate; they redistribute costs and benefits—raising revenue and protecting some industries while increasing prices, reducing real wages, and risking slower growth over time, according to economic analyses and recent data on the new U.S. tariffs.' Trump on Aug. 11 posted that he was 'nominating highly respected economist, Dr. E.J. Antoni, as the next commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.' Antoni would replace the last BLS commissioner, who Trump fired on Aug. 1 for issuing an accurate report on job growth. Truth Social AI isn't as impressed with Antoni as Trump, calling him 'a partisan policy economist known for media commentary and work at the Heritage Foundation, but he is not widely recognized in academia as a highly cited or field‑leading economist.' Trump also posted on Aug. 11 that 'the murder rate in Washington today is higher than that of Bogotá, Colombia,' while trying to justify his absurd mobilization of the National Guard to patrol in our nation's capital. Truth Social is working with Perplexity, an AI search engine, which has said Trump's website is a customer and has control over issues like which information sources get cited. Truth Social AI told me, based on available data, that Washington's murder rate would be lower than Bogotá's, not higher. The chatbot also knocked down Trump's false claim that crime is on the rise in Washington, noting that 'the Metropolitan Police Department is reporting a roughly 26% decrease in violent crime so far in 2025.' So for now, you can get accurate information from Truth Social, but not the website's largest stockholder. Read more from me and my colleagues:
San Francisco Chronicle
6 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
The Latest: Federal agents will patrol Washington 24/7
The increased presence of local and federal law enforcement officers in Washington, D.C. has intensified in the days following President Donald Trump's unprecedented announcement that his administration would take over the city's police department for at least a month. Troops are expected to start more missions in Washington on Thursday. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to London on Thursday in a show of support for Ukraine as Trump prepares for his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Both Zelenskyy and the Europeans have worried that the bilateral summit would leave them and their interests sidelined. GOP climate change denial continues amid soaring heat and fires Trump has called climate change a hoax — rhetoric echoed by many in the GOP — and his administration has worked to dismantle and defund federal climate science and data collection, with little to no pushback from Republicans in Congress. He's proposed to revoke the scientific finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare — the central basis for U.S. climate change action. He's declared a national energy emergency to expedite fossil fuel development, canceled grants for renewable energy projects and ordered the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, aimed at limiting long-term global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels. The Associated Press reached out to more than half a dozen Republicans who criticized Canada but none returned phone calls or emails. Republicans demand Canadian action on wildfires — but not on climate change Republican lawmakers are blaming Canada for not preventing and containing the wildfires whose smoke has fouled the air in their states. In letters expressing outrage and indignation, they're demanding more forest thinning, prescribed burns and other measures. They say the smoke is hurting U.S.-Canadian relations and warn that the U.S. could make it an issue in tariff talks. What they don't mention is climate change, caused primarily by burning fossil fuels like coal and gas. Scientists say that's a glaring omission that also ignores the U.S. contribution to heat-trapping gases that help set the stage for more intense wildfires. 'If anything, Canada should be blaming the U.S. for their increased fires,' said Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Maine clinics want their Medicaid funding A network of clinics that provides health care to thousands of people across Maine is expected to ask a judge Thursday afternoon to restore its Medicaid funding as the Trump administration seeks to keep federal money from going to abortion providers. Trump's ' big beautiful bill ' blocked Medicaid money from flowing to Planned Parenthood and also stopped funding for Maine Family Planning, a much smaller provider that offers health care services in poor rural areas. Anne Marie Costello, deputy director for the Center for Medicaid & CHIP Services, called the lawsuit 'legally groundless.' 'The core of its claim asks this Court to revive an invented constitutional right to abortion — jurisprudence that the Supreme Court decisively interred — and to do so in a dispute over federal funds,' Costello said in court documents. National Guard sets up outside Washington's Union Station At least two groups of Guard members were standing near Humvees outside the city's main train station as taxis and other vehicles drove by. They also stood near a tent with an anti-Trump sign hanging from it. The White House said Wednesday the number of National Guard troops in the nation's capital would ramp up and federal officers would be on the streets around the clock after Trump announced his administration would take over the city's police department for at least a month. The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits fell modestly last week Applications for unemployment benefits for the week ending Aug. 9 fell by 3,000 to 224,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday, below the 230,000 new applications that economists had forecast. These applications are seen as a proxy for U.S. layoffs and have mostly settled in a historically healthy range between 200,000 and 250,000 since COVID-19 throttled the economy in the spring of 2020. Thursday's report showed that the four-week average of claims, which smooths out some of the week-to-week volatility, ticked up by 750 to 221,750. The total number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits for the previous week of Aug. 2 fell by 15,000 to 1.96 million. Inflation surges as Trump's import taxes push costs higher The Labor Department reported Thursday that its producer price index — which measures wholesale inflation before it hits consumers — was up 0.9% last month from June and 3,3% from a year earlier. The numbers were much higher than forecasters had expected. The wholesale inflation report two days after the Labor Department reported that consumer prices rose 2.7% last month from July 2024, same as the previous month and up from a post-pandemic low of 2.3% in April. Core consumer prices rose 3.1%, up from 2.9% in June. Both figures are above the Federal Reserve's 2% target. The new numbers suggest that slowing rent increases and cheaper gas are at least partly offsetting the impacts of Trump's tariffs. Many businesses are also likely still absorbing much of the cost of the duties instead of passing them along to customers via higher prices. There's confusion over who controls Washington police The White House says Attorney General Pam Bondi is effectively in charge of the police department in Washington, D.C. But the city's police force already has a Pam at the helm — Chief Pamela Smith — and she says she only reports to the mayor. D.C. and federal officials say they are working together, but the unusual arrangement is raising questions about who gets to make decisions about police resources, personnel and policy. Trial over California National Guard deployment concludes The judge has yet to rule after a three-day trial over whether the administration broke the law by sending Guard troops to accompany immigration agents on raids in Southern California. The state argued that the deployment violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits military enforcement of domestic laws. Lawyers for the administration said the law does not apply because Trump called up the Guard under an authority that allows separate authority. What to know about the US-Russia summit in Alaska It's happening where East meets West, in a place familiar to both countries as a Cold War front line of missile defense, radar outposts and intelligence gathering. Whether it can lead peace in Ukraine after more than 3 1/2 years of war remains to be seen. It takes place Friday at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson outside Anchorage, according to a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning. It played a key role in the Cold War in monitoring and deterring the Soviet Union. It's Putin's first U.S. trip since 2015, for the U.N. General Assembly in New York. Because the U.S. isn't a member of the International Criminal Court, which has issued a warrant for Putin on war crimes accusations, it's under no obligation to arrest him. — Dasha Litvinova and Michelle L. Price Guard troops expected to ramp up DC missions Thursday National Guard officials say they expect troops to start doing more missions as orders and plans are being developed and more troops stage at the Guard's armory. Neither Army nor District of Columbia National Guard officials have been able to describe the training backgrounds of the troops who have reported for duty so far. While some Guard members are military police, and thus better suited to a law-enforcement mission, others likely hold jobs that would have offered little training in dealing with civilians or law enforcement. Federal agents will patrol the streets 24/7 in Washington, White House says Officials said the number of National Guard troops will ramp up and federal officers will be out around the clock after the president made the unprecedented announcement that his administration would take over the police department for at least a month. Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser is walking a political tightrope. She has called the takeover an 'authoritarian push' but also framed the infusion of officers as a boost to public safety. Hundreds of federal law enforcement and city police officers who patrolled Tuesday night made 43 arrests, compared with about two dozen the night before. Councilmember Christina Henderson downplayed these as 'a bunch of traffic stops' and said the administration is seeking to disguise how unnecessary the intervention is. 'I'm looking at this list of arrests, and they sound like a normal Saturday night in any big city,' Henderson said.
Time Magazine
7 minutes ago
- Time Magazine
How to Fix America's Gerrymandering Problem
President Donald Trump has thrust the country into a new political battle: mutually assured gerrymandering. And the antidote is what we call 'mutually assured representation.' The current saga began in June, when Trump called for Texas to start a congressional redistricting process in the middle of the decade—rather than after the next census in 2030. Last month, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott called a special legislative session to replace the state's current House map which would favor his party. Now, Trump's push for mid-decade redistricting in Republican-controlled states appears likely to spread to Missouri, Ohio, and Florida. If this happens, Democrats would have retaliate in the states they control in order to have a chance at winning a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives in 2026. In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul has declared her readiness to 'fight fire with fire.' In California, Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed holding a special election in November for voters to approve a ballot initiative allowing the legislature to redraw the state's congressional map. Read More: 'Time to Stand Down': Newsom Gives Trump Deadline to Call Off Redistricting Plan In Texas, Republicans are claiming that they are entitled to five more congressional seats—even if they receive the exact same number of votes as before. To achieve this, they can redraw the boundaries of the districts that Democrats won in 2024, moving Democratic voters into heavily Republican districts where their votes will not matter, and moving Republican voters into previously Democratic districts so that they can win these seats. In 2024, Republicans in Texas won 25 of the state's 38 seats, and Democrats won 13. With this new map, Republicans could win in 30 of 38 congressional districts. The proposed gerrymander is likely to give Republicans four or five new seats even if Democrats win substantially more votes for Congress than they did in 2025. According to our calculation, this will happen even if there is a five percentage point swing towards Democrats in the 2026 elections. In recent years, just a few congressional seats have determined control of the House, and a flip of just five seats on its own might determine the national result. Partisan gerrymandering makes it harder for voters to hold their representatives accountable. Congressional district elections become uncompetitive. With reelection in the general assured, candidates are focused on catering to their own party base, which tends to be a more extreme subset of their constituents. Through this process, partisan gerrymandering often reduces effective representation in Congress and can play a role in crowding out moderate and independent voters. But here's a twist: President Trump's new wave of extreme gerrymandering may actually backfire, paving the way for electoral reform. Partisan gerrymandering is unpopular with voters, as we've seen repeatedly in recent years. Voters in states such as Michigan, Arizona, Colorado, and New Jersey, have supported nonpartisan redistricting commissions. In 2021, Democrats tried and failed to pass the For the People Act, a bill that would have limited partisan gerrymandering nationwide and implemented non-partisan redistricting commissions in every state. But Republican senators blocked the bill. Gerrymandering reform often fails because only one party makes the necessary reforms. For instance, previous successful anti-gerrymandering measures in states like California and New York created fairer maps in each state—but actually cost the party in power (Democrats in both instances) more seats than the margin determining control of the House in 2024. One proposed solution is bipartisan redistricting commissions. These can fail when the parties cannot agree on a map. For instance, the Virginia commission deadlocked in 2022, leaving the courts to draw the maps. Then there are more radical solutions that effectively blow up the current electoral system as we know it, such as multi-member districts or aproportional representation. But we think it is unrealistic to get rid of a system that has been in place for two hundred and fifty years. Instead, we believe it is possible to make reforms that keep the current electoral system while also overcoming some of its flaws. We've developed a process-based solution that has a number of appealing properties. It's inspired by the problem parents face when dividing a cake between two children. How can they make sure everyone gets an equal slice? One child cuts the cake in two, and the other child chooses between the two pieces. Our approach, which we call the 'Define-Combine Procedure,' splits the map drawing process into two simple stages. First, one party divides the state into twice the number of needed districts—for example, 20 sub-districts for a state that needs 10 congressional seats. Then, the second party pairs those sub-districts into the final 10 districts. The result is a fairer map than either party would have drawn on its own. Instead of mutually assured gerrymandering, this approach leads to mutually assured representation. Read More: Gerrymandering Isn't New—But Now We Have a Solution We used real-world census and election data from 2020 in each state to forecast the results of extreme partisan gerrymandering and the Define-Combine Procedure in every state. In Texas, Republicans could draw a map where they won 30 of 38 congressional seats. If Democrats could unilaterally gerrymander Texas, they could create a map with 28 Democratic and 10 Republican seats. Depending on party control of redistricting in Texas, a whopping 20 seats could change hands. When we used the Define-Combine Procedure, the resulting map would produce 19 Republicans seats and 17 Democratic seats, with the two remaining seats changing hands depending on which party defines and which combines. This result comes much closer to the 53% of the two-party vote that Republicans won in 2020. Scaling nationwide, we estimate that extreme gerrymandering could determine which party holds almost 200 seats, out of the 435 seats in the House. Processes like ours could reduce the advantage that a party can earn just from drawing a map, with outcomes that are less biased and closer to proportional. The trick here is to use the impulse to score more seats for your party as a tool for fairness instead. It's a partisan solution for a partisan problem. One party alone cannot protect voting rights and ensure fair representation. That's why, in 1965, Democrats and Republicans came together to pass the Voting Rights Act—and why they continued to amend and renew it for the next 40 years. But, a series of Supreme Court decisions over the last 12 years have substantially weakened the Voting Rights Act and allowed states to engage in extreme partisan gerrymandering. Now, a case before the court next year is likely to further diminish its remaining provisions. Instead of settling for mutually assured gerrymandering, with less effective representation, reduced accountability, and uncompetitive elections, both parties should unite behind solutions that achieve fairer outcomes nationwide. Such an outcome seems unrealistic right now as tit-for-tat gerrymandering ramps up, but the moment when the dust settles and voters take stock of the damage done may well be the best opportunity to address the scourge of partisan gerrymandering. If we don't seize this opportunity, America will pay the price.
