WASHINGTON – Wade Henderson, interim president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, issued the following statement after today’s passage of H.R. 51, the Washington, D.C. Admission Act, in the U.S. House of Representatives:

“With the House passage of H.R. 51, more than 700,000 residents of D.C. are one step closer to finally having a meaningful voice in our nation’s legislature and no longer being spectators to our democracy. The right to vote is our most fundamental right. It allows us to hold our leaders accountable. Democracy cannot exist without all of our participation, and it is incumbent upon the Senate to act swiftly and also pass this critically important legislation.”

See Henderson’s previous testimony on D.C. statehood here.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

President Biden took office promising a new era of American international leadership and diplomacy. But with a few exceptions, he has so far allowed self-serving foreign allies, hawkish U.S. interest groups and his own imperial delusions to undermine diplomacy and stoke the fires of war.

Biden’s failure to quickly recommit to the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA, as Senator Sanders promised to do on his first day as president, provided a critical delay that has been used by opponents to undermine the difficult shuttle diplomacy taking place in Vienna to restore the agreement. 

The attempts to derail talks range from the introduction of the Maximum Pressure Act on April 21 to codify the Trump administration’s sanctions against Iran to Israel’s cyberattack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. Biden’s procrastination has only strengthened the influence of the hawkish Washington foreign policy “blob,” Republicans and Democratic hawks in Congress and foreign allies like Netanyahu in Israel. 

In Afghanistan, Biden has won praise for his decision to withdraw U.S. troops by September 11, but his refusal to abide by the May 1 deadline for withdrawal as negotiated under the Trump administration has led the Taliban to back out of the planned UN-led peace conference in Istanbul. A member of the Taliban military commission told the Daily Beast that “the U.S. has shattered the Taliban’s trust.” 

Now active and retired Pentagon officials are regaling the New York Times with accounts of how they plan to prolong the U.S. war without “boots on the ground” after September, undoubtedly further infuriating the Taliban, making a ceasefire and peace talks all the more difficult.

In Ukraine, the government has launched a new offensive in its civil war against the ethnically Russian provinces in the eastern Donbass region, which declared unilateral independence after the U.S.-backed coup in 2014. On April 1, Ukraine’s military chief of staff said publicly that “the participation of NATO allies is envisaged” in the government offensive, prompting warnings from Moscow that Russia could intervene to protect Russians in Donbass.

Sticking to their usual tired script, U.S. and NATO officials are pretending that Russia is the aggressor for conducting military exercises and troop movements within its own borders in response to Kiev’s escalation. But even the BBC is challenging this false narrative, explaining that Russia is acting competently and effectively to deter an escalation of the Ukrainian offensive and U.S. and NATO threats. The U.S has turned around two U.S. guided-missile destroyers that were steaming toward the Black Sea, where they would only have been sitting ducks for Russia’s advanced missile defenses.

Despite a promising initial pause and policy review, Biden has decided to keep selling tens of billion dollars worth of weapons to authoritarian regimes in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Persian Gulf sheikdoms, even as they keep bombing and blockading famine-stricken Yemen.

Tensions have escalated with China, as the U.S. Navy and Marines stalk Chinese ships in the South China Sea, well inside the island chains China uses for self defense. The Pentagon is hoping to drag NATO allies into participating in these operations, and the U.S. Air Force plans to shift more bombers to new bases in Asia and the Pacific, supported by existing larger bases in Guam, Japan, Australia and South Korea.

Meanwhile, despite a promising initial pause and policy review, Biden has decided to keep selling tens of billion dollars worth of weapons to authoritarian regimes in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Persian Gulf sheikdoms, even as they keep bombing and blockading famine-stricken Yemen. Biden’s unconditional support for the most brutal authoritarian dictators on Earth lays bare the bankruptcy of the Democrats’ attempts to frame America’s regurgitated Cold War on Russia and China as a struggle between “democracy” and “authoritarianism.”

In all these international crises (along with Cuba, Haiti, Iraq, North Korea, Palestine, Syria and Venezuela, which are bedevilled by the same U.S. unilateralism), President Biden and the hawks egging him on are pursuing unilateral policies that ignore solemn commitments in international agreements and treaties, riding roughshod over the good faith of America’s allies and negotiating partners.

As the Russian foreign ministry bluntly put it when it announced its countermeasures to the latest round of U.S. sanctions, “Washington is unwilling to accept that there is no room for unilateral dictates in the new geopolitical reality.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping echoed the same multipolar perspective on April 20th at the annual Boao Asian international business forum. “The destiny and future of the world should be decided by all nations, and rules set up just by one or several countries should not be imposed on others,” Xi said. “The whole world should not be led by unilateralism of individual countries.”

The near-universal failure of Biden’s diplomacy in his first months in office reflects how badly he and those who have his ear are failing to accurately read the limits of American power and predict the consequences of his unilateral decisions.

Unilateral, irresponsible decision-making has been endemic in U.S. foreign policy for decades, but America’s economic and military dominance created an international environment that was extraordinarily forgiving of American “mistakes,” even as they ruined the lives of millions of people in the countries directly affected. Now America no longer dominates the world, and it is critical for U.S. officials to more accurately assess the relative power and positions of the United States and the countries and people it is confronting or negotiating with.

Under Trump, Defense Secretary Mattis launched negotiations to persuade Vietnam to host U.S. missiles aimed at China. The negotiations went on for three years, but they were based entirely on wishful thinking and misreadings of Vietnam’s responses by U.S. officials and Rand Corp contractors. Experts agree that Vietnam would never violate a formal, declared policy of neutrality it has held and repeatedly reiterated since 1998.

As Gareth Porter summarized this silly saga, “The story of the Pentagon’s pursuit of Vietnam as a potential military partner against China reveals an extraordinary degree of self-deception surrounding the entire endeavor. And it adds further detail to the already well-established picture of a muddled and desperate bureaucracy seizing on any vehicle possible to enable it to claim that U.S. power in the Pacific can still prevail in a war with China.”   

Unlike Trump, Biden has been at the heart of American politics and foreign policy since the 1970s. So the degree to which he too is out of touch with today’s international reality is a measure of how much and how quickly that reality has changed and continues to change. But the habits of empire die hard. The tragic irony of Biden’s ascent to power in 2020 is that his lifetime of service to a triumphalist American empire has left him ill-equipped to craft a more constructive and cooperative brand of American diplomacy for today’s multipolar world.

Amid the American triumphalism that followed the end of the Cold War, the neocons developed a simplistic ideology to persuade America’s leaders that they need no longer be constrained in their use of military power by domestic opposition, peer competitors or international law. They claimed that America had virtually unlimited military freedom of action and a responsibility to use it aggressively, because, as Biden parroted them recently, “the world doesn’t organize itself.”

The international violence and chaos Biden has inherited in 2021 is a measure of the failure of the neocons’ ambitions. But there is one place that they conquered, occupied and still rule to this day, and that is Washington D.C.

The politically safe path on foreign policy for corporate Democrats has been to talk a good game about human rights and diplomacy, but not to deviate too far from hawkish, neoconservative policies on war, military spending, and support for often repressive and corrupt allies throughout America’s neocolonial empire.

The dangerous disconnect at the heart of Biden’s foreign policy is the result of this dichotomy between the neocons’ conquest of Washington and their abject failure to conquer the rest of the world. 

For most of Biden’s career, the politically safe path on foreign policy for corporate Democrats has been to talk a good game about human rights and diplomacy, but not to deviate too far from hawkish, neoconservative policies on war, military spending, and support for often repressive and corrupt allies throughout America’s neocolonial empire.

The tragedy of such compromises by Democratic Party leaders is that they perpetuate the suffering of millions of people affected by the real-world problems they fail to fix. But the Democrats’ subservience to simplistic neoconservative ideas also fails to satisfy the hawks they are trying to appease, who only smell more political blood in the water at every display of moral weakness by the Democrats.

In his first three months in office, Biden’s weakness in resisting the bullying of hawks and neocons has led him to betray the most significant diplomatic achievements of each of his predecessors, Obama and Trump, in the JCPOA with Iran and the May 1 withdrawal agreement with the Taliban respectively, while perpetuating the violence and chaos the neocons unleashed on the world.

For a president who promised a new era of American diplomacy, this has been a dreadful start. We hope he and his advisers are not too blinded by anachronistic imperial thinking or too intimidated by the neocons to make a fresh start and engage with the world as it actually exists in 2021.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

The Working Families Party announced Thursday that Rep. Jamaal Bowman will deliver a progressive response to President Joe Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress next week—a departure from tradition aimed at giving voice to the millions of Americans who want to push the president to fight harder for working people and the common good.

The WFP has in recent years selected lawmakers to respond to former President Donald Trump’s addresses, but has not previously offered rebuttals to Democratic presidents.  Bowman’s response will be aimed at praising Biden for strides he’s made in representing progressives’ policy priorities, while also pushing him to go further.

“The worst thing we could do in a moment like this, where we feel like we have momentum, is to slow down—to misread the moment and think we can sit back now,” Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party (WFP), told NBC News. “He laid out this agenda to be big and bold, and we’re saying, ‘Game on.’”

Bowman plans to “offer a bold, progressive vision for how we will deliver jobs and care to the American people and make sure everyone who calls this country home can thrive,” the WFP said on social media. 

Since Biden took office, progressives have credited him for offering his public support for doing away with the filibuster; giving an unequivocal endorsing the rights of workers to organize; and nominating left-leaning political appointees such as Jessica Rosenworcel to lead the Federal Communications Commission and Deb Haaland to serve as interior secretary. 

Progressives, however, have also expressed frustration with Biden’s insufficient goal of cutting fossil fuels by only 50% by the end of this decade and the infrastructure plan he unveiled last month that they say does not go nearly far enough.

Bowman himself recently demanded the Biden administration improve the Supplemental Security Income program for elderly Americans and people with disabilities, and as vice chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, he denounced the White House for requiring standardized testing during the pandemic.

“The worst thing we could do in a moment like this, where we feel like we have momentum, is to slow down—to misread the moment and think we can sit back now.”
—Maurice Mitchell, WFP

“It’s a balancing act,” Bowman told NBC. “He’s already done a lot that I love. And he’s going to say a lot of things that I like, as well. But if we relent, it doesn’t mean that what’s been going on so far is going to continue. It’s important for us as progressives to continue to push and continue to organize.”

On Twitter, the freshman representative—who defeated 16-term Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) last year after running on a platform focused on passing a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and free college tuition—said he was “honored” to respond to the president’s upcoming address, while fellow progressive Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) offered his support. 

“Let’s go!” tweeted Bowman. 

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – Today, in the lead up to President Biden’s Climate Summit, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) announced it will be net zero by 2040. 

Kate DeAngelis, International Finance Program Manager at Friends of the Earth U.S., issued the following statement in response:

DFC’s broad-based restrictions on fossil fuel financing are a first for any U.S. institution, but still insufficient to address the true nature of the climate crisis. DFC should have taken the opportunity of the climate summit to once and for all end support for all fossil fuels immediately. In putting forward a net zero target, DFC is ignoring the lifetime and lifecycle emissions of its portfolio while putting off real climate action with dangerous and ineffective offsets.

Even more alarming is Biden’s silence on the Export-Import Bank, which provides billions of dollars every year to disastrous projects like Mozambique LNG and the Vaca Muerta fracking projects in Argentina. While the United Kingdom has shown true climate leadership by ending support for overseas fossil fuel projects, Biden has failed to take a whole-of-government approach to stop enabling overseas carbon emissions.

A full analysis of the announcement is below.

This announcement follows President Biden’s Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, calling on DFC and EXIM “to identify steps . . . [to] promote ending international financing of carbon-intensive fossil fuel-based energy while simultaneously advancing sustainable development and a green recovery.” In response, nearly 450 organizations called on the Biden Administration to immediately end all US public financing for fossil fuels, including natural gas.

In the past five years, DFC and its predecessor, Overseas Private Investment Corporation, approved almost $4 billion for overseas fossil fuel projects. In addition, EXIM has approved over $5 billion for fossil fuel projects abroad in just the last two years. Other agencies, including the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) and Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), have provided technical assistance and policy guidance in support of overseas fossil fuel projects.

Friends of the Earth’s rapid response analysis of Biden’s announcement:

• DFC’s restrictions are not a blanket ban on fossil fuel financing unlike the approach of other development finance institutions like Swedfund. The announcement indicates the continued allowance of support for midstream and downstream gas projects that could result in only minor changes to DFC’s energy portfolio and financed emissions inventory. Moreover, it could allow for more support for disastrous projects like Rovuma LNG in northern Mozambique and  Vaca Muerta fracking projects in Argentina. Considering that gas can be as bad for the climate as coal, DFC will have limited effect until it bans all support for fossil fuels from all sources, including financial intermediaries. Moreover, DFC’s inaccurate greenhouse accounting fails to assess the lifetime and lifecycle emissions of its projects, meaning that any targets will underestimate and, therefore, fail to properly mitigate DFC’s real climate impact.
• DFC’s net zero target will require carbon offsets, which have proven to be  ineffective at reducing emissions at any significant scale and perpetuate environmental racism and compromise human rights, and undermine healthy, sustainable, and resilient communities and food systems. Reaching “net zero” will lead to massive demand for lands that can soak up ongoing emissions, which will result in  landgrabs and the dispossession of Indigenous Peoples, peasants and local communities. Moreover, net zero by 2040 implicitly means that Biden is pushing the problem on to the next generation. In contrast, a “real zero” approach requires emission reductions at sufficient scale and speed to keep warming below 1.5°C. It requires all entities to bend their emissions curve towards zero immediately. DFC’s “net zero” target needs to be turned into a “real zero” target.
• Conspicuously missing is any commitment to curb fossil fuel financing by the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM), which is the U.S. export credit agency and the largest source of U.S. Government financing for fossil fuel projects abroad. EXIM’s existing portfolio of supported projects emits tens of millions of tons of CO2 annually. EXIM fossil fuel financing includes nearly $5 billion for the Mozambique LNG project and nearly $1 billion for the Sasan coal plant and mine in India, which has caused at least 36 project deaths. A failure to address EXIM’s financing will allow for billions of dollars to continue to flow from the U.S. government to fossil fuel projects all over the world and potentially also domestically. This failure stands in stark contrast to the United Kingdom’s ending of its support for overseas fossil fuel projects as of March 31, 2021.
• Also conspicuously missing is any commitment to curb U.S. public money that goes towards fossil fuels overseas through international financial institutions like the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund, even though they are addressed by the same Biden Administration Executive Order. These institutions finance billions in fossil fuel projects a year, and importantly, also influence policy changes in client countries that enable fossil fuel expansion and dependency. As a major–and in some cases the largest–shareholder in these institutions, the U.S. government,  through the Department of Treasury, must issue an ambitious and accountable strategy on how the U.S. government’s “voice and vote” will be used on the Boards of Directors of these institutions towards phasing out support for coal, oil and gas and scaling up international support for a just transition and clean development pathway for workers and communities. This strategy must be released as soon as possible, in order to establish the U.S. position ahead of important relevant processes coming up like the release of the World Bank’s Climate Change Action Plan. 

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Life on our fast-heating planet faces an existential threat. This we know. We’re now on track for the worst-case melting of polar glaciers and the resulting sea rise. During the last 15 years, temperatures in the Arctic have reached levels not predicted for another 70 years.

When we’re facing any seemingly overwhelming threat, despair can be our greatest enemy. It can feed denial and stymy action. But we can escape this deadly enemy.

First, we must recognize that it is too late to save those species we’ve already wiped out at the rate of nearly 150 each day. It is too late to prevent even worse drought, flooding, and generally more extreme weather.

But it’s not too late to save at least some of the million species now facing extinction. We can avoid the worst—if we act now, quickly, with proven tools, to cut greenhouse gas emissions and to store vastly more carbon in plants and the earth.

It’s a message of hope—hope of a certain kind: honest hope that takes it all in. In fact, hope organizes our brains toward solutions. Hope is a form of power.

How, then, do we quickly build such truth-grounded, energizing hope?

Because we humans are social creatures who take our cues from one another, we can spread stories of everyday Americans stepping up to confront the climate crisis.

I put it this way because our country is a prime climate culprit.

Our sad status reflects a damaged democracy and a particularly brutal form of capitalism.

Over time, the United States has emitted more CO2 than any other country—since 1751, adding roughly a quarter of total historical emissions. Today, China and the United States emit almost half of the world’s carbon dioxide: In 2020, China released almost 30 percent and the United States 15 percent. But per person we are much worse: Each American adds more than three times her or his share of the world average.

Our sad status reflects a damaged democracy and a particularly brutal form of capitalism. Still, numerous states and cities—including unlikely heroes—are seizing the climate challenge.

As of late 2020, more than 1 in 4 Americans—over 100 million of us—lived in places committed to using 100 percent clean electricity. These places include over 170 cities and towns, more than 10 counties, and eight states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. All states with clean energy laws now on the books have set mid-century targets for carbon-neutral electricity. To succeed, timetables must be yanked forward, but it is a beginning.

I grew up in Texas, where oil is king, and my home state’s leadership on clean energy is an energizing surprise.

Yes, it’s true that Texas still produces over a third of the nation’s crude oil; and its continuing dependence on oil and gas brought havoc, even death, during this winter’s deep freeze. But in the 1990s, an alternative opened when eight utilities used a deliberative opinion poll to shape their direction: Randomly selected citizens were invited to come together to learn about and then weigh energy options.

The results surprised many. Respondents upped their commitment to renewables and efficiency.

Then in 2002, the Texas Legislature not only amended the state’s utility code to allow competition among retail electricity companies but also enacted state Renewable Portfolio Standards. These “standards”—a term more friendly to Texans than “regulation”—required enough clean energy that by 2009 electricity providers collectively supply consumers to power about a third of a million homes. When it became clear the goal would be met three years early, the Legislature more than doubled the requirement.

Today, Texas leads the nation, generating almost 30 percent of total US wind-powered electricity. If it were a country, Texas would be the world’s fifth-largest wind energy producer.

An additional plus?

Because wind turbines use only 2 percent of the area of a typical farm, Texas farmers collectively earn about a fifth of a billion dollars yearly by leasing bits of land to the wind industry. Some see wind as “a stable cash crop that is policy and drought resistant.”

Imagine the possibility. Just three states—Texas, Kansas, and North Dakota—have wind power potential exceeding the electricity used annually by the entire nation.

Another state probably not linked with green energy innovation in the minds of many is Georgia. Although it was reliably “red” for nearly 20 years, in less than a decade Georgia has risen to place in the top 10 solar-powered states, providing 76,000 clean energy jobs.

To make it happen, the Sierra Club and the state’s Tea Party collaborated, and the unusual partnership has been dubbed—get ready—the “Green Tea Party.”

Georgia’s solar power is now on track to provide by 2024 about a fifth of the state’s capacity.

We can’t turn back the clock, but we can press utilities and government at every level, and with all our might, for the Greenest New Deal.

In tackling climate chaos, cities matter greatly—since they produce three-quarters of the world’s carbon emissions. In the United States, over 170 cities and towns have committed to 100 percent green energy—with 47 already drawing all their electricity from green, renewable sources.

One surprise for me was Washington D.C., which in 2017 became the world’s first LEED platinum-certified city. LEED—Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design—is the globally recognized green-building rating system. That year Washington also ranked number one in the nation for “green roofs.” The city has 3 million square feet of vegetative roofs that capture carbon while mitigating runoff and flooding.

These advances have required smart policy tools. State Renewable Portfolio Standards—what worked for wind in Texas—have been successful across the board. Adopted by 30 states and D.C., the approach gets credit for almost half the country’s 2002-2019 renewable energy growth.

State collaborative commitments are also helping. An example is the Northeast Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative involving Massachusetts and nine other states. In the initiative’s first decade, beginning in 2005, CO2 emissions from power plants in member states fell by 50 percent, “outpacing the rest of the country by 90 percent.”

In facing the climate emergency, there’s a lot to build on. True, we can’t turn back the clock, but we can press utilities and government at every level, and with all our might, for the Greenest New Deal.

To act, we humans don’t need certainty of success. What we do need is to see others like ourselves in action and to glimpse even a possibility that we can make a difference.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Just before U.S. President Joe Biden’s two-day virtual summit on the climate crisis got underway, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg on Thursday shared a video message calling out the “bullshit” of world leaders who she says are failing to take the steps necessary to confront the planetary emergency.

“While we can fool others and even ourselves, we cannot fool nature and physics.”
—Greta Thunberg

Posted online by NowThis News, the video featuring Thunberg comes as a warning from the well-known global climate campaigner that the people of the world should not be fooled by the lofty rhetoric they will hear at the summit.

“At the Leaders’ Climate Summit, countries will present their new climate commitments, like net-zero emissions by 2050,” Thunberg says in the video. “They will call these hypothetical targets ‘ambitious.’ But when you compare our insufficient targets with the overall current best available science, you clearly see that there’s a gap. There are decades missing.”

Watch the video:

The 18-year-old founder of “Fridays for Future” and inspiration for the global climate strike movement also penned an open letter first published in Vogue on Thursday, making much the same argument.

“You may call us naïve for believing change is possible, and that’s fine,” Thunberg wrote. “But at least we’re not so naïve that we believe that things will be solved by countries and companies making vague, distant, insufficient targets without any real pressure from the media and the general public.”

Thunberg continued:

Of course, we welcome all efforts to safeguard future and present living conditions. And these targets could be a great start if it wasn’t for the tiny fact that they are full of gaps and loopholes. Such as leaving out emissions from imported goods, international aviation and shipping, as well as the burning of biomass, manipulating baseline data, excluding most feedback loops and tipping points, ignoring the crucial global aspect of equity and historic emissions, and making these targets completely reliant on fantasy or barely existing carbon-capturing technologies. But I don’t have time to go into all that now.

The point is that we can keep using creative carbon accounting and cheat in order to pretend that these targets are in line with what is needed. But we must not forget that while we can fool others and even ourselves, we cannot fool nature and physics. The emissions are still there, whether we choose to count them or not.

“The gap between what needs to be done and what we are actually doing is widening by the minute,” she added. “The gap between the urgency needed and the current level of awareness and attention is becoming more and more absurd. And the gap between our so-called climate targets and the overall, current best-available science should no longer be possible to ignore.”

Speaking of world leaders in the Thursday video and the shortcomings of their climate proposals thus far, Thunberg said, “Let’s call out their bullshit,” because the gap between what their rhetoric and what’s actually needed is “the biggest elephant there’s even been in any room.”

Along with other witnesses, Thunberg is testifying before congressional lawmakers on Thursday during a hearing convened by the House Subcommittee on the Environment.

Watch the hearing—titled “The Role of Fossil Fuel Subsidies in Preventing Action on the Climate Crisis” and slated to begin at 10:00 am ET—live:

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

A new analysis released Thursday shows that the global vaccine initiative COVAX has delivered just one in five of the Oxford/AstraZeneca doses it said would arrive in struggling countries by next month, a shortfall that progressive campaigners cited as further evidence of the need to more aggressively combat vaccine inequities by suspending patent protections.

“COVAX was never intended to go far enough or fast enough to end the pandemic. And we now know it’s not capable of achieving even its limited scope.”
—Heidi Chow, Global Justice Now

“COVAX was never intended to go far enough or fast enough to end the pandemic. And we now know it’s not capable of achieving even its limited scope,” Heidi Chow, senior campaigns and policy manager at Global Justice Now, said in a statement.

“There is no hiding behind COVAX anymore,” added Chow. “Rich countries need to support an intellectual property waiver for Covid-19 vaccines and force big pharma to share their vaccine blueprints with the world.”

Drawing on data from UNICEF and GAVI—two organizations helping run COVAX—The Guardian‘s analysis finds that “large countries such as Indonesia and Brazil have so far received about one in 10 of the Oxford/AstraZeneca doses they were expecting by May, while Bangladesh, Mexico, Myanmar, and Pakistan are among those that have not received any doses of the vaccine through the program so far.”

“A handful of countries such as Moldova, Tuvalu, Nauru, and Dominica have received the full amount they were allocated, but the vast majority of those in the scheme have so far received a third or less of what they were allocated,” The Guardian noted. “In Africa, Rwanda has received just 32% of its allocation, the biggest percentage on the continent, ahead of countries including Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which have each received about 28% of the doses they are expecting.”

In an address earlier this month, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO)—another partner in the COVAX initiative—acknowledged that the global vaccination program is lagging behind its targets and blamed the shortfalls on a “scarcity” of doses.

While Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and other major vaccine manufacturers have made commitments to COVAX, much of their supply has gone to wealthy nations, which now have huge surpluses as much of the developing world struggles to administer a single dose.

“The problem is not getting vaccines out of COVAX; the problem is getting them in,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on April 9. Tedros, who called COVAX a “strong mechanism,” has also voiced support for a patent waiver proposal introduced at the World Trade Organization (WTO) by India and South Africa.

That proposal—which would enable generic manufacturers to replicate vaccine formulas—has garnered the support of a majority of WTO member nations, but rich countries such as the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom have sided with the pharmaceutical industry and blocked the waiver.

“Getting the world vaccinated is not about some feel-good gestures, like a few billion dollars for COVAX… It means pulling out all the stops to produce and distribute billions of vaccines as quickly as possible.”
—Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research

Instead of temporarily suspending intellectual property rules, those wealthy nations have provided billions of dollars in funding for COVAX, investments that civil society organizations have decried as far from sufficient to promote the kind of vaccine manufacturing scale-up necessary to meet global needs.

“This is not a plan to end the pandemic,” Public Citizen’s Peter Maybarduk said last week in response to a COVAX fundraising initiative hosted by the U.S., which has pledged $4 billion to the vaccine-sharing program since President Joe Biden took office in January.

Maybarduk argued that in addition to supporting India and South Africa’s proposed patent waiver, “the U.S. government urgently should invest $25 billion in a new program to vaccinate the world.”

“The U.S. government and partners can retrofit facilities to produce eight billion mRNA vaccine doses, enough for half the world’s population,” said Maybarduk. “This investment will pay for itself many times over by preventing trillions of dollars in economic loss from slower global vaccination.”

“Absent this extraordinary, necessary manufacturing effort,” Maybarduk warned, “many of the world’s people will not be vaccinated for years to come, if ever.”

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), echoed that point in a recent blog post, writing, “Getting the world vaccinated is not about some feel-good gestures, like a few billion dollars for COVAX, the Bill Gates inspired initiative to make vaccines available in developing countries.”

“It means pulling out all the stops to produce and distribute billions of vaccines as quickly as possible,” Baker added. “To do this, we need the cooperation of the whole world and the elimination of all the barriers to the production and distribution of vaccines.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Since we’re talking about the Republican Party and its descent into an authoritarian leader cult, we might as well invoke Godwin’s Law straightaway. Suppose you were conversing with a German in the early postwar years, and the man said that he supported Hitler’s policies, in fact he voted for him in 1933? And suppose he said the only thing that tore it for him was Hitler’s personal conduct, and how the Führer “abused the loyalty and trust” of supporters like himself?

You might conclude that the man had no more moral sense than a hyena, and that he only regretted the fact that things did not turn out well. Such thoughts passed through my mind on the publication of former Speaker of the House John Boehner’s memoir, On the House. The mainstream political media, on the other hand, have mostly bought into the author’s narrative frame that it’s a book of unguarded truth-telling by a profane and hard-drinking Regular Guy.

Despite that caveat, there are elements of Boehner’s tale that add to our knowledge about just how it came to pass that the so-called party of Lincoln inexorably was degenerating into madness well before Donald J. Trump became president.

Let us consider the case of Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), he of “Bridge to Nowhere” fame. After Boehner made a speech denouncing congressional earmarks in 2011, Young (a master practitioner of pork barrel politics) confronted the speaker just off the House floor and, according to Boehner, held a 10-inch knife to his throat.

This anecdote has a couple of salient angles. First, if most of us had been threatened in such a manner, we would have filed a police report, and there would have been repercussions involving either criminal law or the legal disposition of a mentally unstable person. That the man who was second in line to the presidency, a constitutional officer who normally has a security detail, did nothing, shows either a saintly forbearance or, more likely, a strange, Stockholm Syndrome-like passivity beneath his façade of manly bluffness.

Second, having myself worked on Capitol Hill until 2011, I already had Young pegged as a mean, nasty old geezer. But I had never credited him – if that’s the word – with homicidal impulses. How many more of those vain, insecure, tightly wound specimens that the American people in their wisdom have elected to Congress are as potentially dangerous as Young? Could that possibly have something to do with the crisis of democracy that currently besets us?

The other revealing episode involves deceased Fox News chairman Roger Ailes. When Boehner suggested that Ailes knock off some of the more outlandish conspiracy lies that Fox News was peddling, the TV mogul responded thus, according to the speaker’s memoirs:

But he did go on and on about the terrorist attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, which he thought was part of a grand conspiracy that led back to Hillary Clinton. Then he outlined elaborate plots by which George Soros and the Clintons and Obama (and whoever else came to mind) were trying to destroy him.

“They’re monitoring me,” he assured me about the Obama White House. He told me he had a “safe room” built so he couldn’t be spied on. His mansion was being protected by combat-ready security personnel, he said. There was a lot of conspiratorial talk. It was like he’d been reading whacked-out spy novels all weekend.

Many Americans who have not drunk the Fox Kool-Aid have surmised that the TV “news”  network consists of moustache-twirling Svengalis who don’t in the least believe the childish nonsense they are peddling. Rather, their theory holds that Fox management has cynically and scientifically confected a visually arresting montage of dog whistle-infused propaganda to deliberately addict the poorly educated and senescent viewership that Fox News targets.

Assuming that Ailes wasn’t putting on an impromptu performance in order to gaslight Boehner, this vignette suggests that, on the contrary, even the wire pullers of the far right largely buy into their own lies. We can at least tentatively conclude that the source of all those conspiracy theories that the credulous Fox Nation clings to consists not of an inner conspiracy of coolly rational and self-serving manipulators, but of something even more alarming – of unhinged true believers, as Ailes appeared to be.

The anecdote rings true; Ailes’s safe room, for instance, has been widely reported elsewhere before. Where Boehner withholds the truth concerns his own motivation, and the media have not done a good job smoking this out. In an NPR interview, Boehner explains his capitulation to the extremists in his party in the period 2011-2015 as a necessary attribute of good leadership:

A leader without followers is just a man taking a walk… There were a couple of times where I found myself taking a walk. And I was going one direction, the team was going some other direction.

And even though I didn’t really want to go the direction where the team’s going, they were the ones who elected me to be the leader and I had an obligation to go lead them… So that means I had to go jump out in front of them, even if I thought what they were trying to do really made not a whole lot of sense.

Curiously, this discourse elicited no follow-up question about his strange conception of how to lead. Because what he said was the antithesis of true leadership, which means persuading followers to go places they don’t want to go. Good luck to teachers in front of their classrooms, or sports team coaches, or military commanders, who “lead” simply by doing what their charges would prefer to do. Boehner was a mere windsock, a ventriloquist’s dummy for the Republican Freedom Caucus and its menagerie of loonies.

Boehner’s comments about the January 6 riot at the Capitol have received broad coverage. He said Trump “incited that bloody insurrection for nothing more than selfish reasons, perpetuated by the bullshit he’d been shoveling since he lost a fair election the previous November.” But there is a big problem with that account.

In reality, Trump was shoveling the same bullshit several months before the election, saying that that if he were to lose the vote count it could only be due to fraud and that he would not relinquish power. Thus, he gave fair warning to all American voters—including his deranged followers, such as the Proud Boys—of his dictatorial mindset and his intent to resist stepping down. Under the circumstances, it was hardly a stretch to infer the potential for violence.

In the face of all this, Boehner voted for Trump a second time. “I voted for Donald Trump. I thought that his policies, by and large, mirrored the policies that I believed in.”

So now we get it. John Boehner was pretty much always in favor of Trump; his objections were just a stylistic thing. That is to say, he had no problem sitting of an evening with his cronies in the Speaker’s office, downing a glass or three of Merlot while cogitating on how to deprive Americans of health care or give Republican donors an unmerited tax break. If deliberations went into the night, a functionary could be dispatched to Schneider’s Liquor of Capitol Hill for another case of the grape.

It was this cozy, clubbable atmosphere that Trump and his fan club of face-painted yahoos disturbed. Even if the former president made all the “right” picks for the judiciary and followed the Republican playbook for screwing the American people to a T, he was still a parvenu who didn’t care what Boehner and other members of the Old Guard thought. Worse, Trump’s perpetual nastiness could put off respectable suburban women, and even corporate plutocrats would hesitate to pull out their wallets for the GOP if they thought it might damage their brand reputation with younger consumers.

So now Boehner has written a book about all of it, courageously timed to hit the Amazon warehouses and airport bookshops now that Trump is safely out of office.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – According to reports ahead of a global climate summit in Washington, President Joe Biden will announce Thursday that the United States will reduce global warming emissions 50 percent by 2030 as part of America’s commitments under the newly rejoined Paris climate accords. This nearly doubles the target agreed to in 2015 by the Obama administration. The reductions will hinge on an accelerated transition to carbon-free electricity and the phase out of gas-powered vehicles.

Through their 100% Renewable Energy, Destination Zero Carbon and Transform Transportation campaigns, Environment America and U.S. PIRG have convinced dozens of states to increase the amount of power they get from solar and wind. They have helped convince five states to commit to 100 percent carbon free electricity, and have won pollution reduction programs to cut carbon emissions from power plants and cars in states across the country. This progress in the states has laid the groundwork for President Biden’s ability to make such a bold national commitment.

Environment America President Wendy Wendlandt issued the following statement:

“Global warming is the existential challenge of our times, but we have more solutions at our fingertips than ever before. Rejoining the Paris agreement was just step one. Now the Biden administration has taken another big step by committing to cut global warming pollution in half by 2030. That’s exactly the kind of bold leadership we need. But just as critical are the policies we implement to get there. We look forward to working with the administration and officials, businesses and other institutions across America to accelerate a rapid transition to renewable sources of energy and to facilitate faster and more widespread adoption of zero emissions electric vehicles.”

U.S. PIRG President Faye Park issued the following statement: 

“If we implement common sense climate solutions today, we can preserve a livable planet, clean air and clean water for generations to come. Reducing pollution from dirty energy sources and our transportation vehicles, like our cars, trucks and school buses, will not only lower climate emissions, but will also clear our air and promote healthier communities. With his proposal to halve emissions by 2030, President Biden is putting the health of Americans at the forefront. Under this plan, we will be well-positioned to take polluting cars off the road and get more people walking and biking. We must also replace dirty diesel school buses with all-electric ones to protect our kids’ lungs. And we need to prioritize energy efficiency and renewable energy sources that keep our air clean. The American people want a healthier future, and we’re glad to see President Biden take bold steps toward delivering one.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – As today marks the first day of President Biden’s climate summit, Sunrise Movement Political Director, Evan Weber, released the following statement, calling on Biden to be a climate leader at home and commit to reducing U.S. emissions even further:

“Biden must realize that he can only become the international climate leader he wants to be when he begins to scale the bold and vital climate actions we must take here at home. The only way to get the rest of the world to take climate action to the degree we need is if the United States – the richest country in the world and the biggest historical polluter—does our fair share first. Until we deliver on that, efforts at climate diplomacy will inevitably fall short. While many will applaud the President’s commitment to cut U.S. emissions by at least half by 2030, we have a responsibility to tell the truth: it is nowhere near enough. The science is clear – if the US does not achieve much, much more by the end of this decade, it will be a death sentence for our generation and the billions of people at the frontlines of the climate crisis in the US and abroad.

“The landmark 2018 IPCC report gave a directive that in order to have even a 50% shot of staying under 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming to avoid the worst of the climate crisis, we must half global emissions by 2030. If the US — the country with the most historical responsibility and greatest economic capacity—only halves our own emissions by then, we are doomed. We must do much more, as quickly as we can. A new report outlines that in order to truly meet our global historic responsibility, we’d have to reduce global emissions by the equivalent of 195% of 2005 US levels. That’s why this economic mobilization cannot stop at our borders. 

“As Biden nears the end of his first 100 days, he must uphold the climate mandate he was elected on, by both directing international finance to support a just and accelerated transition to renewable energy abroad and delivering a groundbreaking jobs and infrastructure package to put people to work decarbonizing every sector of our economy, including electricity, transportation, buildings, manufacturing, and agriculture, in the next decade.” 

This comes just days after climate champions Senator Ed Markey and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reintroduced the Green New Deal, alongside a suite of climate bills, including the Civilian Climate Corps for Jobs and Justice Act, which would set the U.S. on track to achieve this transformation and halt the climate crisis.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – As President Joe Biden’s ‘Leaders Summit on Climate’ unfolds today, April 22, through tomorrow, Friday, April 23, communities around the world are escalating the demand for immediate and more ambitious climate action. This week’s events are a key milestone on the road to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) this November in Glasgow. 

Commitments from the Biden administration, including reports of a 50% reduction of emissions at 2005 levels by 2030, fall short of the United States’s fair share of global climate action. Top officials from the Biden administration, including Gina McCarthy, met with oil and gas executives last month, yet failed to meet with Black, Indigenous, and frontline leaders of color who are most impacted, and who must be centered in real climate solutions.

“On Day 1 in office, Biden cancelled Keystone XL. Now he must do the same with Line 3, the Dakota Access pipeline, and all new fossil fuel projects. There can be no meaningful climate action if we don’t keep all fossil fuels in the ground. By doing so, Biden will show the world that the U.S. is serious about facing the climate crisis at scale and centering the communities most impacted,” said Natalie Mebane, U.S. Policy Director of 350.org.

Biden must go beyond promises, and take immediate action to stop the bad, build the good, and repair harm. This includes drastically increasing emission reduction targets to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by doing what science and justice demand: 

1. Stop approving all new fossil fuel projects and shut down Line 3, Dakota Access, and all fossil fuel projects that violate Indigenous sovereignty, pollute and poison communities, drive up emissions and fuel the climate crisis. 

2. Stop funding the problem. The US government must cut off the flow of funding to fossil fuels from all institutions and invest in job creation, renewable energy, sustainable infrastructure, and support the frontline communities that are hardest hit by climate change.

3. Declare a climate emergency to lead a clean energy revolution, invest in historically marginalized communities, and create millions of good union jobs.

Yesterday, a global petition with over 300,000 signatures, was delivered to the Biden administration, underscoring that to Build Back Better, we must #BuildBackFossilFree.

“By using the Climate Clock as a tool, we are pressuring world governments to take bold action for a just recovery from the compound crisis our communities are facing from COVID-19, climate impacts, and racial and economic injustice” said Thanu Yakupitiyage, 350.org US Communications Director. “President Biden It’s time for Biden to be a real Climate President, show the world that the U.S. is serious about keeping fossil fuels in the ground, and lead by example on the world stage.  Biden needs to go beyond promises and take immediate action to stop the bad, build the good, and repair the harm. “

Glasgow City Council and UK youth climate activists light-projected a CLIMATE CLOCK onto Glasgow’s landmark Tolbooth Steeple. Like its counterpart in Union Square, New York, the Glasgow CLIMATE CLOCK will count down the time until the threshold of carbon emissions for 1.5 degrees of warming is exceeded, and show the percentage of the world’s energy that is generated from renewable sources. It will run continuously every night for the six months from Earth Day until the COP26 begins, turning the eyes of the world to the upcoming UN Summit in November.

“There can be no meaningful climate action if world leaders don’t make a decisive move to keep all fossil fuels in the ground. The Biden Summit is a critical meeting of world leaders ahead of COP26 this November. Talk of “net-zero” won’t cut it: we demand more from our world leaders than false promises, false solutions and empty negotiations at Biden’s Climate Summit,” added Agnes Hall, Global Campaigns Director at 350.org. “The task now is to hold politicians to their lofty words,  and to do that the global climate movement needs to keep up the pressure on our governments at home as well as on the international stage to take urgent action now to reduce carbon emissions and ensure a Just Recovery by creating a sustainable, fossil-free world.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – The new U.S. target for reducing climate-heating emissions 50%-52% by 2030 fails to meet the demands of climate science and environmental and energy justice.

While the new U.S. target doubles the emissions-reduction commitments made in the country’s 2016 pledge, it falls short of what’s needed to address both the climate emergency and global equity.

“A pledge to cut emissions 50%-52% by 2030 simply isn’t big enough to meet the massive scale of the climate emergency,” said Jean Su, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Energy Justice program. “Solving the climate crisis requires applying both science and equity. The U.S. is the largest historic polluter and one of the wealthiest nations, and it must do its fair share and cut domestic emissions by at least 70% by 2030. Combating the climate emergency at home also requires transforming our economy by moving immediately to end the fossil fuel era and create a renewable and anti-racist energy system that advances justice first.”

A United Nations report released in February showed that current climate commitments would only reduce global emissions 1% by 2030 from 2010 levels. That’s far below the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recommendation that the world must commit to reduce at least 45% of emissions over the same time period to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius—the point at which scientists predict catastrophic, irreversible consequences.

A recent effort led by civil society groups, including the Center, called for the Biden administration to contribute its fair share of global climate action, based on climate science demands and the country’s historical emissions contribution and wealth.

According to the US Climate Action Network and the Climate Equity Reference Project, the U.S. fair share amounts to reducing domestic greenhouse gas emissions 70% below 2005 levels by 2030, with substantial assistance to developing countries to cut their emissions and mitigate climate change harms.

As the world’s largest cumulative greenhouse emitter, largest oil and gas producer, third-largest coal producer and the world’s wealthiest nation, the United States has an obligation to achieve greater-than-average emissions reductions. The United States committed to do so in the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change but has yet to honor that promise.

In addition, the U.S. NDC fails to include foundational climate actions to achieve the needed emissions reductions. Because 86% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from fossil fuels, no climate policy can succeed unless it ends new fossil fuel infrastructure and limits fossil fuel production.

Both the NDC and the Biden administration’s proposed infrastructure plan fail to halt new fossil fuel infrastructure, including destructive oil and gas pipelines across the country. Biden has yet to take action to limit U.S. fossil fuel exports. And while President Biden has implemented a laudable moratorium on new federal oil and gas leasing, he has yet to match the decisive leadership of other countries such as Denmark, which has reached broad agreement to cancel ongoing leasing, ban all future oil and gas licensing, and set a final phase-out date of 2050 for all fossil fuel extraction.

At the same time, while the Biden infrastructure plan does invest in transmission lines and extends renewable energy tax credits, it fails to tackle systemic reform of investor-owned utilities that have lined the pockets of investors while obstructing distributed clean energy systems like rooftop and community solar that boost energy affordability and climate resilience.

The Biden administration is also promoting a clean energy standard that, according to White House climate czar Gina McCarthy, will include carbon capture and storage technology, an unproven technology that prolongs dirty gas extraction and the pollution of communities of color.

“It is not enough that President Biden build back better. Justice requires we build back fossil free,” said Su. “The global response to climate change requires a transformational shift in how our economy and energy systems work. But President Biden’s lackluster plans continue to embrace the false solutions of carbon capture and storage and other market measures that landed us in this emergency to begin with. We need to reject that broken paradigm and instead build a new climate future in a way that combats the country’s inequalities, racism and ecocide.”

Swift executive actions to end fossil fuel extraction and advance a clean and just energy transition are central premises in the progressive Climate President action plan and model executive order, authored by the Center and supported by nearly 750 climate and environmental justice groups.

Ending oil and gas exports is also a core pillar of Build Back Fossil Free—a growing grassroots campaign pushing Biden to take executive action to end the era of fossil fuel production, declare a climate emergency and protect communities reeling from the climate and COVID-19 crises.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Forty leaders from the world’s top greenhouse gas-polluting nations where hosted by the Biden administration on Thursday for an all-virtual summit to discuss the global climate emergency and the pathways—including individual emission reduction goals—that governments must take to stave off the worst impacts of global warming and runaway destruction of the planet’s natural systems.

Just ahead of the gathering, President Joe Biden announced new U.S. commitments to meeting the goals set forth in the 2015 Paris climate agreement and said that the nation will now aim to reduce annual carbon output by 52% compared to 2005 levels.

“Our clean energy plan will create millions of good-paying union jobs, ensure our economic competitiveness, and improve the health and security of communities across America,” Biden said in a declaration released ahead of the summit. “By making those investments and putting millions of Americans to work, the United States will be able to cut our greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.”

While the most ambitious target ever set forth by an American president—and a total reversal from the destructive policies of his predecessor Donald J. Trump—climate scientists and advocacy groups have been outspoken to say that even Biden’s stated goals are simply “not enough” to meet U.S. obligations or keep the world from less than 1.5ºC of warming this century.

Watch the summit live:

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

India’s health ministry on Thursday reported a global pandemic record of 314,835 new coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours as the South Asian country is ravaged by a catastrophic wave of infections that is overwhelming already-strained medical facilities, leading to severe shortages of oxygen, hospital beds, and other critical supplies.

“Victory was declared prematurely and that ebullient mood was communicated across the country, especially by politicians who wanted to get the economy going and get back to campaigning.”
—K. Srinath Reddy, Public Health Foundation of India

Critics were quick to blame the exploding case count on the far-right government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who just Saturday boasted that he had “never ever seen such huge crowds” as he addressed tens of thousands of supporters at a campaign rally in West Bengal. That same day, India reported 1,341 coronavirus deaths.

On Wednesday, the country reported a record-shattering 2,104 deaths from Covid-19 as experts fear a more contagious “double mutant” strain of the virus is driving the surge.

K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India, slammed the nation’s political leadership for failing to implement adequate safety measures and effectively communicate to the public that the pandemic “had not gone away.”

“Victory was declared prematurely and that ebullient mood was communicated across the country, especially by politicians who wanted to get the economy going and wanted to get back to campaigning,” Reddy told The Guardian. “And that gave the virus the chance to rise again.”

In a dispatch from the ground in Delhi, the epicenter of the surge, the BBC‘s India correspondent Yogita Limaye said the massive spike in cases and deaths is “what’s been feared would happen since the pandemic began.”

“But once the first wave subsided, the government almost declared victory over Covid-19,” Limaye noted. “The country’s been caught unprepared.”

India’s 24-hour case count of nearly 315,000 surpasses the previous daily record set by the United States, which recorded more than 313,000 new infections on January 8.

“As cases worldwide reach weekly records, a substantial proportion of the infections are coming from India, a sobering reminder that the pandemic is far from over, even as infections decline and vaccinations speed ahead in the United States and other wealthy parts of the world,” the New York Times reported Thursday. “India has surpassed 15.6 million total infections, second most after the United States.”

“Patents should be disregarded and technology transferred as needed to maximize global vaccine production everywhere.”
—Dr. Adam Gaffney

In an effort to ramp up production of coronavirus vaccines to fight the global surge, India has joined South Africa in pushing a proposal at the World Trade Organization to waive certain intellectual property rules that are keeping vaccine formulas under the total control of a few major pharmaceutical companies.

The patent waiver is supported by more than a 100 countries as well as hundreds of civil society groups, Nobel Prize-winning economists, and the head of the World Health Organization, but rich nations—including the U.S. and European Union members—have repeatedly blocked the proposal.

According to the latest figures from Our World in Data, India has fully vaccinated just 1.3% of its population. The country announced Monday that on May 1, its vaccination program will be opened to any person older than 18 in an effort to combat the devastating rise in cases.

Dr. Adam Gaffney, a critical care physician and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, said late Wednesday that the international community “should be diverting vaccine stock to India now” in response to the “absolutely horrifying surge.”

“Patents should be disregarded and technology transferred as needed to maximize global vaccine production everywhere,” Gaffney added.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca—three of the world’s top coronavirus vaccine manufacturers—have paid out a combined $26 billion in dividends and stock buybacks to their shareholders over the past year, a sum that could fully fund the cost of inoculating Africa’s entire 1.3 billion-person population.

That’s according to an analysis released Thursday morning by the People’s Vaccine Alliance, a coalition of advocacy organizations campaigning to end massive inequities in the distribution of life-saving coronavirus vaccines.

“It’s morally bankrupt for rich country leaders to allow a small group of corporations to keep the vaccine technology and know-how under lock and key while selling their limited doses to the highest bidder.”
—Heidi Chow, Global Justice Now

Unveiled just ahead of Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson’s annual shareholder meetings on Thursday, the new report notes that Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are projecting revenues of $33.5 billion this year from their mRNA vaccines, which have largely been sold to rich nations.

“One of the reasons Pharma companies have been able to generate such large profits is because of intellectual property rules that restrict production to a handful of companies,” the report notes, alluding to an international agreement that bars generic manufacturers from replicating vaccine formulas.

Wealthy countries, including the U.S. and European Union members, are standing in the way of an effort to temporarily waive the rules at the World Trade Organization.

“These vaccines were funded by public money and are desperately needed worldwide if we are to end this pandemic,” Heidi Chow, senior campaigns and policy manager at Global Justice Now, said in a statement. “It’s morally bankrupt for rich country leaders to allow a small group of corporations to keep the vaccine technology and know-how under lock and key while selling their limited doses to the highest bidder.”

The new analysis estimates that Pfizer and BioNTech received a total of $2.5 billion in public funding for their vaccine, and that Pfizer has paid out $8.44 billion in dividends over the past 12 months. Johnson & Johnson, which received $1.5 billion in public money, paid out $10.5 billion in dividends.

Maaza Seyoum, who is leading the People’s Vaccine Alliance’s Africa campaign, called on President Joe Biden to “put the health of all of humanity and shared economic prosperity ahead of the private profits of a few corporations” by ending U.S. opposition to the proposed intellectual property waiver.

“Big business as usual will not end this pandemic,” said Seyoum. “This is clearer now more than ever.”

As wealthy nations swallow up much of the existing supply, developing countries are left largely without access to vaccines as coronavirus infections continue to surge globally, fueling warnings that vaccine-resistant strains could spread widely and prolong the deadly pandemic.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), less than 2% of the hundreds of millions of coronavirus vaccine doses that have been administered globally have gone to people in Africa, the world’s second-most populous continent. More broadly, the WHO said earlier this month that just one in 500 people in low-income countries have been vaccinated, compared to nearly one in four people in rich nations.

“We should not be letting corporations decide who lives and who dies while boosting their profits. We need a people’s vaccine, not a profit vaccine.”
—Anna Marriott, Oxfam International

“Vaccine apartheid is not a natural phenomenon but the result of governments stepping back and allowing corporations to call the shots,” said Anna Marriott, health policy manager at Oxfam International. “It is appalling that Big Pharma is making huge pay-outs to wealthy shareholders in the face of this global health emergency.”

In its new report, the People’s Vaccine Alliance notes that “while the global economy remains frozen due to the slow and uneven vaccine rollout worldwide, the soaring shares of vaccine makers has created a new wave of billionaires.”

BioNTech founder Ugur Sahin is now worth $5.9 billion and Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel is worth $5.2 billion, the coalition observes.

“This is a public health emergency, not a private profit opportunity,” Marriott said. “We should not be letting corporations decide who lives and who dies while boosting their profits. We need a people’s vaccine, not a profit vaccine.”

“Instead of creating new vaccine billionaires,” Marriott added, “we need to be vaccinating billions in developing countries.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

As the world prepares to observe Earth Day and U.S. President Joe Biden gets set to host heads of state and government at the Leaders Summit on Climate Thursday, campaigners traveled from New York City to Washington, D.C. to demand Biden #BuildBackFossilFree by stopping all future fossil fuel expansion. 

“We are fighting for our survival. President Biden must fulfill his promise to tackle climate change and environmental racism.”
—Sharon Lavigne,
RISE St. James 

Climate and environmental justice activists journeyed from Union Square in Manhattan to the White House in the nation’s capital with a Climate Clock showing the time remaining for policymakers to reduce emissions before the effects of the climate crisis become irreversible, along with a petition led by 350.org and signed by more than 300,000 people demanding that Biden and other world leaders halt all new fossil fuel projects.

“I traveled from Cancer Alley to Washington, D.C. because our community is being poisoned by oil, gas, and petrochemical industries,” said Sharon Lavigne, founder and director of RISE St. James in St. James Parish, Louisiana.

“We are fighting for our survival,” Lavigne added. “President Biden must fulfill his promise to tackle climate change and environmental racism by revoking permits for Formosa Plastics’ proposed petrochemical complex in St. James, and placing a moratorium on all new and expanding petrochemical plants.”

Natalie Mebane, policy director at 350.org, noted in a statement that “on day one in office, Biden cancelled Keystone XL,” TC Energy’s tar sands oil pipeline. “Now he must do the same with Line 3, the Dakota Access pipeline, and all new fossil fuel projects.”

“There can be no meaningful climate action if we don’t keep all fossil fuels in the ground,” asserted Mebane. “By doing so, Biden will show the world that the U.S. is serious about facing the climate crisis at scale and centering the communities most impacted.”

Silas Neeland of the White Earth Nation said in a statement that “the Biden climate summit is a big opportunity for the administration to end all fossil fuel projects that threaten our sacred lands, Manoomin (wild rice), treaties, and waters.”

“There is no such thing as safe fossil fuel pipelines—all pipelines leak—and there is no time left to delay on bold climate action to protect my community and communities around the U.S.,” added Neeland. 

In a statement, 350.org called on world leaders to “commit to bold, transformative climate ambition ahead of COP26 in Glasgow this November,” a reference to the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference.

“Biden and world governments must drastically increase emission reduction targets to limit global warming to 1.5°C,” the group added. “To do that, they must keep fossil fuels in the ground, including by stopping all new fossil fuel projects.”

After rejoining the Paris climate agreement earlier this year, Biden is now reportedly planning to commit the United States to a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by the end of the 2020s. 

However, climate campaigners quickly countered that such a target isn’t nearly ambitious enough to successfully address the climate emergency. 

“A pledge to cut emissions 50% by 2030 simply isn’t big enough to meet the massive scale of the climate emergency,” said Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement.

“Solving the climate crisis requires applying both science and equity,” added Su. “On both counts, the U.S.—the largest historic polluter and one of the wealthiest nations—must do its fair share and cut domestic emissions by at least 70% by 2030.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden’s 100th day in office, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog project issued a report card on Wednesday giving his administration a “B-” grade for its “performance at resisting corporate capture.”

“It is vital that the Biden administration redouble its efforts to prevent undue influence by powerful corporate interests, especially as these industries push for policy at odds with the clear public interest.”
—RDP

“Although the bar is low, Biden has proven to be the least captured and most public-oriented president of any of our lifetimes,” says the report (pdf) from the Revolving Door Project (RDP). “Certainly compared to the Trump administration, which was the most corrupt in American history, Biden has fared incalculably better at limiting corporate influence over governance.”

RDP, a project of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), credits progressives for pressuring Biden to pick people who will serve in the public interest.

“That said, Biden’s administration thus far is certainly not spotless,” the report notes. “Allies of Big Tech, Wall Street, Big Pharma, the military-industrial complex, and the fossil fuel industry have secured jobs in various corners of the executive branch—typically not as high-profile heads of agencies, as they had been under past presidents, but in advisory or sub-appointee positions.”

RDP explains that “because Biden has inherited so many interlinking crises of public health, economic inequality, racial injustice, and climate change, the existential stakes, and crucially short window of time, to act on each of these means that the shortcomings of his administration—fewer though they are, compared to recent past presidents—carry more weight.”

Given current conditions, the project adds, “it is vital that the Biden administration redouble its efforts to prevent undue influence by powerful corporate interests, especially as these industries push for policy at odds with the clear public interest.”

While Biden’s overall grade was a B-, RDP also gave the White House varied grades for influence by corporate actors across several industries and relationships with public interest actors.

Biden earned a B/B+ on Wall Street and praise for “nominating independent voices like Rohit Chopra and Gary Gensler to lead key financial regulatory agencies.” However, RDP criticizes making Brian Deese, formerly of asset manager BlackRock, director of the National Economic Council (NEC); Climate Envoy John Kerry considering private equity mogul Mark Gallogly as an aide; and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen‘s “dangerous hesitance to fully regulate and scrutinize BlackRock and banks.”

“Progressives now always have a seat at the table and are a constituency that genuinely has to be respected and at least heard out.”
—RDP

Biden also got Bs on fossil fuels and Big Tech. RDP calls Interior Secretary Deb Haaland possibly the administration’s “brightest spot” and says Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan “has also performed admirably so far,” though expresses concerns about John Morton serving as the Treasury Department’s climate czar, the uncertainty over Gallogly, and the possibility of “notorious petro-diplomat” Amos Hochstein negotiating a Germany-Russia oil pipeline.

The report welcomes the selection of Lina Khan for the Federal Trade Commission and Tim Wu’s appointment to the NEC to work on technology and competition policy. The project is critical of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who has a background in venture capital; White House counselor Steve Ricchetti, whose brother is an Amazon lobbyist; Amazon shareholder and corporate fixer Jamie Gorelick’s relationship with Attorney General Merrick Garland; and some federal vacancies.

On Big Pharma, Biden earned an “inconclusive” grade, with RDP calling his appointment of Xavier Becerra as health and human services secretary “a clear win for opponents of America’s exploitative and rent-seeking pharmaceutical industry,” while reiterating concerns about “Sackler ally” Raimondo. The project vows to closely monitor upcoming picks for people advising Biden on the intellectual property issues impacting coronavirus vaccine access in the Global South. 

The worst grade, a D-, was for the military-industrial complex.

“The announced withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2021, if actually executed, would be a genuine achievement, and one which the defense industry is already vociferously opposing (the retention of U.S. civilian contractors, remote bombing campaigns, and ‘off-the-books’ intelligence officials in the country notwithstanding),” the report says. “Despite not appointing the ultra-hawkish Michéle Flournoy as defense secretary, Biden’s pick of Lloyd Austin—a former Raytheon board member—has done little to challenge the military-industrial complex when it comes to staffing the administration.”

Biden got a D for “industry influence.” The report explains:

When the Biden team trumpeted an early ban on lobbyists serving in the administration, they were exploiting a common misconception of how Washington’s influence industry works: Many of corporate America’s most powerful political hatchet-men never register as lobbyists, instead either taking roles as “consultants” for high-powered industries, or litigating on behalf of corporations from white-shoe legal firms. These consultants and “Big Law” lawyers may not engage in the narrow, legal definition of lobbying (telling a legislator or regulator to vote “yes” or “no” on a specific bill or regulation), but they do engage in the activities that the public disdains about K Street: using personal connections, corporate cash, and political stagecraft to nudge policy in directions opposed to the public interest.

As for the administration’s “affection for public interest-minded stakeholders,” RDP gave Biden a B+ for labor, a B for civil rights, and a B- for the “progressive movement.”

“To hear mainstream pundits tell it, the broadly defined progressive movement—encompassing environmentalists, consumer groups, racial and economic justice activists, and more—has found their next great hero in Biden, on par with César Chávez, whose bust the president keeps behind his desk,” the report says. “This is not really the case.”

However, the report adds, “progressives now always have a seat at the table and are a constituency that genuinely has to be respected and at least heard out. After so many years in the political wilderness, and facing the high stakes of so many interlinking crises, progressives are not about to waste this newfound opportunity.”

In addition to releasing the report, RDP joined Demand Progress Education Fund as well as Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE) for a Wednesday event on Biden’s first 100 days.

RDP executive director Jeff Hauser noted that Garland “is not reversing Trump-era litigation positions quickly and that very much includes on the environment, but also includes on issues of immigration, on higher ed, just across the executive branch we’re seeing that Garland is running a very Big Law, corporate-friendly Justice Department.”

However, David Segal, executive director at Demand Progress Education Fund, said that “Jeff and I titled our recent Democracy Journal piece ‘Building Back Better (Than Expected),’ and I think that sums up our thinking on personnel and policy so far,” adding that the administration has “generally exceeded our expectations.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday narrowly confirmed Vanita Gupta to be associate attorney general, eliciting praise from civil rights defenders.

The vote was 51-49, with Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska the sole Republican to join Democrats in voting for Gupta to be the third highest ranking official at the Justice Department.

A civil rights lawyer who has worked at both the ACLU and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), Gupta will be the first woman of color to be associate attorney general. In the position, she will oversee the Justice Department’s tax, antitrust, and civil rights divisions—the latter of which she led under the Obama administration.

Her nomination faced strong opposition from Republicans, which Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, denounced as “baseless smears” by the minority party.

Democratic lawmakers welcomed the confirmation.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Gupta “will bring a long overdue perspective to our federal law enforcement agency.” 

Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) said she “dedicated her life to advancing equity, justice, and civil rights—work I know she’ll continue at the Justice Department.”

The confirmation also sparked an outpouring of praise from progressive organizations, some of whom put it in the context of the recent spate of police killings and Tuesday’s conviction of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd.

“Gupta’s confirmation is especially crucial as the nation reckons with reimagining and reinventing a public safety system that works for everyone, as well as confronting the systemic racism that has excused centuries of police killings of Black people with impunity.”
—Ben Jealous, People For The American Way“Following yesterday’s conviction,” said People For the American Way president Ben Jealous, “Gupta’s confirmation is especially crucial as the nation reckons with reimagining and reinventing a public safety system that works for everyone, as well as confronting the systemic racism that has excused centuries of police killings of Black people with impunity.”

“Gupta is the best choice to be associate attorney general and her record of leadership on civil rights issues is unparalleled,” said Jealous, who expressed confidence she’ll “fight successfully for greater equity in our criminal legal system and for the rights and dignity of every person in America.”

Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director counsel of LDF, pointed to Gupta’s record as a civil rights lawyer and leader as evidence “why she is exactly the right person to help return the Department of Justice to its mandate of civil rights enforcement,” especially given “this critical moment in the history of our country.”

Delivering a similar message was Damon Hewitt, acting president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “We are at a pivotal moment in our nation’s history, an inflection point at which we are rebuilding and defending democracy at the same time,” he said.

Citing her “extensive and unassailable record when it comes to integrity and expertise in the administration of justice,” Hewitt declared Gupta “exactly the person we need to help lead the Justice Department and advance equal justice for all.”

Jealous and Ifill also urged the Senate to confirm Kristen Clarke, Biden’s nominee to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Like Gupta, Clarke is a woman of color, a civil rights lawyer, and a target of GOP attacks, as Politico reported this week.

Ifill, however, called Clarke and Gupta “extraordinary civil rights attorneys” whom she hopes “can work in tandem with Attorney General Merrick Garland to vigorously enforce civil rights protections, especially in the areas of voting rights, policing, and criminal justice.”

“We look forward to working with the department as it fulfills this urgent and imperative mandate,” said Ifill.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – In a major push to protect childrens’ health and address fossil fuel-powered emissions, lawmakers introduced the Clean Commute for Kids Act today in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Alex Padilla of California, Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Rep. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut and Rep. Tony Cárdenas of California, would invest $25 billion over 10 years to help nearly half of the nation’s school districts upgrade to zero-emission electric bus fleets by 2030.

Nearly 95 percent of America’s school buses run on diesel, a fossil fuel that has been shown to cause numerous health problems, including asthma, bronchitis, and cancer. Transitioning to all-electric school bus fleets would prevent the release of 5.3 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year. 

In response, Morgan Folger, Destination: Zero Carbon campaign director at Environment America, issued the following statement:

“The toxic diesel pollution spewing out of our nation’s school buses is threatening our kids’ health, accelerating the climate crisis and endangering our childrens’ future. Achieving all-electric buses by 2030 means that by the time today’s toddlers grow up to become middle schoolers, kids will be using clean, green and quiet electric school buses to get to school. The Clean Commute for Kids Act will help build a greener, cleaner future for our kids.”

Ethan Evans, transportation associate at U.S. PIRG, issued the following statement:

“Our children deserve to get to school without breathing diesel fumes and contributing to climate change. We’re grateful to Senator Padilla, Senator Warnock, Representative Hayes and Representative Cárdenas for championing electric school buses and putting childrens’ health first. The Clean Commute for Kids Act will help tackle the existential threat of climate change, protect our childrens’ health and accelerate us toward a zero-emission future.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – Today, the House of Representatives voted to pass the NO BAN Act (H.R. 1333). The bill, introduced by Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA), would close loopholes in immigration law to prevent future presidents from enacting another Muslim Ban or similar, discriminatory bans. Muslim Advocates has worked with members of Congress to support the bill and also leads the NO BAN Act Coalition, an alliance of over 100 diverse civic, civil rights, faith and community organizations fighting to end the ban and pass the bill. The following is a statement from Muslim Advocates Special Counsel for Anti-Muslim Bigotry Madihha Ahussain:

“Just days ago, Donald Trump re-emerged to spew false smears about Muslim terrorists to argue that we should reinstitute the Muslim Ban. Trump is still here and so is Trumpism. He and his supporters will continue to use anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant hate to win political power. That is why the passage of the NO BAN Act is so important. The Muslim Ban tore families apart, put lives on hold for years and labeled Muslims, Africans and other targeted people as threatening outsiders. We must ensure that no president can enact discriminatory bans like this ever again and with the passage of the NO BAN Act in the House, we are taking a major step forward to ensuring that they won’t.

We want to thank Reps. Chu, Jayapal, Tlaib, Omar, Carson and all the other members of Congress who worked to pass this bill. We also want to thank the NO BAN Act Coalition for their tireless work to end the ban. Now we move on to the Senate, where we will ask every senator to defend our nation’s founding principles of religious freedom and equality by supporting this historic Muslim civil rights bill.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – Jamal Abdi, President of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), issued the following statement on the House passage of the NO BAN Act (H.R. 1333) from Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) and Access to Counsel Act from Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA):

“The protests against Donald Trump’s Muslim ban fed into a movement that swept Trump from office and brought in Joe Biden, who ended the ban on his first day in office. But the work remains for those who continue to be impacted by the ban and communities – like the Iranian-American community – who risk being targeted by subsequent bans. Unfortunately, Trumpism and the ugly xenophobia that fuels it remains a powerful force in American politics.

“Thankfully, the House took the first step toward guarding against any future discriminatory bans by passing the NO BAN Act. This critical legislation – crafted by legislators in consultation with civil rights groups and impacted communities – helps ensure that the stain of the Muslim ban is never repeated. Now it is time for the Senate to officially debate the ban for the first time and pass the NO BAN Act. We call on Sen. Schumer and all Senators of good conscience to send the NO BAN Act on to President Biden for his signature. We also call on Congress and the administration to ensure that all those impacted have had their harm redressed, including diversity visa recipients unjustly blocked by Trump’s discriminatory orders.

“Iranian nationals and Iranian Americans were the Muslim ban’s largest target, with 30,000 Iranians denied solely on the basis of Trump’s bigotry. Yet our community never accepted the ban and fought tooth and nail to ensure it was defeated and that families could reunite.

“Considered along with the NO BAN Act is Rep. Jayapal’s Access to Counsel Act, a critical bill to ensure that U.S. nationals and those with valid visas have access to a lawyer at ports of entry. Under the Trump administration, many individuals of Iranian heritage were subjected to detention, deportation and abuse solely on the basis of their national origin – including students with valid visas deported arbitrarily and Iranian nationals detained at the Blaine Port of Entry amid heightened tensions with Iran. The Senate should pick up this bill and pass it without delay, along with the NO BAN Act.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Last summer, Black Lives Matter protests in the United States after the murder of George Floyd echoed around the world.

Evoked by the worldwide visibility of the brutal killing on video, this solidarity also reflected visceral anger against police violence in a host of other countries — including African countries like Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria.

Millions across the world, not just the U.S., watched the trial of Floyd’s killer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis. The celebration and relief at Chauvin’s conviction won’t just be felt here.

Today’s global crises—police violence, a global pandemic, the climate emergency, and many more—require action wherever we live. But they also require global collaboration on a scale never seen before.

Global inequalities play out on so many issues like these that it is no exaggeration to talk of a more general “global apartheid.”

Despite Biden’s pledge to “build back better” after the destructive Trump era, the new president still appears reluctant to take these global obligations seriously.

For example, the Biden administration has moved aggressively to roll out vaccines here in the United States. But it has rejected global appeals to waive patent rights for vaccines, to share vaccine technology, and to require transparency from pharmaceutical companies about their pricing.

The result is “vaccine apartheid” on a global scale. As of early April, 20 percent of the population in North America had received at least one dose of a vaccine, compared to less than 1 percent in Africa.

Global inequalities play out on so many issues like these that it is no exaggeration to talk of a more general “global apartheid.”

This global system is structured not only by race, but also by class, gender, and national origin. There are many different levels of privilege and vulnerability. But similar patterns are repeated from the local to the global levels.

African countries are among the most vulnerable. And, although its power is waning, the United States is still among the most privileged—and resistant to change. U.S. policy on global issues will not change fundamentally without widespread public demand.

Can we as U.S. citizens be inspired to join global movements for justice and see them as linked to, rather than competitive with, action on pressing issues at home?

It will definitely not be easy. But my experience says such solidarity is possible. We can learn from the transnational movement against South African apartheid, when the movement won U.S. sanctions against South Africa over the veto of President Ronald Reagan.

Thirty-one years ago, on April 16, 1990, I sat in London’s Wembley Stadium with 70,000 others celebrating Nelson Mandela’s release. I heard a familiar accent nearby, and it turned out to be several folks from Pikesville, Maryland.

I was born and raised in nearby Baltimore. Pikesville was a majority-white suburb of families that fled the city in response to desegregation efforts. Nonetheless, there we were, together in London celebrating the success of a transnational solidarity movement led by Black and brown South Africans.

The obstacles to global solidarity may seem overwhelming. But we can redefine the possible, argues Varshini Prakash of the Sunrise Movement, the youth movement that has put the Green New Deal on the political agenda in the United States. “In your demands and your vision,” she says, “don’t lead with what is possible in today’s reality but with what is necessary.”

In 2021, joining forces for justice across national boundaries is not a choice. It is a necessity.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Amid a wave of GOP attacks on voting rights in legislatures across the United States, activists applauded the Democrat-controlled New York State Assembly on Wednesday for passing a bill to end the disenfranchisement of New Yorkers on parole and called on Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo to swiftly sign the measure into law.

“Outdated, racist voter suppression laws that disenfranchise the formerly incarcerated have no place in New York. No one should be excluded from our democracy because of Jim Crow-relic voting laws or as a result of our deeply broken criminal justice system,” said the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America in a statement.

“We applaud the activists who brought attention to this injustice and the state lawmakers who voted for this critical bill,” the group added, thanking state Sens. Leroy Comrie (D-14) and Zellnor Myrie (D-20) as well as Reps. Daniel O’Donnell (D-69) and Latrice Walker (D-55) “for championing this bill through both chambers.”

Stand Up America joined with Alliance of Families for Justice, the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, Brooklyn Voter Alliance, Citizen Action of New York, Parole Preparation Project, VOCAL-NY, and other organizations to advocate for the bill.

Sean Morales-Doyle, deputy director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, said in a statement that “by passing this bill, the state Assembly has sent a clear message: If you live in the community, you should be able to vote.”

“For decades, New York law has denied tens of thousands of New Yorkers living, working, and paying taxes in their communities the right to vote only because they are on parole. That’s wrong,” he said. “They should be able to participate in democracy and the decisions that affect their lives.”

Morales-Doyle noted that “because of the racial disparities plaguing New York state’s criminal justice system, the prohibition on voting for people on parole has had an enormous impact on Black and Latino New Yorkers, who make up nearly three-quarters of the people on parole in New York state.”

“Disenfranchising people on parole is a vestige of Jim Crow,” he declared. “We look forward to the governor putting an end to it by signing S. 830 into law.”

The state Assembly’s vote came after the Senate passed A. 4448/S. 830 in February. Highlighting how long this fight has dragged on, O’Donnell—former chair of the Assembly’s Standing Committee on Correction—told CNN on Wednesday that the first version of the bill was drafted in 2005.

“Parole disenfranchisement in New York was designed to prevent Black men from voting, and we see the legacy of these laws in the largely Black and Latinx parolee population today,” O’Donnell said in a statement.

“With the passage of this bill, we are one step closer to dismantling the vestiges of segregation-era felony disenfranchisement in New York,” he continued. “We are sending a clear message to the rest of the country: the right to vote is foundational to our democracy and should be expanded, not restricted.”

“Someone who is successfully on parole, they are living a law-abiding life,” he added. “Why can’t they participate?”

Though it’s unclear if or when Cuomo will sign the bill, he did begin using his pardon power to restore voting rights to New York residents on parole in 2018. At the time, he said, “The right to vote is fundamental and it is unconscionable to deny that basic right of citizenship to New Yorkers who have paid their debt to society.”

The progress on expanding voting rights in New York comes as GOP policymakers in several states including Georgia and Texas have proposed or passed legislation to restrict ballot box access. According to the Brennan Center, Republicans across 47 states this year have introduced at least 361 bills with restrictive voting provisions.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Federal agencies have taken advantage of legal loopholes to collect massive amounts of personal information from cell phone and internet users without congressional or judicial authorization for years, but that practice is being challenged by a bipartisan and bicameral group of lawmakers who introduced legislation on Wednesday that would prevent the U.S. government from buying individuals’ information from data brokers without a court order.

“Every time federal agents buy data from unregulated and exploitative data brokers they’re violating the spirit of the Fourth Amendment.”
—Sandra Fulton, Free Press Action

Led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a group of 20 senators introduced the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act (pdf) in the upper chamber of Congress. Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) also unveiled an equivalent bill in the House.

By closing major loopholes in federal privacy laws—including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—the newly proposed legislation seeks to protect everyone in the U.S. from unlawful searches and seizures, one of the key civil liberties spelled out in the Bill of Rights.

In a press release (pdf), the lawmakers said that “while there are strict rules for consumer-facing companies—phone companies like AT&T and Verizon and tech companies like Google and Facebook—loopholes in the law currently permit data brokers and other firms without a direct relationship to consumers to sell Americans’ private information to the government without a court order.”

Media reports in the past year “revealed that a data broker named Venntel is selling location data collected from Americans’ smartphones to government agencies,” the lawmakers continued. “While it would be unlawful for app developers to sell data directly to the government, a legal loophole permits app developers to sell data to a data broker, which can then sell that data to the government.”

“Another controversial data broker, Clearview.AI, has compiled a massive database of billions of photos, which it downloaded in bulk from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube, in violation of their terms of service,” the lawmakers added. “Clearview.AI uses these illicitly obtained photos to power a facial recognition service it sells to government agencies, which they can search without a court order.”

The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act would require law enforcement agencies to obtain a court order before accessing data about people through third-party brokers that “aggregate and sell information like detailed user location data, surreptitiously gathered from smartphone apps or other sources,” The Verge reported Wednesday.

As Free Press Action explained, the bill would also prevent “police and intelligence agencies from buying data on people if the information was obtained from a user’s account or device, or via deception, hacking, violations of a contract, privacy policy, or terms of service.”

In addition, the bill would close loopholes that enable the national security state to buy metadata about U.S. residents’ international calls, texts, and emails, and to collect records about their web browsing of foreign websites. While this is information that would typically require a warrant to access, the intelligence community has found ways to circumvent the Fourth Amendment, routinely violating individuals’ constitutional rights in the process.

“Intelligence and law enforcement agencies have an unhealthy interest in the personal information of people in the United States—which their historical abuses have repeatedly demonstrated is dangerous to our democracy,” Sean Vitka, senior policy counsel for Demand Progress, said in a statement.

Calling the proposed legislation “foundational to the future of privacy,” Vitka added that “the founders meant it when they protected our rights against warrantless searches. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies must come to understand that the American people are off limits to warrantless mass surveillance, no matter how it is done.”

In what Free Press Action called “one of the most alarming examples” of unconstitutional surveillance, the U.S. military has been purchasing location and other personal data extracted from prayer and dating apps popular with millions of Muslim users.

“Intelligence and law enforcement agencies have an unhealthy interest in the personal information of people in the United States—which their historical abuses have repeatedly demonstrated is dangerous to our democracy.”
—Sean Vitka, Demand Progress

“This kind of tracking is an abuse of power and a violation of our Fourth Amendment right to privacy… [and] a harsh truth is that regardless of which party is in power, immigrant communities and people of color are disproportionately targeted,” the organization noted.

According to Free Press Action, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement “regularly purchase location-tracking data from shady ‘data mining’ tech companies. The privacy and civil rights implications of this are staggering—and mean that the communities that were targeted most by the Trump administration remain at risk under the Biden administration.”

Sandra Fulton, government relations director at Free Press Action, said that “every time federal agents buy data from unregulated and exploitative data brokers they’re violating the spirit of the Fourth Amendment.”

“The intelligence community has manipulated legal loopholes to create a sweeping public-private surveillance mechanism that targets immigrants, people of color, and other vulnerable communities,” she said. “The bill is a much needed response to repeated abuses by federal agencies.”

Fulton added that “it’s time we shut down these dangerous practices, and ensure that the Fourth Amendment is not a relic of the past.”

Free Press Action is urging people to tell their senators and representatives to protect the right to privacy by passing the Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Announcing a federal probe into policing in Minneapolis, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Wednesday that the conviction of former police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd is not the equivalent of addressing systemic racism and violence by officers—echoing the recent calls of racial justice advocates and progressive lawmakers including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Less than 24 hours after Chauvin was found guilty, Garland announced to the press that officials in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division have opened a probe into the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) to determine whether the agency has a “pattern or practice of unconstitutional or unlawful policing.”

“Yesterday’s verdict in the state criminal trial does not address potentially systemic policing issues in Minneapolis,” Garland told reporters. “Public safety requires public trust.”

The attorney general said that DOJ officials have already begun contacting community members and organizations to interview them about their interactions with the MPD, and will also speak with officers at the department about the training they receive.

The probe will focus on whether the agency uses excessive force—including at protests like the racial justice demonstrations which erupted last year following Floyd’s murder—and whether it engages in discriminatory conduct, and treats residents with behavioral health disabilities unlawfully.

“The Department of Justice will be unwavering in its pursuit of equal justice under law.”
—Attorney General Merrick Garland

The investigation could result in a civil lawsuit, with the Justice Department calling on a federal court to order the MPD to change its practices.

The DOJ intends to “look beyond individual incidents to address systemic failures,” Garland said, and officials will review the MPD’s policies, training, and use-of-force investigations. Prior to Floyd’s violent arrest last May, during which Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, the MPD has long been accused of excessive use of force, particularly against Black residents.

A New York Times analysis last year found that the department used force against Black people at seven times the rate of white people. The killings of Jamar Clark in 2015 and Thurman Blevins in 2018 by Minneapolis officers made national news, as did the fatal shooting of a white woman named Justine Damond after she called 911.

Family members of Black residents killed in the Minneapolis area recently—including the family of Daunte Wright, who was fatally shot by an officer in Brooklyn Center on April 11—have previously called for a federal investigation into policing.

“I don’t want to feel helpless. I need my son to have justice along with everybody else’s son, daughters, people who are murdered by the police,” Wright’s mother, Katie Wright, said last week. 

Garland’s announcement gave hope to racial justice advocates who have expressed outrage in recent days at the prevalence of police killings of civilians including Wright; 13-year-old Adam Toledo in Chicago; and 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant, who was shot by an officer in Columbus, Ohio on Tuesday afternoon—just before the verdict in the Chauvin case was announced. 

“The Department of Justice will be unwavering in its pursuit of equal justice under law,” said Garland.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office in New York announced Wednesday what it called a “paradigm shift” by saying it will no longer prosecute prostitution and unlicensed massage.

“Over the last decade we’ve learned from those with lived experience, and from our own experience on the ground: criminally prosecuting prostitution does not make us safer, and too often, achieves the opposite result by further marginalizing vulnerable New Yorkers,” District Attorney Cy Vance said in a statement. “For years, rather than seeking criminal convictions, my office has reformed its practice to offer services to individuals arrested for prostitution. Now, we will decline to prosecute these arrests outright, providing services and supports solely on a voluntary basis.”

At a virtual court appearance, Vance said his office was dismissing 914 prostitution and “unlicensed massage” cases to reflect the new policy.

His office is also dismissing over 5,000 “loitering for the purpose of prostitution” cases. State lawmakers in February repealed the law that criminalized such loitering. Dubbed the “walking while trans” law, its critics say (pdf) the law was used to targt BIPOC and transgender communities.

“By vacating warrants, dismissing cases, and erasing convictions for these charges, we are completing a paradigm shift in our approach,” Vance said, pointing the fact that many cases go back to the 1970s and 1980s.

Vance added that reforms would not have been possible “without the tireless work of dedicated individuals who changed not only our laws, but law enforcement’s understanding of their lived experiences.”

The move in New York follows similar steps already taken by other cities, as the New York Times noted:

Manhattan will join Baltimore, Philadelphia, and other jurisdictions that have declined to prosecute sex workers. Brooklyn also does not prosecute people arrested for prostitution, but instead refers them to social services before they are compelled to appear in court—unless the district attorney’s office there is unable to reach them.

Abigail Swenstein, staff attorney with The Legal Aid Society’s Exploitation Intervention Project, welcomed the development. “Countless sex workers, those profiled as sex workers, and trafficking victims have suffered under the weight of convictions and warrants,” she said. “These perpetual punishments extend into family and immigration court, and impact our clients’ ability to find stability through housing and employment.”

“However,” Swenstein added, “today’s announcement should not supplant the need to pass legislation that would fully decriminalize sex work and provide for criminal record relief for people convicted of prostitution offense.” She called on lawmakers to pass the Stop Violence in the Sex Trades Act, S6419, which would decriminalize sex work. 

An analysis released in October by the ACLU provides evidence for that legislation, finding that full decriminalization of sex work better supported such workers’ safety, health, and economic well-being compared to more restrictive and punitive approaches.

“Right now, millions of people are asking what we can do to reduce abuse by law enforcement, racial disparities in our criminal justice system, and our overall jail and prison populations,” LaLa Zannell, the ACLU’s Trans Justice campaign manager, said at the time.

“One policy that can achieve all of these goals—particularly for Black trans women and immigrants—is to recognize that sex work is work and treat it like any other industry,” said Zannell. “Sex workers have been saying they face significant violence from police and clients for decades and it is time that we all listen to these voices when determining how to improve safety for sex workers.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – In a historic bipartisan vote today, the U.S. Senate voted to confirm Vanita Gupta to the role of associate attorney general, the third highest-ranking position in the U.S. Department of Justice. Gupta is now the first woman of color ever to be confirmed to the role and the first civil rights lawyer to serve in one of the top three positions at the Department of Justice. The following is a statement from Damon Hewitt, acting president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law:

“We are at a pivotal moment in our nation’s history, an inflection point at which we are rebuilding and defending democracy at the same time. As a long-standing champion of civil rights, Vanita Gupta is exactly the person we need to help lead the Justice Department and advance equal justice for all. She has an extensive and unassailable record when it comes to integrity and expertise in the administration of justice, and in advocating for the rights of people of color- traits that are sorely needed at this moment to bring independence and integrity back to the Justice Department.

“With this historic confirmation, the U.S. Senate also is sending a clear message to the American public – communities of color are a critical part of the strength of our nation. It’s great to see that America again has a Justice Department that is back in the business of fulfilling its mission of enforcing the nation’s civil rights laws and ensuring equal justice for all.”

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Few people welcome change when they benefit from the status quo. So it’s not surprising that players within the philanthropic community would raise concerns about a proposal to change how much they are required to take out of their warehouses and give directly to charities.

On the other hand, during a pandemic that has decimated the non-profit sector—and will likely continue to drain resources for another two years at least—such concerns might be best keep to oneself. After all, the point of philanthropic funds is to support charities, not to save the funds for the next generation or to provide management fees to companies that manage the warehouses where some $1.2 trillion of charitable donations are sitting today. Plus, the people who set aside those funds have already received a tax deduction, so why shouldn’t charities get the funds right away?

But when people actually give voice to concerns that seem silly at best or selfish and greedy at worst … well, sarcasm often seems the appropriate response.

In this case, the proposal for an emergency charity stimulus would have Congress mandate an increase in foundation payout from 5 percent to 10 percent each year for three years. What’s wrong with that, you might ask. Well, dear reader, here’s when you might be surprised.  See many of these concerns raised in a widely circulated Associated Press story.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

WASHINGTON – After both chambers of the New York State Legislature passed S.830 // A4448, a bill permanently restoring voting rights to 43,000 returning citizens, Stand Up America issued the following statement:

“Outdated, racist voter suppression laws that disenfranchise the formerly incarcerated have no place in New York. No one should be excluded from our democracy because of Jim Crow-relic voting laws or as a result of our deeply broken criminal justice system. 

“We applaud the activists who brought attention to this injustice and the state lawmakers who voted for this critical bill—and thank Sen. Leroy Comrie, Sen. Zellnor Myrie, Rep. Daniel O’Donnell, and Rep. Latrice Walker for championing this bill through both chambers.

“Now, we implore the governor to move quickly to sign this bill into law.”

The bill, S.830B // A.4448A, will codify, clarify, and expand upon the executive order issued by the governor in 2018 by creating a bright-line rule that is easy to administer and understand: If you are a citizen living in the community you are immediately eligible to vote. The bill also requires that New Yorkers be informed of their newly restored voting rights before being released and that they also receive a voter registration application.

Stand Up America’s community members in New York drove 2,200 calls and emails to state lawmakers in support of the bill. The group partnered with Alliance of Families for Justice, Brennan Center, Brooklyn Voter Alliance, Citizen Action of New York, Parole Preparation Project, VOCAL-NY, and numerous other groups to pressure the state legislature to pass the bill.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia on Tuesday reportedly mocked the popular push for a $15 federal minimum wage during a private event with restaurant industry lobbyists, telling attendees he prefers an hourly wage floor of $11 and nothing “above half of that” for tipped workers.

According to The Daily Poster, Manchin specifically singled out Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—one of the leading proponents of a $15 minimum wage in Congress—in remarks at the conference, which was hosted by the National Restaurant Association (NRA), a powerful lobbying group that has been fighting the Raise the Wage Act for years.

“We’ve been having meetings on minimum wage, and I can’t for the life of me understand why they don’t take a win on $11,” said the West Virginia senator. “Bernie Sanders is totally committed in his heart and soul that $15 is the way to go. Well, it might be the way to go, Bernie, but it ain’t gonna go. You don’t have the votes for it. It’s not going to happen. So they’re going to walk away with their pride, saying we fought for $15, got nothing.”

“If it comes down to one person,” Manchin added, “I don’t believe it should be above $11, I don’t think the tipped wage should ever go above half of that.”

The Daily Poster‘s Joel Warner and Andrew Perez reported that Sean Kennedy, the NRA’s top lobbyist, “couldn’t contain his excitement” at Manchin’s comments.

“From your lips to God’s ears,” said Kennedy, who sent a letter (pdf) to congressional leaders in February urging them to reject the Raise the Wage Act of 2021, which would gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 and phase out the subminimum wage for tipped workers—a proposal that’s anathema to many in the restaurant industry.

Last month, Manchin was one of eight Democratic senators who joined Republicans in voting down Sanders’ attempt to reattach a $15 minimum wage provision to the American Rescue Plan, a coronavirus relief package. Senate Democrats removed the provision from the original bill in deference to the Senate parliamentarian, an unelected official who said the proposed wage hike violated arcane budget reconciliation rules.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who voted against the Sanders amendment with a theatrical and now-infamous thumbs-down, joined Manchin in speaking at the NRA event on Tuesday.

During her remarks, according to The Daily Poster, Sinema said she believes that “achieving lasting results on the issues that matter to everyday Americans really requires bipartisan solutions.”

HuffPost reported earlier this month that Sinema is working with Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on legislation that would increase the federal minimum wage, but the details—including the wage floor the bill will propose—have not been finalized. The federal minimum wage, which currently sits at $7.25 an hour, has not been raised since 2009.

Asked about the Sinema-Romney bill, Manchin told HuffPost, “I think it’s $11.”

If so, that would be lower than the current $12 minimum wage in Sinema’s home state of Arizona, where a strong majority of voters favor raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.