Migrant rights groups and Texas Democrats on Wednesday welcomed a federal judge’s order that the state remove from the Rio Grande about 1,000 feet of orange buoys fastened together with metal cables and anchored with concrete blocks. The federal Department of Justice sued Texas and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott over the buoys in July. Judge David A. Ezra of the Western District of Texas — an…
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Amid a summer of extreme heat across the Northern Hemisphere, an international report led by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration revealed Wednesday that greenhouse gas concentrations, global sea level, and ocean heat content hit record highs last year. “This report is a truly international effort to more fully understand climate conditions around the globe and our capacity to…
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Climate campaigners in California and beyond celebrated on Friday after the state Legislature affirmed its support for a resolution that urges the U.S. government to join a worldwide effort to develop “a fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty as an international mechanism to manage a global transition away from coal, oil, and gas.” Senate Joint Resolution 2 also endorses what advocates call a “just…
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Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights on Monday sued the Ohio Ballot Board for its “irreparably flawed” summary of Issue 1, a citizen-initiated reproductive freedom amendment to the state constitution that voters are set to consider in November. The proposed amendment states in part that “every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions…
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More than two dozen advocacy groups from Papua New Guinea, the Asia Pacific region, and the United States on Tuesday urged the U.S. export credit agency to reject a liquefied natural gas project that they warned “presents significant financial risks and opportunity costs, as well as harmful climate impacts.” The groups — including the Center for Environmental Law and Community Rights Inc. (CELCOR)…
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More than four dozen congressional Democrats on Wednesday wrote to the White House urging U.S. President Joe Biden to quickly deliver long-promised student debt cancellation for federal borrowers. While the president announced his initial plan to forgive up to $20,000 per borrower under a 2003 federal law last August, the U.S. Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority struck down that policy in…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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As President Joe Biden prepares to visit Maui next week amid Hawaiian wildfires that have prompted a federal disaster declaration, he faces fresh calls to declare a national climate emergency and support a pair of local lawsuits against the planet-wrecking fossil fuel industry. The lawsuits against Big Oil were filed in 2020 by Oahu’s City and County of Honolulu as well as Maui County — where a…
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This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Aug. 17, 2023. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
As the Hawaiian island of Maui is reeling from the deadliest U.S. wildfire in over a century, the Hawaii Supreme Court on Thursday is set to hear fossil fuel giants’ request to dismiss a climate liability lawsuit filed by the City and County of Honolulu on Oahu.
Honolulu leaders sued companies including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Sunono in March 2020. Just seven months later, Maui County followed suit, launching a case against those and other Big Oil firms. Both complaints mention worsening wildfires.
“The average air temperature in the city is currently warming at a rate that is approximately four times faster than the warming rate 50 years ago,” the Honolulu complaint states. “Warming air temperatures have led to heatwaves, expanded pathogen and invasive species ranges, thermal stress for native flora and fauna, increased electricity demand, increased occurrence and intensity of wildfire, threats to human health such as from heat stroke and dehydration, and decreased water supply due to increased evaporation and demand.”
The Maui filing explains that “wildfires are becoming more frequent, intense, and destructive in the county. As climate changes, stronger El Niño events become more frequent. El Niños alter Hawaii’s weather patterns, bringing wetter summers which in turn provide prime conditions for fast-growing grasses and invasive species, followed by prolonged periods of drought and hotter average temperatures, which desiccate vegetation thereby increasing the fuel available for fires.”
“The county’s fire ‘season’ now runs year-round, rather than only a few months of the year,” the 2020 document adds. “In 2019, called the ‘year of fire’ on Maui, 26,000 acres burned in the County—more than six times the total area burned in 2018.”
Three years after the filings, the Northern Hemisphere is enduring a summer of unprecedented heat that scientists say “would have been virtually impossible” without the burning of fossil fuels, and Lahaina, the former capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom, was leveled last week in a Maui County fire that killed at least 106 people—a death toll expected to rise, with over 1,000 missing—and caused over $5 billion in damage.
Denise Antolini, a retired University of Hawaii law professor and supporter of the plaintiffs, told The Guardian that the fires affecting the 50th U.S. state “underscore the importance” of climate liability suits, which seek damages from fossil fuel giants.
The Honolulu case calls out the companies for “their introduction of fossil fuel products into the stream of commerce knowing, but failing to warn of, the threats posed to the world’s climate; their wrongful promotion of their fossil fuel products and concealment of known hazards associated with the use of those products; their public deception campaigns designed to obscure the connection between their products and global warming and the environmental, physical, social, and economic consequences flowing from it; and their failure to pursue less hazardous alternatives.”
Antolini said that “if the truth had been known about climate change, if the truth had been allowed to be known by Big Oil, Hawaii might have had a different future,” telling the newspaper that while the climate emergency isn’t the sole cause of this summer’s fires, it “set the table” for the destruction.
Thursday’s hearing before the state Supreme Court “is an incredibly important milestone in the case because it determines whether or not the case will proceed to discovery, to further motions, and to trial,” she added. “So it’s a go or no-go point.”
The high court’s hearing for the Honolulu case is scheduled to begin at 10:00 am local time and will be livestreamed on YouTube.
“The deadly fires in Maui underscore how urgent it is to make polluters pay for fueling the climate crisis,” the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) said Thursday. “The people of Honolulu and Maui deserve their day to put Big Oil on trial.”
As for the Maui case, Emily Sanders, CCI’s editorial lead, wrote for ExxonKnews on Tuesday:
Maui spent years defeating the industry’s numerous attempts to move the case out of state court, where it was originally filed. The county is now awaiting a decision from a judge that could make it the third community—after Honolulu and Massachusetts—to enter the pretrial phase of a climate accountability lawsuit against Big Oil. That means the people of Maui would be one step closer to their rightful day in court to hold fossil fuel companies accountable.
Another ongoing Hawaiian climate case was launched last year by youth from the islands of Hawaii, Kauai, Maui, Molokai, and Oahu against the Hawaii Department of Transportation and its director, the governor, and the state.
“While in many ways Hawaii has been a leader in recognizing and setting goals to address the climate emergency, progress is slow because of the unconstitutional, and uncooperative, actions of the state Department of Transportation,” said Andrea Rodgers, senior litigation attorney at Our Children’s Trust and co-counsel for the youth plaintiffs, at the time.
Our Children’s Trust also represents youth plaintiffs for a similar constitutional climate case in which a Montana judge on Monday sided with 16 young residents who claimed that the state violated their rights by promoting fossil fuel extraction. Julia Olson, founder of the nonprofit law firm, called the ruling “a game-changer that marks a turning point in this generation’s efforts to save the planet from the devastating effects of human-caused climate chaos.”
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
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This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Aug. 13, 2023. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Formerly the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Lahaina on island of Maui was ravaged by a wildfire that has killed 93 people as of Sunday, and locals now fear wealthy outsiders will dominate and further serve themselves with the multibillion-dollar rebuild from the recent devastation in the 50th U.S. state.
“Lahaina residents worry that rebuilt homes in their Maui town could slip into the hands of affluent outsiders seeking a tropical haven rather than homegrown residents who give the Hawaiian island its spirit and identity,” The Associated Press wrote on social media Sunday, sharing new reporting from Hawaii.
Naomi Klein—author of several books including The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism—responded with one word: “Again.”
After American expatriates and sugar planters backed by U.S. troops led the 1893 coup that deposed the Hawaiian Kingdom’s Queen Lili’uokalani, the United States formally annexed the islands in 1898. Hawaii became a state in 1959.
“As that recovery unfolds, we want to make sure that the people, the communities, are actually empowered to rebuild themselves, that we don’t open the door for disaster capitalists.”
Even before Tuesday’s fire—which was enabled by climate-wrecking fossil fuel companies and land management decisions that have diverted water away from the area—”a chronic housing shortage and an influx of second-home buyers and wealthy transplants have been displacing residents,” the AP noted.
Richy Palalay, who had “Lahaina Grown” tattooed on his forearms when he was 16, told the outlet at a shelter on Saturday that “I’m more concerned of big land developers coming in and seeing this charred land as an opportunity to rebuild.”
Condos and hotels “that we can’t afford, that we can’t afford to live in—that’s what we’re afraid of,” said Palalay, who didn’t yet know whether the house where he rents a room for $1,000 survived the fire, which destroyed the restaurant where he works.
The Pacific Disaster Center and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) estimate that 86% of the 2,719 structures in Maui County exposed to fire—the deadliest in the U.S. in over a century—were residential, 4,500 people may be in need of shelter, and rebuilding could cost $5.52 billion.
The AP‘s reporting on Sunday sparked warnings from Kanaka Maoli—a term Native Hawaiians use to refer to themselves—as well as campaigners and experts beyond the islands.
“Reports suggest 93 people are dead, 1,000 people missing still, and 2,700 structures destroyed,” said Kahikea Maile, a Kanaka Maoli activist and scholar and assistant professor of Indigenous politics at the University of Toronto, St. George. “The colonial speculation of disaster capitalism is happening right now in Lahaina.”
Former National Women’s Soccer League player Mana Shim, who is also Kanaka Maoli, wrote on social media: “This is a major concern that needs our immediate attention. It’s awful to have to discuss this before we know how many have lost their lives, but anyone who knows disaster capitalism knows the urgency of protecting our ‘āina from developers and greedy malihini.”
Malihini means a foreigner, newcomer, or stranger, while ‘āina is a Hawaiian term for land or Earth.
Klein, who coined the term disaster capitalism, has said, “The way I define disaster capitalism is really straightforward: It describes the way private industries spring up to directly profit from large-scale crises.”
Some users of X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, pointed to past examples of such exploitation:
Institute for Policy Studies fellow Sanho Tree said Sunday that “disaster capitalism will happen yet again unless they act proactively.”
In an interview earlier this week with Heatmap, Kaniela Ing, a seventh-generation Native Hawaiian from Maui and national director of the Green New Deal Network, took aim at the fossil fuel companies that have heated the planet as well as mismanagement of land and water tied to “corporations that stem from the original Big Five oligarchy in Hawaii—which is the first five missionary families who control our government, rich, white, right-wing families.”
“We want to make sure that as we recover, once the direct relief efforts are done, the cameras have left—we understand that recovery will take years. And as that recovery unfolds, we want to make sure that the people, the communities, are actually empowered to rebuild themselves, that we don’t open the door for disaster capitalists,” Ing said.
“Unfortunately, the institutions best poised to distribute direct aid are also the most likely to enable disaster capitalists to exploit this tragedy,” he continued. “They’re actively raising millions and once the spotlight moves from our island, what’s to come of those monies, and who’s really going to benefit? Those are questions that I think we need to be really proactive about answering on our own as community organizers.”
“And maybe in this opportunity—like, we all understand that we’re going to have to be lobbying for additional FEMA funds, federal funds, state and local funds,” he added. “We want to make sure that the people, the forces that contributed to this problem in the first place, are pushed out of power for a more community, ground-up sort of infrastructure. So there’s a lot of mutual aid and power building that needs to happen immediately.”
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
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Hawaiian state Attorney General Anne Lopez on Friday announced her office will conduct a “comprehensive review of critical decision-making and standing policies leading up to, during, and after the wildfires on Maui and Hawaii,” which have killed dozens of people. “The Department of the Attorney General shares the grief felt by all in Hawaii, and our hearts go out to everyone affected by this…
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott faced fresh criticism on Friday after officials confirmed a young child died during a bus trip from the border city of Brownsville to Chicago, Illinois — part of the Republican’s monthslong stunt of transporting migrants to communities with Democratic leaders. “The Illinois Department of Public Health said the child was 3 years old and died Thursday in Marion County…
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This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Aug 1, 2023. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday was indicted by a federal grand jury in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump—now the leading candidate for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination—faces four charges: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.
“The defendant lost the 2020 presidential election,” the indictment states. “Despite having lost, the defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following Election Day on November 3, 2020, the defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won.”
“These claims were false, and the defendant knew that they were false. But the defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway—to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election,” adds the document, which describes but does not identify by name six co-conspirators.
The election interference case has been assigned to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, an appointee of former President Barack Obama in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. NBC News noted that she “is the only federal judge in Washington, D.C., who has sentenced January 6 defendants to sentences longer than the government had requested.”
Trump is expected to be arraigned in D.C. on Thursday before Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya, according to NBC.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) president Noah Bookbinder said Tuesday that “the charges leveled against Donald Trump today are the most significant he has yet faced because they address the most serious offense he committed: trying to block the peaceful transfer of power and keep himself in office despite losing the 2020 election by inciting a violent insurrection.”
“Had he succeeded, it would have effectively ended our almost two-and-a-half-century experiment in democratic self-governance,” added Bookbinder, a former federal prosecutor. “Jack Smith’s indictment cuts through Trump’s propaganda to explicitly demonstrate not just the facts, but the stakes of this case. Holding Trump accountable for his crimes pulls our democracy back from the precipice and prevents his criminal attempt to overturn an election from being forgotten or normalized. Nothing could be more important for the future of America.”
Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, said that “today’s charges matter beyond the fact that a former president is accused. Donald Trump and his co-conspirators tried to overthrow American democracy.”
“They wanted to negate the votes of millions of Americans. They did this using phony claims of voter fraud and rigged elections. These conspiracy theories are still being used to justify changes to voting and election law all over the country,” he continued. “Donald Trump will stand trial. The Big Lie will be on trial too.”
Stand Up America president and founder Sean Eldridge asserted that “accountability is essential to protecting our democracy and our freedom to vote, and today, Donald Trump is finally being held accountable for his attack on the rule of law and the will of the people.”
“This indictment serves as a stark reminder of the danger Trump still poses to our democracy,” he stressed. “Time and time again, Trump has demonstrated that he is unfit for the highest office in the land. To protect our democracy and our fundamental freedoms, voters must make sure he never sets foot in the White House again.”
Common Cause interim co-president Marilyn Carpinteyro declared that “no American is above the law—not even former presidents. The charges that a federal grand jury leveled today against former President Donald Trump are profoundly serious and must go to trial. The charges themselves are unprecedented, but so are the events that led to them.”
The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol “revealed the monthslong conspiracy to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election and its culmination in the deadly insurrection,” she noted. “Anyone and everyone who broke the laws of this nation participating in that conspiracy must be held accountable.”
Public Citizen executive vice president Lisa Gilbert highlighted Tuesday that the bipartisan congressional panel ” recommended criminal charges for Trump’s role in inciting an insurrection and the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.”
“The committee’s work was based on reams of evidence obtained by nonpartisan career prosecutors, intelligence officers, and national security experts. Their recommendations were informed by more than one hundred subpoenas, over 1,000 interviews and depositions, and more than 140,000 documents,” she said, welcoming the charges.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said in a joint statement:
The insurrection on January 6, 2021 was one of the saddest and most infamous days in American history, personally orchestrated by Donald Trump and fueled by his insidious Big Lie in an attempt to undermine the 2020 election. In a deadly effort to overturn the will of the American people and block the peaceful transition of power, our nation’s Capitol—the very symbol and home of American patriotism and democracy—fell under attack to thousands of vicious and violent rioters.
The third indictment of Mr. Trump illustrates in shocking detail that the violence of that day was the culmination of a monthslong criminal plot led by the former president to defy democracy and overturn the will of the American people. This indictment is the most serious and most consequential thus far and will stand as a stark reminder to generations of Americans that no one, including a president of the United States, is above the law. The legal process must continue to move forward without any outside interference.
Trump was previously indicted in June as a result of Smith’s classified documents probe and in April following Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into alleged hush money payments during the 2016 election. He could also soon face charges stemming from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ probe of attempts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.
The ex-president claimed on social media Tuesday that the new “Fake Indictment” is an effort to interfere with the next presidential election—an unsubstantiated allegation repeated by his campaign, which also took aim at his likely 2024 opponent, Democratic President Joe Biden.
Some advocacy groups and constitutional experts argue that regardless of the results of his legal issues, the 14th Amendment disqualifies Trump from holding office again because he incited the 2021 insurrection.
Among them are Familia Vota Education Fund and Free Speech for People, whose legal director, Ron Fein, said that “these criminal charges will hold Trump accountable in the criminal justice system, but states don’t need any permission from federal prosecutors to move forward on excluding him from presidential ballots under the 14th Amendment’s insurrectionist disqualification clause.”
Héctor Sánchez Barba, executive director and CEO of Mi Familia Vota, emphasized Tuesday that “we must continue to strengthen our democracy. That is why we are urging secretaries of state and chief election officials across the country to carry out the mandate of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and bar Trump from the ballot.”
The new charges against Trump on Tuesday came as two of his “Big Lie” allies in Michigan, former attorney general candidate Matt DePerno and ex-state Rep. Daire Rendon, were indicted for illegally tampering with voting equipment as part of the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
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While conservative Justice Samuel Alito’s new Wall Street Journal interview covered various topics, one that provoked intense ire on Friday was his suggestion that federal lawmakers don’t have the power to regulate the U.S. Supreme Court. For a series of Journal opinion pieces — the first was published in April — Alito spent four hours speaking on the record with David B. Rivkin Jr.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Activists around the world held a day of action on Saturday as the “Climate Clock” for the first time ticked below six years — signaling how far away humanity is from using up the remaining carbon budget to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C. “The five-year mark is not the end, it is a reminder that we still have a window of hope to prevent the worst impacts of climate change…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Four Black Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday joined the growing chorus of critics opposing “racist tropes” in Florida’s new K-12 history curriculum, which includes teaching middle school students “the resurrection of one of the greatest lies America has ever told itself, that slavery benefited the enslaved.” “Your decision to rewrite history to ingrain white supremacy into…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Years after U.S. President Joe Biden campaigned on a promise to ban new oil and gas leases on public lands, his administration earned fresh criticism from green groups on Thursday with a proposal to update regulations for the federal fossil fuel leasing program. The U.S. Department of the Interior unveiled a proposed rule for the outdated fiscal terms of the onshore oil and gas leasing program.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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The advocacy group Food & Water Watch on Thursday called out Republicans on a U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee panel for pushing a 64% cut to a pair of federal clean water funds in the next fiscal year. “House Republicans should be ashamed of themselves,” declared Mary Grant, the group’s Public Water for All campaign director, in a statement.
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A pair of advocacy organizations that have long argued former President Donald Trump’s incitement of the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol legally disqualifies him from holding office again plan to make that case with a week of rallies and banner drops beginning on Sunday. Free Speech for People and Mi Familia Vota are among various groups and legal scholars that cite Section 3 of the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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In the wake of President Joe Biden and Congress just barely averting an economically catastrophic U.S. default, a pair of Democratic leaders on Friday introduced a bill intended to stop Republican lawmakers from holding the economy hostage again. Contending that the recent crisis proves the current process “is broken and unsustainable,” House Budget Committee Ranking Member Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.)…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Faced with persistent attacks from Florida Republicans, including presumed 2024 presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis, immigrant and LGBTQ+ rights groups on Wednesday issued advisories for traveling to the southeastern U.S. state.
The moves by the Florida Immigrant Coalition (FLIC) and Equality Florida follow the NAACP Florida State Conference voting unanimously last month to ask the national group’s board of directors to issue a travel advisory for the Black community.
FLIC’s advisory—issued as a website—comes as DeSantis pressures the GOP-controlled state Legislature to pass measures that would threaten Florida residents with felony charges if they provide undocumented immigrants with shelter, transportation, or work while also requiring publicly funded schools and hospitals to participate in the crackdown.
“Travel to all areas of Florida should be done with extreme caution as it can be unsafe for people of color, individuals who speak with an accent, and international travelers,” the website warns. “Due to unconstitutional legislation supported by Gov. Ron DeSantis and introduced by legislative leadership, every county in Florida poses a heightened risk of harassment, possible detainment, and potential family separation based on racial profiling.”
\u201c”The Florida Immigrant Coalition … also issued a travel advisory today, urging reconsideration of travel to Florida and providing critical information about where immigrant travelers can learn more about their constitutional rights.”\n\nMore here: https://t.co/Qr4PcD3B1G\u201d— Gabe Ort\u00edz (@Gabe Ort\u00edz) 1681323640The coalition’s site also notes that “naturalized and U.S. citizens of African, Latin American, Central American, Native American, Asian, and Pacific Islander descent are not immune from racial profiling, heightened scrutiny, and false arrest.”
Additionally, as the site explains:
Florida is poised to pass laws creating criminal penalties for medical providers who provide medically necessary care for transgender youth, weaponizing the courts to shred existing child custody agreements and reassign transgender youth to an unsupportive parent, and severely restricting access to prescribed medical care for transgender adults.
Florida has passed or is poised to pass bills that restrict access to reproductive healthcare, including a near-total abortion ban, which threatens to force people to travel out of state or seek unsafe, illegal abortions.Equality Florida similarly pointed to the “passage of laws that are hostile to the LGBTQ+ community, restrict access to reproductive healthcare, repeal gun safety laws and allow untrained, unpermitted carry, and foment racial prejudice” when warning that the Sunshine State “may not be a safe place to visit or take up residence.”
Equality Florida executive Director Nadine Smith said in a statement that “as an organization that has spent decades working to improve Florida’s reputation as a welcoming and inclusive place to live, work, and visit, it is with great sadness that we must respond to those asking if it is safe to travel to Florida or remain in the state as the laws strip away basic rights and freedoms.”
“While losing conferences and top students who have written off Florida threatens lasting damage to our state, it is most heartbreaking to hear from parents who are selling their homes and moving because school censorship, book bans, and healthcare restrictions have made their home state less safe for their children,” Smith continued.
“We understand everyone must weigh the risks and decide what is best for their safety, but whether you stay away, leave, or remain we ask that you join us in countering these relentless attacks,” she added. “Help reimagine and build a Florida that is truly safe for and open to all, and where freedom is a reality, not a hollow campaign slogan.”
\u201cI never thought I would see the day where it is too dangerous to visit my home state and family. I had to spend an hour on the phone with my grandmother the other day explaining why I can’t visit her this summer.\u201d— Alejandra Caraballo (@Alejandra Caraballo) 1681322092Bryan Griffin, a spokesperson for DeSantis, told The Florida Times-Union that the new advisories were a “political stunt” and “we aren’t going to waste time worrying about political stunts but will continue doing what is right for Floridians.”
DeSantis had responded similarly to the NAACP’s move last month, saying, “what a joke” and “I’m not wasting my time on your stunts.”
The NAACP request came not only amid battles over various laws but also after DeSantis rejected the new Advanced Placement African-American Studies course for high school students.
“Our question to Gov. DeSantis is, ‘What sort of future are you fostering for Black Americans throughout Florida while eradicating our historical contributions to this nation?’” said NAACP Florida State Conference chair Adora Obi Nweze. “There is no ‘feel-good’ version of the horrors and inequalities that Black Americans have faced or continue to face.”
“Slavery, Jim Crow, and lynchings followed by ongoing school segregation, mass incarceration, police brutality, housing discrimination, healthcare disparities, and [the] wage gap are all tough truths to face,” she argued. “Misrepresenting the reality of our history promotes ignorance and apathy.”
Although the request for an NAACP travel advisory was submitted as a resolution to the national board last month, review and approval of resolutions won’t begin until May and are expected to go through July. However, board chairman Leon W. Russell has already weighed in, saying that “the recommendation from our Florida State Conference is a clear indication of just how egregious Gov. DeSantis’ actions are.”
“Any attempt to intentionally erase or misrepresent Black history is a direct attack on the foundation of comprehensive education. Be clear—Black history is American history,” Russell declared. “We are proud of our Florida State Conference for meeting this moment with the equal aggression and intention that is a necessary response to these attacks. Any location in America where our history has been erased does not offer us, or our children, a bright future.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
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On the fourth anniversary of Julian Assange’s arrest, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib led six other progressive lawmakers in calling on U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to “uphold the First Amendment’s protections for the freedom of the press by dropping the criminal charges” against the Australian WikiLeaks founder and withdrawing the extradition request of the U.K. government.
Assange has been jailed at Belmarsh Prison in London since U.K. authorities forcibly removed him from the Ecuadorian Embassy in 2019. The 51-year-old publisher continues to fight his extradition to the United States, which the U.K. government approved last year.
Tlaib (D-Mich.) along with Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Greg Casar (D-Texas), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) on Tuesday joined media outlets, world leaders, and civil liberties, human rights, and press freedom groups that have decried U.S. efforts to prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act.
Such organizations “have been emphatic that the charges against Mr. Assange pose a grave and unprecedented threat to everyday, constitutionally protected journalistic activity, and that a conviction would represent a landmark setback for the First Amendment,” the Democrats wrote to Garland. “This global outcry against the U.S. government’s prosecution of Mr. Assange has highlighted conflicts between… America’s stated values of press freedom and its pursuit of Mr. Assange.”
“We urge you to immediately drop these Trump-era charges against Mr. Assange and halt this dangerous prosecution.”
The lawmakers argued that prosecuting the publisher “for carrying out journalistic activities greatly diminishes America’s credibility as a defender of these values, undermining the United States’ moral standing on the world stage, and effectively granting cover to authoritarian governments who can (and do) point to Assange’s prosecution to reject evidence-based criticisms of their human rights records and as a precedent that justifies the criminalization of reporting on their activities.”
“Assange faces 17 charges under the Espionage Act and one charge for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion,” they noted. “The Espionage Act charges stem from Mr. Assange’s role in publishing information about the U.S. State Department, Guantánamo Bay, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Much of this information was published by mainstream newspapers, such as The New York Times and Washington Post, who often worked with Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks directly in doing so. Based on the legal logic of this indictment, any of those newspapers could be prosecuted for engaging in these reporting activities.”
However, “the prosecution of Mr. Assange marks the first time in U.S. history that a publisher of truthful information has been indicted under the Espionage Act,” the letter highlights. “The prosecution of Mr. Assange, if successful, not only sets a legal precedent whereby journalists or publishers can be prosecuted, but a political one as well.”
“As attorney general, you have rightly championed freedom of the press and the rule of law in the United States and around the world,” the document added, pointing to the U.S. Department of Justice’s recently revised media regulations. “We are grateful for these pro-press freedom revisions, and feel strongly that dropping the Justice Department’s indictment against Mr. Assange and halting all efforts to extradite him to the U.S. is in line with these new policies.”
“Every day that the prosecution of Julian Assange continues is another day that our own government needlessly undermines our own moral authority abroad and rolls back the freedom of the press under the First Amendment at home,” the letter concludes. “We urge you to immediately drop these Trump-era charges against Mr. Assange and halt this dangerous prosecution.”
\u201cFour years ago today, Julian Assange was arrested for publishing the truth.\n\nI\u2019m leading a letter to Attorney General Garland urging him to uphold the freedom of the press by dropping these Trump-era charges and withdrawing the extradition request.\u201d— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib)
1681241654The Democrats’ appeal to Garland coincided with similar demands from parliamentarians across the political spectrum in Australia, Brazil, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, and was welcomed by groups that have long demanded Assange’s freedom.
“As Julian Assange marks four years in Belmarsh prison and faces possible imminent extradition to the United States, it’s more crucial for members of Congress to speak up now than ever before,” said Rebecca Vincent, director of operations and campaigns at Reporters Sans Frontières, or Reporters Without Borders (RSF). “No one should face prosecution or the possibility of the rest of their lives in prison for publishing information in the public interest.”
“As long as the case against Assange continues, it will be a thorn in the side of the U.S. government, and undermines U.S. efforts to defend media freedom globally,” Vincent added. “We welcome Rep. Tlaib’s leadership on this issue and encourage widespread support for her call on the Justice Department to drop the charges against Assange. It’s time for the U.S. to lead by example by bringing this 12-year-old case to a close and allowing for his release without further delay.”
Chip Gibbons, policy director of Defending Rights & Dissent, similarly applauded the Michigan Democrat for her “courageous defense of the First Amendment.”
“Defending the Bill of Rights is the responsibility of every branch of government,” said Gibbons, “and we are proud to stand with those members of Congress who are joining with nearly every press freedom group and newspapers such as The New York Times, in calling on the Department of Justice to end its prosecution of Julian Assange.”
Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Seth Stern also commended Tlaib’s “efforts to finally put an end to the unconstitutional prosecution of Julian Assange,” stressing that “whatever one might think about Assange personally, there is no principled distinction between the conduct he is charged with and the kind of investigative journalism that has helped shape U.S. history.”
“As long as the government claims the power to prosecute newsgathering, all journalists can do is hope prosecutors exercise restraint and don’t come after them for doing their jobs. Journalists will surely tread more cautiously as a result,” he warned. “No one who values the First Amendment should be comfortable with that, which is why every major press rights and civil liberties organization opposes Assange’s prosecution.”
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Ahead of the Nashville Metropolitan Council voting Monday to reappoint Tennessee Rep. Justin Jones to the state House of Representatives, attorneys for him and ousted Rep. Justin Pearson warned Republican legislators not to further retaliate against the pair.
The letter from the six attorneys, including former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, to Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-25) came after Republicans in the chamber voted last Thursday to expel Jones (D-52) and Pearson (D-86) over their protest in support of gun control after the Covenant School shooting in Nashville.
The missive also follows Pearson saying in a televised interview that he has “heard that people in the state Legislature and in Nashville are actually threatening our Shelby County commissioners to not reappoint me, or they’re going to take away funding that’s in the government’s budget for projects that the mayor and others have asked for.”
The GOP state lawmakers expelled Jones and Pearson “not for any criminal or unethical act, but for merely exercising their constitutional rights,” the Democrats’ lawyers wrote. “In so acting, the House Republicans not only wrongfully stripped these representatives of their rights as duly-elected legislators but also disenfranchised the voters they were elected to represent.”
“Their partisan expulsion was extraordinary, illegal, and without any historical or legal precedent,” the attorneys continued. “The House must not now compound its errors by further retributive actions.”
\u201cIt\u2019s been the honor of my life to serve District 86 as their State House Representative. I want nothing more than to serve again & I\u2019m thankful that Scott Crosby @burchporter is representing us alongside @brotherjones_ & @EricHolder. May we continue to build this Movement! #TN3\u201d— Justin J. Pearson (@Justin J. Pearson)
1681148544Should the Metro Nashville Council and Shelby County Commission vote to reinstate Jones and Pearson, the letter states, “such reappointment must lead to the full and immediate restoration of their rights as members of the House.”
They “should be promptly sworn back in as members of the General Assembly and granted the same benefits, rights, duties, and liberties as any other member,” the letter asserts. “That includes, but is not limited to, returning their parking and badge access to the state Capitol, which was cut off before their expulsion, restoring their benefits, including healthcare, which was immediately cut off upon expulsion, returning their status on committees, and being allowed to, in all manners, conduct legislative business the same as any other member.”
“The world is watching Tennessee,” the letter declares. “Any partisan retributive action, such as the discriminatory treatment of elected officials, or threats or actions to withhold funding for government programs, would constitute further unconstitutional action that would require redress.”
In a statement Monday evening, Tennessee House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-44) and Republican Caucus Chairman Jeremy Faison (R-11) said that “should any expelled member be reappointed, we will welcome them. Like everyone else, they are expected to follow the rules of the House as well as state law.”
Jones returned to the House for Monday’s evening session, fist raised.
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Cheers erupted Monday evening after Nashville’s Metropolitan Council unanimously reappointed Democratic Rep. Justin Jones to the Tennessee House of Representatives after Republicans expelled him from the chamber last week over a gun control protest.
In sharp contrast with the Republican-dominated House’s 72-25 expulsion vote on Thursday, all 36 council members supported Jones reclaiming his seat representing District 52.
\u201c\ud83c\udf89\u201d— The Tennessee Holler (@The Tennessee Holler) 1681163206Just before the “unprecedented” vote, Democratic Nashville Mayor John Cooper declared that “voters in District 52 elected Justin Jones to be their voice at the statehouse, and that voice was taken away this past week. So let’s give them their voice back. I call on this body to vote unanimously, right now, to do just that.”
Jones was the only candidate even considered. He was nominated by Delishia Porterfield, the Democratic council member for District 29, who called his expulsion a “miscarriage of justice.”
Ahead of the Tennessee House’s Monday night session, Jones marched with a police escort from City Hall to the state Capitol, where protesters chanted, “Welcome home!”
\u201cWATCH: \u201cThey didn\u2019t know we were seeds \u2014 there\u2019s a new south rising, and it begins here in Nashville.\u201d \n\n@brotherjones_ addresses the crowd there for his return to the house. #TennesseeThree\u201d— The Tennessee Holler (@The Tennessee Holler) 1681169743As The Tennessean reports:
Jones took a bullhorn in his hands and began speaking.
“Today we sent a clear message to Speaker Cameron Sexton [R-25] that the people will not allow his crimes against democracy to happen without challenge,” he said. “This is not about one person. It’s not about one position. It’s about a movement of people empowered to restore the soul of what this building should represent and that is democracy.”
Chancellor I’Ashea L. Myles led Jones in his oath on the steps of the Capitol as cheers erupted from the crowd. When he was done, he raised his fist into the air.Along with Jones, Rep. Justin Pearson (D-86), a fellow young Black man, was expelled from the House last week. A third GOP expulsion resolution targeting Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-13), who is white, failed.
\u201cHere\u2019s the moment @brotherjones_ walked back onto the house floor arm in arm with @VoteGloriaJ, fist raised \u270a\ud83c\udffe\u201d— The Tennessee Holler (@The Tennessee Holler) 1681167969As Jones returned to the chamber Monday evening, he walked with Johnson—one arm linked with hers, and the other raised, with his hand in a fist.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
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Climate groups celebrated Wednesday once top officials revealed that after outraging campaigners and fellow Democrats, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul no longer sees rewriting a landmark state law to allow more planet-heating emissions as a top priority for budget negotiations. “Make no mistake, this is because of the enormous and immediate public pressure. Huge thank you to everyone who took action to…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Climate groups celebrated Wednesday once top officials revealed that after outraging campaigners and fellow Democrats, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul no longer sees rewriting a landmark state law to allow more planet-heating emissions as a top priority for budget negotiations.
“Make no mistake, this is because of the enormous and immediate public pressure. Huge thank you to everyone who took action to kill this horrible attack on the CLCPA!” Food & Water Watch’s Alex Beauchamp tweeted about recent protests against changing the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.
Under the CLCPA, emissions of methane—which traps over 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide in its first two decades in the atmosphere—are considered over a 20-year period. Moving to the 100-year metric commonly used by other governments would require the state to cut roughly one-third less emissions this decade, according to a New York Focus analysis.
After the planned overhaul was revealed by Politico last week, it was embraced by New York Republican lawmakers and energy companies that donated to the governor’s campaign while intensely criticized by scientists and other advocates of ambitious climate action.
\u201c*at least as a major priority in the budget\u201d— Marie French (@Marie French) 1680719682New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Basil Seggos and Doreen Harris, president and CEO of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, confirmed Hochul’s priority shift to Politico on Wednesday:
She is still seeking a deal on “cap and invest,” which would set up an auction for emissions allowances and drive increased gas and energy prices that would include a rebate to consumers to cushion the cost at the pump, they said.
They didn’t rule out the measure being considered in the future but noted it won’t be a top agenda item in the budget for the Democratic governor.
“The other elements that we’ve discussed recently may take time to get done. We may get it done during the budget. That may happen during the session; it may take the course of a year,” Seggos said Wednesday. “The fundamental takeaway is it’s full steam ahead for cap and invest with the climate action rebate and any other elements we’ll take up as soon as we can.”Though, as the officials indicated to reporters, the potential change to the CLCPA remains on the table for New York’s legislative session, campaigners who have turned out to protest the plan still welcomed Wednesday’s news as a win.
\u201cDoreen Harris of NYSERDA said the idea will remain on table for legislative session\u201d— Zach Williams (@Zach Williams) 1680717952“Facing the powerful efforts of a united climate movement, the governor has reneged on her attempts to sabotage the CLCPA, which would define New York’s progress towards decarbonization,” declared the Public Power NY Coalition.
“Instead of playing with numbers to squeeze in a few more bucks by the fossil fuel lobby,” the coalition argued, “Gov. Hochul should advance the full Build Public Renewables Act, material climate legislation which would guarantee that New York would reach the current CLCPA goals as they stand, while guaranteeing affordable rates for those who need it most.”
“If Gov. Hochul is truly concerned about energy affordability, she should not give discounted NYPA energy to billionaire corporations like Amazon, but instead, offer it to New Yorkers who are suffering the most from increasing utility rates,” the coalition charged, referring to the New York Power Authority.
Public Power NY wasn’t alone in not only cheering Wednesday’s development but also advocating for specific legislation, with multiple organizations pointing to the NY Home Energy Affordable Transition (HEAT) Act.
\u201cHochul should turn this debacle around in the budget:\n\n\u2705end gas in new construction (with no delays, no loopholes)\n\u2705pass NY Heat Act\n\u2705pass Build Public Power Act\n\u2705Enact the @NYSenateDems cap and invest program \n\nThat\u2019d be a serious response to this growing crisis!\u201d— New York Communities for Change (@New York Communities for Change) 1680719336Another coalition, NY Renews, said that “when Gov. Hochul tried to sneak in a fossil-fueled methane accounting method that would gut New York state’s climate act during the final push of budget negotiations, New York’s climate and environmental justice movement responded swiftly and powerfully.”
“NY Renews is proud to stand with a movement that stopped—for now—changes to New York’s progressive 20-year methane accounting method as written in law,” the group continued. “Our coalition will continue to defend against changes to our state’s climate act, including changes to the definition of renewable energy as is being pushed by fossil fuel interests in Albany.”
“We look forward to returning our attention to real ways to keep energy costs low for working New Yorkers by implementing NY’s climate act via the Climate, Jobs, and Justice Package (CJJP), and particularly the CJJP bills being negotiated at present: the Climate and Community Protection Fund, the Climate Superfund Act, NY HEAT Act, and the Build Public Renewables Act,” said NY Renews. “We will continue fighting to ensure that any ‘cap and invest’ proposal includes environmental justice safeguards.”
The coalition urged the Legislature “to continue fighting for their constituents during budget negotiations” and Hochul “to follow their lead in securing climate justice, affordable renewable energy, good union jobs, and improved public health for New Yorkers statewide.”
\u201cAn additional shout out to our MANY legislative champs who stood alongside us to defend our climate law @SenatorHarckham @DeborahJGlick @EmilyAssembly @annakelles @JoAnneSimonBK52 @sarahana @LizKrueger @PatriciaFahy109 @SteveOtis91 @SolagesNY @BPHACaucus!!!\u201d— Liz Moran (@Liz Moran) 1680724695Earthjustice New York policy advocate Liz Moran highlighted several of the groups and lawmakers who opposed the overhaul in a series of tweets, and said in a statement, “Thankfully, the governor has listened to the voices of hundreds of New Yorkers by backing down from a proposal that would gut New York’s climate law by changing how we account for greenhouse gas emissions.”
“Right now,” Moran noted, “New Yorkers are stuck paying millions every year for the needless expansion of gas infrastructure—we’re literally forced to pay for something that exacerbates climate change and impairs our health.”
“With rolling back the climate law off the table, the governor and lawmakers can focus on the real policies that will fight climate change and save New Yorkers money for a final budget—a strong mandate for all-electric new construction starting January 1, 2025, the NY HEAT Act to cap energy bills for low-middle income New Yorkers, and other policies to stop the fossil fuel industry from squeezing every last dollar out of us,” she added. “At no time should the Legislature accept any efforts that would undercut our landmark climate law.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
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The historic arraignment of former U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday highlighted how infrequently American political leaders are held accountable for any crimes.
“The last time anything remotely similar happened was” in 1872, when a police officer arrested then-President Ulysses S. Grant for speeding in a two-horse carriage—an incident that only came to light in a 1908 interview,The New York Times reported.
Trump, now a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, faces 34 felony counts for allegedly “falsifying New York business records in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election.”
As Free Speech for People noted, the twice-impeached former president still has not faced legal consequences for alleged “crimes related to the January 6, 2021 insurrection and the events leading up to it; crimes related to Trump’s January 2, 2021 phone call demanding that the Georgia Secretary of State ‘find 11,780 votes’… the obstruction of justice crimes identified by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in the second part of his report; crimes identified by the inspector general of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence related to Trump’s attempts to extort Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy; and others.”
“Trump may be the first former president to face criminal prosecution, but that fact in and of itself is a damning condemnation of the U.S. system of impunity.”
Trump’s prosecution in New York “is a good first step,” according to The Intercept‘s Jeremy Scahill, but it “is not evidence that our much-vaunted justice system can actually be applied fairly and evenly to all, even a former president.”
“Trump may be the first former president to face criminal prosecution, but that fact in and of itself is a damning condemnation of the U.S. system of impunity that has long permeated our system of American exceptionalism,” the journalist argued Tuesday. “This case against Trump would be a mere footnote of history, albeit a wild one, if the U.S. actually believed in holding presidents and other top officials accountable for their crimes, including those committed in office.”
Pointing to former U.S. President George W. Bush; his vice president, Dick Cheney; and Henry Kissinger, who served as secretary of state and national security adviser in the Nixon and Ford administrations, he asserted, “The truth is that all of them should be serving substantial prison sentences for directing and orchestrating the gravest of criminal activity: war crimes.”
\u201cGeorge W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the vile living corpse of Henry Kissinger should be serving substantial prison sentences for directing and orchestrating the gravest of criminal activity: war crimes, writes @jeremyscahill. https://t.co/jQ3r7Y91CX\u201d— The Intercept (@The Intercept)
1680644514However, former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “steadfastly refused to even consider impeachment proceedings against Bush,” and former president Barack Obama made clear that “no one would be prosecuted for running a secret global kidnap and torture regime under Bush and Cheney,” Scahill wrote. “The system depends on such bipartisan impunity.”
The prosecution of Trump comes on the heels of the 20th anniversary of Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq. Just ahead of that milestone last month, the U.S-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) renewed its call for reparations and accountability.
“Reparations are rooted in precedent and international law, as well as a strong tradition of justice-based organizing by civil rights movements, and we should not let the difficulty of securing justice deter us from seeking it—for Iraqis and for all others harmed by U.S. imperialism, exploitation, and genocide,” CCR said. “Justice also entails accountability for the perpetrators of these horrific crimes, including those responsible for the torture at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers in Iraq.”
CCR further demanded justice for those tortured and detained in the broader war against terrorism that Bush declared in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks—while also acknowledging that “legal efforts against high-level political and military leaders for the invasion itself and the many crimes committed in the ‘war on terror’ pose a different set of challenges, as demonstrated by our efforts to hold high-level Bush administration officials accountable at the International Criminal Court for crimes in or arising out of the war in Afghanistan or under universal jurisdiction.”
The United States is notably not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the treaty which established the Hague-based tribunal to investigate and prosecute people from around the world for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression.
Nearly a year after 9/11, Bush signed into law the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act. Dubbed the “Hague Invasion Act” by critics, it empowers the president to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release” of any U.S. or allied person “who is being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.”
Last month, roughly a year into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the ICC issued international arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for allegedly abducting Ukrainian children.
\u201cAfter flexing its jurisdiction by issuing an arrest warrant for Putin, Hannah al-Khafaji argues that the ICC must do the same for the architects of the Iraq invasion, who have evaded accountability for 20 years despite a long list of war crimes:\nhttps://t.co/Do69s28IMz\u201d— The New Arab (@The New Arab)
1680631319While Putin has “exhibited zero concern about his indictment,” his “invasion of Ukraine has created an interesting predicament for the U.S. empire on these matters,” Scahill highlighted, explaining that though President Joe Biden has called the Russian leader a war criminal, the United States has long “encouraged ad hoc tribunals” rather than supporting ICC prosecutions.
“The whole purpose of this from the U.S. perspective is to ensure that these laws will never be applied to Americans or their friends,” he wrote. “The prosecution of Trump should thus serve as a reminder that the U.S. does not actually believe in holding its most powerful citizens accountable for even the most serious of acts. And that position has real consequences, including in how it can be weaponized by criminals like Putin.”
“Make no mistake, Trump should be prosecuted for a variety of crimes, committed both as a private citizen and public official,” Scahill concluded. “But if we want to claim that our system is exceptional, then the same fate should be brought to bear on the Bushes, Cheneys, and Kissingers of the world as well.”
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Climate campaigners on Tuesday remained resolute in their fight against ConocoPhillips’ Willow oil project in Alaska—even after a federal judge declined to issue a preliminary injunction sought by environmental and Indigenous groups behind a pair of legal challenges.
“It’s heartbreaking that ConocoPhillips has been allowed to break ground on Willow before the court has fully assessed whether the project is lawful,” said Kristen Monsell, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement.
“But this case isn’t over, and we’ll keep fighting to protect struggling Arctic wildlife and our climate from this disastrous project,” Monsell vowed. “We’re hopeful we’ll get the Willow project’s approval thrown out once again.”
After the Biden administration last month controversially approved the 30-year Big Oil project, two coalitions of advocacy organizations swiftly filed separate lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska.
One case is led by the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace USA, and Natural Resources Defense Council; the other was filed by Trustees for Alaska on behalf of Alaska Wilderness League, Environment America, Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Sierra Club, Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, and the Wilderness Society.
“Allowing ConocoPhillips to bulldoze forward with construction of the largest oil and gas project on public lands before the lawsuits are settled is needlessly destructive.”
In a 44-page order on Monday, U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason—an appointee of former President Barack Obama—denied both coalitions’ requests that the court halt construction.
“The court has weighed the environmental harm posed by the proposed winter 2023 construction activities against the economic damages, benefits to most subsistence users, and the state and federal legislative pronouncements of the public interest that would be impacted by a preliminary injunction prohibiting these construction activities at this time, and concludes that the balance of the equities and the public interest tip sharply against preliminary injunctive relief,” she wrote. “The court has further determined that plaintiffs have not established that irreparable injury to their members is likely if winter 2023 construction activities proceed.”
A spokesperson for ConocoPhillips said in a statement to CNN that “with this decision from the federal district court, we are able to immediately begin construction activities.”
Trustees for Alaska lead staff attorney Bridget Psarianos noted that “the district court found in our prior 2020 lawsuit that winter road construction and gravel mining would do immediate and permanent harm to land and the community of Nuiqsut. It’s no different this time.”
“This is heartbreaking for all who want to protect local communities and prevent more devastating climate impacts in the Arctic and around the world,” the lawyer added. “We will do everything we can to protect the region while the merits of our case get heard.”
Those behind the other case were similarly disappointed but determined. Greenpeace USA climate campaign director Natalie Mebane declared that “allowing ConocoPhillips to bulldoze forward with construction of the largest oil and gas project on public lands before the lawsuits are settled is needlessly destructive.”
\u201cSolidarity to those fighting to #StopWillow.\n\nThe fight continues \u270a\u201d— Greenpeace UK (@Greenpeace UK)
1680623376Still, “we remain undeterred,” said Defenders of Wildlife Alaska Program director Nicole Whittington-Evans. “We remain committed to protecting the western Arctic and look forward to the court’s full consideration of the Willow project, including its impacts to polar bears threatened with extinction and massive carbon emissions that will worsen the climate crisis for decades to come.”
President Joe Biden has faced intense criticism over his administration greenlighting Willow despite the climate campaign promises that helped him win in 2020. Green groups called the approval a “betrayal” and some Democrats on Capitol Hill warned that it “destroys our climate goals and undermines international climate ambition,” leaving an “oil stain” on Biden’s legacy.
“Although the White House and Department of Interior were not persuaded to stop Willow despite the advocacy of more than 5 million individuals, we are now using the power of the law to restore some balance,” said Erik Grafe, deputy managing attorney in Earthjustice’s Alaska regional office. “While this particular round of the legal challenge did not produce the outcome we had hoped for, our court battle continues.”
“We will do everything within our power to protect the climate, wildlife, and people from this dangerous carbon bomb,” Grafe pledged. “Climate scientists have warned that we have less than seven years to get it right on climate change, and we cannot afford to lock in three decades of oil drilling that will only serve to open the door to more fossil fuel extraction.”
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Just over a year into a “state of exception” in El Salvador, Amnesty International on Monday accused all three branches of government of enabling “the systematic, massive, and sustained violation of the human rights of the Salvadoran population” in a supposed effort to crack down on gang violence.
Since the Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele requested and the Legislative Assembly approved the state of emergency that suspended certain civil liberties in March 2022, lawmakers have repeatedly extended it, most recently last month. The policy has “allowed the arbitrary detention and imprisonment of more than 66,000 people,” according to the global human rights group.
“The international community is alert to the grave human rights consequences of the state of emergency in El Salvador,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty’s Americas director. “The compliance of the institutions responsible for ensuring and administering justice in the country has led to the criminal justice system being weaponized to punish people, the majority of whom are from historically marginalized areas, when there is no evidence that they have committed a crime.”
Specifically, according to the organization:
On the one hand, the executive, through the police, the armed forces, and the Ministry of Security, has designed and implemented a security strategy based on the excessive use of force, indiscriminate arbitrary detention, and the practice of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment including torture.
For its part, the legislature has for a year continued to approve and extend the period that the state of emergency, a measure whose nature is temporary and extraordinary, remains in force. In addition, it has supported a series of legal amendments that contravene international human rights standards ratified by the country.
Finally, the judiciary is not acting independently, is violating the right to due process, and is failing to combat impunity for the violations committed. The courts and auxiliary entities as well as those attached to the Public Prosecutor’s Office are flagrantly failing in their duties in criminal proceedings.“The deaths of 132 people in state custody, arbitrary detention, mass criminal prosecutions, and the indiscriminate imprisonment of tens of thousands of people are incompatible with an effective, fair, and lasting public security strategy,” said Guevara-Rosas. “The systematic violation of human rights and the dismantling of the rule of law are not the answer to the problems facing the country. On the contrary, they set very dangerous precedents.”
While the confirmed death toll as of last month is 132, Amnesty noted that “Salvadoran human rights organizations believe that there is underreporting because of reported cases of exhumations of victims from mass graves after families were finally able to learn of the deaths of individuals who had died months earlier.”
In one case highlighted by the group, a 45-year-old man with mental disabilities was apprehended at his home in April 2022. His family spent months trying to locate him. In September, someone who claimed to have shared a cell with the man called his family and advised them to go to the Forensic Medicine Institute, because he believed the man died after being beaten by guards.
“He told us: ‘Your relative vomited blood through his mouth and nose. I think he died, because they took him to the hospital and they never brought him back,’” the family said. The Forensic Medicine Institute informed them that he died after 36 days in custody and was buried in a mass grave. The family had his remains exhumed in October but is unaware of any investigation into his death.
That’s part of a trend, according to Amnesty. Guevara-Rosas said that “in none of the 50 cases we have documented has it been possible to verify that there were investigation processes regarding the conduct of public officials. The fact that there are widespread human rights violations and virtually no ongoing criminal proceedings evidences the control exercised from the highest level so that all state powers obey this policy of indiscriminate imprisonment.”
\u201cToday marks one year since a state of emergency was decreed in El Salvador, since then, more than 66,000 detentions took place and 132 deaths occurred in state custody, most of whom at the time of their deaths had not been found guilty of any crime \ud83d\udc47 \nhttps://t.co/TUQymUdrEN\u201d— Amnesty International (@Amnesty International) 1680541200Along with documenting abuse by police and prison guards sometimes resulting in deaths from “beatings,” “mechanical asphyxiation,” and “multiple unidentified traumas,” Amnesty interviewed people subjected to “extreme overcrowding in cells holding more than 100 people.” Detainees disclosed a “lack of sanitation and access to basic services such as water, adequate food, medicines, and medical care,” and said they were cut off from communicating with family.
“We see with alarm how overcrowding and torture continue to claim the lives of innocent people, with the complicity of all the institutions that are supposed to uphold their rights,” said Guevara-Rosas. “The dehumanization that thousands of unjustly imprisoned people are suffering is intolerable and must be urgently addressed by international human rights protection mechanisms.”
“Given the systematic nature of grave human rights violations, we call on international protection mechanisms to intervene urgently to avoid a major crisis in El Salvador,” she added. “The Salvadoran state must know with certainty that the international community will not tolerate these kinds of policies.”
Amnesty’s findings and demands echo those of other advocacy groups, including Human Rights Watch, which released a lengthy report on the state of exception in December. Juanita Goebertus, the organization’s Americas director, said at the time that “to put an end to gang violence and human rights violations, El Salvador’s government should replace the state of emergency with an effective and rights-respective security policy that grants Salvadorans the safety they so dearly deserve.”
Goebertus also argued that “the international community should redouble its efforts to help ensure that Salvadorans are safe from heinous crimes by gangs, human rights violations by security forces, and other abuse of power.”
\u201c#ElSalvador: We are very concerned by state of emergency now in force for 1yr & repressive measures to address insecurity, incl mass detentions. Call on authorities to comply w/ intl law & protect right to life, prohibition against torture & due process: https://t.co/EgDJdDXn2r\u201d— UN Human Rights (@UN Human Rights) 1680015959Al Jazeera reported Monday that “such criticism has done little, however, to deter Bukele, whose popularity has surged as the crackdown exerts pressure on networks of gangs that have brought violence and exploitation to many areas of the country for years.”
The president, the outlet noted, “recently unveiled a new, megaprison to hold people rounded up under the state of emergency,” saying in February that “this will be their new house, where they will live for decades, all mixed, unable to do any further harm to the population.”
Bukele’s five-year term is set to end next year. The president confirmed in September his intention to seek reelection despite arguments that doing so would be unconstitutional.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
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This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on March 25, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
Internet Archive vowed to appeal after a U.S. district court judge on Friday sided with four major publishers who sued the nonprofit for copyright infringement.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Internet Archives operated a controlled digital lending system, allowing users to digitally check out scanned copies of purchased or donated books on a one-to-one basis. As the public health crises forced school and library closures, the nonprofit launched the National Emergency Library, making 1.4 million digital books available without waitlists.
Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House sued Internet Archive over its lending policies in June 2020. Judge John G. Koeltl of the Southern District of New York on Friday found in Hachette v. Internet Archive that the nonprofit “creates derivative e-books that, when lent to the public, compete with those authorized by the publishers.”
A future in which libraries are just a shell for Big Tech’s licensing software and Big Media’s most popular titles would be awful—but that’s where we’re headed if this decision stands.
Lia Holland, fight for the futureInternet Archive “argues that its digital lending makes it easier for patrons who live far from physical libraries to access books and that it supports research, scholarship, and cultural participation by making books widely accessible on the Internet,” the judge wrote. “But these alleged benefits cannot outweigh the market harm to the publishers.”
In a statement responding to the ruling, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle pledged to keep fighting against the publishers.
“Libraries are more than the customer service departments for corporate database products. For democracy to thrive at global scale, libraries must be able to sustain their historic role in society—owning, preserving, and lending books,” Kahle said. “This ruling is a blow for libraries, readers, and authors and we plan to appeal it.”
Internet Archive’s supporters have shared similar warnings throughout the ongoing court battle, including after the ruling Friday.
“In a chilling ruling, a lower court judge in New York has completely disregarded the traditional rights of libraries to own and preserve books in favor of maximizing the profits of Big Media conglomerates,” declared Lia Holland, campaigns and communications director at the digital rights group Fight for the Future.
“We applaud the Internet Archive’s appeal announcement, as well as their steadfast commitment to preserving the rights of all libraries and their patrons in the digital age,” they said. “And our admiration is shared—over 14,000 people having signed our pledge to defend libraries’ digital rights at BattleForLibraries.com this week alone.”
Holland continued:
From a basic human rights perspective, it is patently absurd to equate an e-book license issued through a surveillance-ridden Big Tech company with a digital book file that is owned and preserved by a privacy-defending nonprofit library. Currently, publishers offer no option for libraries to own and preserve digital books—leaving digital books vulnerable to unauthorized edits, censorship, or downright erasure, and leaving library patrons vulnerable to surveillance and punishment for what they read.
In a world where libraries cannot own, preserve, or control the digital books in their collections, only the most popular, bestselling authors stand to benefit—at the expense of the vast majority of authors, whose books are preserved and purchased by libraries well after publishers have stopped promoting them. Further, today a disproportionate number of traditionally marginalized and local voices are being published in digital-only format, redoubling the need for a robust regime of library preservation to ensure that these stories survive for generations to come.
A future in which libraries are just a shell for Big Tech’s licensing software and Big Media’s most popular titles would be awful—but that’s where we’re headed if this decision stands. No book-lover who wants an equitable and trustworthy written world could find such a future desirable. Accordingly, we plan to organize an in-person action to demand robust ownership and preservation standards for digital books and libraries. For updates on when and where, check BattleForLibraries.com.
More than 300 authors last September signed an open letter led by Fight for the Future calling out publishers and trade associations for their actions against digital libraries, including the lawsuit targeting Internet Archive.
“Libraries saved my life as a young reader, and I’ve seen them do as much and more for so many others,” said signatory Jeff Sharlet. “At a time when libraries are at the frontlines of fascism’s assault on democracy, it is of greater importance than ever for writers to stand in solidarity with librarians in defense of the right to share stories. Democracy won’t survive without it.”
Fellow signatory Erin Taylor asserted that “the Internet Archive is a public good. Libraries are a public good. Only the most intellectually deprived soul would value profit over mass access to literature and knowledge.”
Koeltl’s ruling came just two days after the American Library Association released a report revealing that in 2022, a record-breaking 2,571 titles were challenged by pro-censorship groups pushing book bans, a 38% increase from the previous year.
Meanwhile, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed the so-called Parents Bill of Rights Act, which education advocates and progressive lawmakers argue is intended to ban books and further ostracize marginalized communities.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.