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NOW members have spoken loud and clear: They want Fiscal Commission
Co-Chair Alan Simpson out -- and NOW President Terry O'Neill is ready to
send him home with 1,500 baby bottle tops.
On Wednesday, Sept. 29, at the next
meeting of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform,
O'Neill will hand deliver nearly 1,500 baby bottle tops from NOW members
as part of its "Tits for an Ass" campaign calling for the removal of
Alan Simpson.
In August, Simpson sent a petulant
and insulting e-mail tirade to Executive Director Ashley Carson of the
Older Women's League (OWL), comparing Social Security to "a milk cow
with 320 million tits" and disparaging those who advocate on behalf of
Social Security recipients as unable to "find honest work."
"NOW's 500,000 members and supporters
responded overwhelmingly when we asked them to use our website or
Twitter account to help us buy baby bottle nipples," says O'Neill. "And
I'm ready to deliver them to Mr. Simpson -- as a going-away gift -- when
I urge him to have the decency to step down from the Fiscal
Commission."
"The Fiscal Commission should be led
by someone who will actually try to address the federal budget deficit,
instead of using it as an excuse to undermine Social Security by cutting
benefits or raising the retirement age," O'Neill continues. "Alan
Simpson is not that person."
What: Delivery of 1,500 baby bottle tops to Fiscal Commission Co-Chair Alan Simpson by NOW President Terry O'Neill
When: Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2010; 9:10 am
Where: Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room 608 (Location subject to change by commission)
Who: National Organization for Women and economic justice allies
The National Organization for Women (NOW) is the largest organization of feminist activists in the United States. NOW has 500,000 contributing members and 550 chapters in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
"This isn’t about left or right," said the group behind the survey. "It’s about protecting our democracy’s foundation: Congress makes the laws. The president enforces them."
Amid US President Donald Trump's authoritarian policies and practices, Americans are increasingly worried that too much power is concentrated in the White House, polling published Wednesday revealed.
YouGov surveyed 1,070 registered US voters on behalf of the campaign finance reform nonprofit Issue One and found that they "overwhelmingly support our constitutional system of checks and balances."
Fifty-six percent of those surveyed said the US political system is "too centralized," more than twice as many respondents who said it isn't centralized enough. Among Democrats, two-thirds agreed that political power is too centralized in the US, while 47% of Republicans and 56% of Independents agreed.
At least two-thirds of respondents of every political affiliation agreed that specific checks and balances—including congressional oversight (78%), Congress' power of the purse (68%), and judicial review (70%)—strengthen democracy.
Respondents were also asked whether they believe the president should be allowed to cross certain "red lines":
Asked if Trump "is going too far," 59% of overall respondents said yes, including 95% of Democrats, 79% of Independents, and 21% of Republicans.
“Americans want a Congress that will stand up to the president when they go too far—that’s the whole point of checks and balances,” Issue One founder and CEO Nick Penniman said in a statement.
“Our Constitution was designed to prevent any one president from acting like a king," Penniman continued. "But if our country keeps heading down this path, power will keep concentrating in the White House—and a representative government that is by and for the American people will be replaced with a government that only serves the president and those connected to him."
“Congress needs to step up and do its job," he added. "Upholding the Constitution is not about right versus left—it is about being on the right or wrong side of history.”
In an effort to "restore checks and balances" and "defend the Constitution," Issue One is launching a We The People Playbook, "a set of bipartisan policies rooted in Article I of the Constitution, designed to protect our freedoms, hold presidents accountable, and restore the balance of power."
The new poll and playbook are part of Issue One's Check the Exec campaign, which is fighting for the "restoration of critical checks and balances."
"This isn’t about left or right," says Issue One on the campaign's website. "It’s about protecting our democracy’s foundation: Congress makes the laws. The president enforces them."
“We’re constantly told, you know, we need to see peaceful protests," said one organizer. "Well, here’s a peaceful protest."
The leaders of the UK-based protest group Led By Donkeys said Wednesday that four of its members remained under arrest for displaying images of US President Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on the side of Windsor Castle ahead of Trump's second state visit to the United Kingdom.
The widely available images were accompanied by a narration discussing Trump and Epstein's friendship, as well as pictures of Epstein's victims, police reports, and news reports about the case.
Trump began his visit, on which he'll meet with King Charles and other members of the royal family as well as Prime Minister Keir Starmer, amid growing scrutiny of the US Department of Justice's decision not to release files related to the Epstein case as well as of the release of a letter the president reportedly sent to Epstein containing dialogue between the two men about a "wonderful secret" they shared.
The White House has denied the letter is authentic and Trump has claimed he was unaware of Epstein's criminal activities during his friendship with him.
Police said they arrested the four Led by Donkeys members on suspicion of "malicious communications" after they displayed the "unauthorized projection."
A spokesperson for Led By Donkeys told The Guardian the group has previously displayed "25 or 30 projections" without organizers being arrested.
"Often the police come along and we have a chat to them, and they even have a laugh with us and occasionally tell us to not do it," the spokesperson said. “But no one’s ever been arrested before, so it is ridiculous that four of our guys have been arrested for malicious communications.”
“Forgive the cliche, but it is rather Orwellian for a piece of journalism, which raises questions about our guest’s relationship with America’s most notorious child sex trafficker, to lead to arrests," they added.
King Charles' brother, Prince Andrew, has also been accused of sexually abusing teenage girls during his friendship with Epstein. He settled out of court with Virginia Giuffre, who sued him for allegedly abusing her, in 2022, after being stripped of his royal patronages.
While the projection was taken down and the protesters detained, Trump is unlikely to escape condemnation from members of the British public during his visit.
The group Everyone Hates Elon, which has previously displayed messages denouncing billionaire Trump ally and megadonor Elon Musk at bus stops around London, also unfurled a banner at Windsor Castle showing a picture of Trump and Epstein.
Protesters gathered in London Wednesday for a "Trump Not Welcome" march from Portland Place to Parliament Square, with some displaying the "Trump baby balloon" that became familiar after the president's first official visit to the UK in 2018, as well as balloons showing a caricature of Vice President JD Vance.
Demonstrators carried signs reading, "No to racism" and "Stop arming Israel," among other slogans.
“We do not want our government to trade away our democracy and decency,” Zoe Gardner, a spokesperson for the Stop Trump Coalition, told The Washington Post Wednesday.
A rallygoer named Alena Ivanova told the outlet that "there's a reason" Trump is spending much of his visit outside of the nation's capital, meeting with Starmer at his country estate and staying at Windsor Castle.
"People on the streets will say what our government seems unable to: Donald Trump is not welcome here," said Ivanova.
Observers in the UK view the invitation for a state visit as an attempt to appeal to the president as he threatens the country with tariffs and an end to aid for Ukraine.
"We want our government to show some backbone," Gardner told the BBC, "and have a little bit of pride and represent that huge feeling of disgust at Donald Trump's politics in the UK."
The Led By Donkeys spokesperson told The Guardian that the arrest of the four organizers "says a lot more about the policing of Trump's visit than it does about what we did."
More than 1,600 police officers have been deployed to respond to protests while Trump is in the UK.
“We’re constantly told, you know, we need to see peaceful protests. Well, here’s a peaceful protest," said the spokesperson. "We projected a piece of journalism on to a wall and now people have been arrested for malicious communications."
"Ben & Jerry's has been silenced, sidelined for fear of upsetting those in power," said co-founder Jerry Greenfield.
Jerry Greenfield, the lifelong political activist and co-founder of the ice cream brand Ben & Jerry's, is quitting the company in protest against what he says are efforts by parent company Unilever to "silence" his advocacy for progressive causes, particularly for Palestinians amid Israel's genocidal war in Gaza.
"I can no longer, in good conscience, and after 47 years, remain an employee of Ben & Jerry's," Greenfield said in a statement posted Tuesday by his longtime partner Ben Cohen. "This is one of the hardest and most painful decisions I've ever made."
The Vermont-based ice cream company was acquired by Unilever, a British conglomerate, in 2000, at which time Greenfield says the company "guaranteed" him and his partner the "independence to pursue our values." Though the pair no longer had a financial stake in the company, which they founded in 1978, they remained on as board members and brand ambassadors.
"For more than twenty years under their ownership, Ben & Jerry's stood up and spoke out in support of peace, justice, and human rights, not as abstract concepts, but in relation to real events happening in our world," Greenfield said. "That independence existed in no small part because of the unique merger agreement Ben and I negotiated with Unilever, one that enshrined our social mission and values in the company's governance structure in perpetuity."
The relationship between Ben & Jerry's and its parent company began to fracture as Cohen and Greenfield became increasingly outspoken advocates against Israel's human rights abuses in Palestine.
In 2021, the duo announced that it would stop selling its ice cream in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in protest of Israel's occupation of those territories, which is widely recognized as illegal under international law. Several US states with laws punishing boycotts of Israel began to pull their investments in Unilever, which rushed to reaffirm that it was “firmly committed” to Israel.
In order to bypass the pair's boycott, Unilever sold the Israeli portion of Ben & Jerry's to a distributor in the country, which promptly resumed distribution in the Occupied Territories. The duo launched a lawsuit against their parent company in hopes of stopping the deal.
The rift would intensify further after October 7, 2023, when, following Hamas' attack against Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government responded with a crushing military onslaught against the Gaza Strip that has now resulted in at least 220,000 casualties according to one former Israeli general.
Ben & Jerry's would file another lawsuit in 2024 alleging that Unilever, on several occasions, used threats and intimidation to stop them from speaking out on the conflict, which they referred to as a "genocide."
They said Unilever threatened to dismantle the company's board if it issued statements calling for "peace" and a "ceasefire," imposed restrictions on their statements in support of pro-Palestine student demonstrators, and stopped them from donating company funds to human rights organizations. Ben & Jerry's would later claim that Unilever fired its CEO, David Stever in March 2025 in retaliation for the brand's activism.
This past May, Cohen was arrested, along with six others, for disrupting a US Senate hearing in protest of Washington's continued sale of weapons to Israel, which at that point had begun outlining plans to fully remove Palestinians from Gaza with support from President Donald Trump.
Unilever distanced itself from Cohen's actions, saying they were "on his own as an individual and not on behalf of Ben & Jerry's or Unilever."
Greenfield's departure comes as Unilever plans to fold Ben & Jerry's into a new entity known as the Magnum Ice Cream Company, which is set to be listed on the stock market in November. In response to the merger, Ben & Jerry's called for its brand to be "freed" from the conglomerate.
"They're ripping the heart out of Ben & Jerry's," Cohen said last week while brandishing a picket sign. "All we're asking is for them to sell the company to a group of people who support the values of Ben & Jerry's."
Magnum rejected this request, saying, "Ben & Jerry’s is a proud part of the Magnum Ice Cream Company and is not for sale."
"It's profoundly disappointing to come to the conclusion that that independence, the very basis of our sale to Unilever, is gone," Greenfield said in his resignation note. "And it's happening at a time when our country's current administration is attacking civil rights, voting rights, the rights of immigrants, women, and the LGBTQ community."
"Standing up for the values of justice, equity, and our shared humanity has never been more important," he continued, "and yet Ben & Jerry's has been silenced, sidelined for fear of upsetting those in power. It's easy to stand up and speak out when there's nothing at risk."