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For Immediate Release
July, 10 2012, 04:23pm EDT
Contact:
Miranda Blue or Justin Greenberg
202-467-4999 / media@pfaw.org
Five Major Corporations Ditch ALEC
WASHINGTON
People For the American Way Foundation applauded the news today that Hewlett-Packard Co., CVS Caremark, Deere & Co., MillerCoors LLC and BestBuy have become the latest major corporations to announce their exit from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), bringing the number of corporations leaving the organization to 25.
"Supporting ALEC's extreme agenda is never justifiable," said Michael Keegan, President of People For the American Way Foundation. "ALEC hurts Americans on a daily basis by promoting policies that suppress the vote, hurt working families, attack public education and destroy the environment.
"The decision by these five companies to leave ALEC is an important step to do right by their customers. Their competitors who have yet to quit should know that the American people won't forget who continues to underwrite ALEC's agenda at our expense. Fortunately, more and more corporations, nonprofits and organizations are withdrawing their memberships. As a result, ALEC's ability to push its dangerous agenda through our statehouses diminishes every day."
A petition drive and phone campaign led by People For the American Way Foundation, Color of Change, the Center for Media and Democracy, CREDO Action, Progress Now, SumOfUs and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee has resulted in over 500,000 signatures and calls to ALEC's corporate members, demanding that those companies end their membership with ALEC.
People For the American Way works to build a democratic society that implements the ideals of freedom, equality, opportunity and justice for all. We encourage civic participation, defend fundamental rights, and fight to dismantle systemic barriers to equitable opportunity. We fight against right-wing extremism and the injustice it fosters.
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One Month Into Ceasefire, Israel Continues 'Silent Genocide' in Gaza
A report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor detailed "a clear policy by the Israeli political and military leadership to use the ceasefire as a cover to continue genocide against Gaza’s residents."
Nov 11, 2025
A month after Hamas and Israeli officials signed off on a ceasefire deal, a leading human rights group warned that Israel is maintaining conditions in Gaza that "prevent any recovery from over 25 months of humanitarian catastrophe," while the international community is largely silent about the continued killing and destruction in the exclave.
Despite the ceasefire deal that was brokered by the Trump administration, an average of eight Palestinians are still being killed per day as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continue to wage "aerial and artillery bombardment, gunfire, and the ongoing destruction of homes and buildings, particularly in the eastern areas of Khan Younis and Gaza City," according to the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.
The Government Media Office in Gaza reported Tuesday that Israel has violated the ceasefire agreement at least 282 times, as it's claimed that Hamas has done the same by killing Israeli soldiers and failing to return the body of one of the captives who was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
President Donald Trump has defended the IDF's attacks in some cases, saying an attack on October 29 that killed 109 Palestinian people, including 52 children, was "retribution" for the killing of an Israeli soldier.
With the president's tacit approval of attacks that it considers "retribution" and his insistence that the ceasefire holds, Israel has killed 242 Palestinians since the ceasefire began on October 10, including 85 children. About 619 people have been injured.
Despite the first phase of the 20-point peace plan put forward by Trump stipulating an end to all hostilities by Hamas and Israel, said the Euro-Med Monitor, "Israel continues to commit genocide against Palestinian civilians through various means."
In addition to continuing its military bombardment, Israel has not obeyed another requirement of the first phase of the deal: lifting the blockade that began in October 2023 and that has killed nearly 500 Palestinians so far.
"Israel continues to administer a deliberate policy of starvation in the Gaza Strip, having blocked the entry of approximately 70% of the aid required under the agreement," said Euro-Med Monitor. "It also controls the type of goods allowed in, systematically restricting essential food items such as meat and dairy products while flooding the markets with calorie-dense but nutrient-poor products."
Gaza's population of about 2 million people remains "in a state of controlled, chronic hunger," said the group. Child malnutrition rates remain 20% from last year despite the ceasefire.
The group released an infographic on Tuesday, detailing the devastation that continues in Gaza as Israel persists in committing a "silent genocide"—now without the sustained pressure of the international community for the attacks to stop.
The graphic notes that since Israel began its attacks:
- Nine out of every 10 Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza were civilians;
- 100% of hospitals have been damaged or destroyed;
- 45,600 children have been orphaned;
- 12% of all Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, injured, detained, or are missing.
- 40,000 people now have permanent or long-term disabilities, including 21,000 children;
- 100% of the population faces acute food insecurity; and
- 100% of the population has suffered psychological trauma.
The Euro-Med Monitor also warned that Israel is continuing to block movement in both directions at the Rafah crossing, restricting civilians who are sick or wounded from getting medical care.
"These actions are not isolated incidents but part of a systematic pattern indicating a clear policy by the Israeli political and military leadership to use the ceasefire as a cover to continue genocide against Gaza’s residents," said the group. "By maintaining a disguised military assault and perpetuating killing, starvation, and systematic destruction, Israel exploits the absence of international will to protect civilians and hold perpetrators accountable."
A "grave development" included in Euro-Med Monitor's report is "the dismantling of the Gaza Strip’s geographical unity, turning it into an isolated and uninhabitable area."
Ramy Abdul, chairman of the organization, posted a video on social media of an Israeli soldier "proudly documenting" his army unit's use of excavators, "flattening what's left of northern Gaza" behind the "yellow line" to which Israeli troops were required to withdraw under the ceasefire deal.
"The continued silence of the international community and the failure to activate accountability mechanisms provide Israel with practical cover to continue committing genocide, albeit at a slower pace, as part of a consistent policy aimed at eliminating the Palestinian presence in the Gaza Strip," said Euro-Med Monitor.
The group's analysis came as Politico reported that Trump administration officials have begun privately expressing concerns that the peace deal could break down due to an inability to implement core provisions, such as deploying an "International Stabilization Force" that would officially be tasked with peacekeeping in Gaza.
"The administration took its victory lap after the initial ceasefire and hostage release, but all the hard work, the real hard work, remains," David Schenker, former assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, told Politico.
Countries including the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Jordan, and Azerbaijan have said they will not commit to contributing forces, with the latter declining to attend a recent planning meeting and saying it would not participate until a full ceasefire is in place.
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‘A Significant Rupture’: Trump's Boat Bombing Spree Leads UK to Curb Intel-Sharing With US
"We're told that the UK is deeply uncomfortable with [the boat strikes], and they believe that it is pretty blatantly illegal," revealed a CNN reporter.
Nov 11, 2025
President Donald Trump's policy of bombing purported drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean, which multiple legal experts have decried as an illegal act extrajudicial murder, is now meeting resistance from a top US ally.
CNN reported on Tuesday that the UK has now stopped sharing intelligence related to suspected drug-trafficking vessels with the US because the country does not want to be complicit in strikes that it believes violate international law.
CNN's sources say that the UK stopped giving the US information about boats in the region roughly a month ago, shortly after Trump began authorizing drone strikes against them in a campaign that so far has killed at least 76 people.
"Before the US military began blowing up boats in September, countering illicit drug trafficking was handled by law enforcement and the US Coast Guard, [and] cartel members and drug smugglers were treated as criminals with due process rights," explained CNN.
Last month, after his administration had already launched several strikes, Trump declared drug cartels enemy combatants and claimed he has the right to launch military strikes against suspected drug-trafficking boats.
Appearing on CNN on Tuesday to discuss the story, reporter Natasha Bertrand described the decision to stop sharing intelligence as "a really significant rupture" between the US and its closest ally.
"We're told that the UK is deeply uncomfortable with [the boat strikes], and they believe that it is pretty blatantly illegal," Bertrand explained. "It really underscores the continued questions surrounding the legality of this US military campaign."
🚨HOLY SHIT: The UK - our closest ally since WWI - just cut off ALL intelligence sharing with the U.S. about Caribbean drug trafficking boats, calling the strikes illegal.
Britain doesn’t trust us anymore. Trump has torched a century of friendship while he sucks up to dictators. pic.twitter.com/E0Was3WrrY
— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) November 11, 2025
The US military began its boat attacks in the Caribbean in September, and has since expanded them to purported drug boats operating in the Pacific Ocean.
Reporting last month from the Wall Street Journal indicated that the administration was also preparing to attack a variety of targets inside Venezuela, whose government Trump has baselessly accused of running drug cartels. Potential targets include “ports and airports controlled by the military that are allegedly used to traffic drugs, including naval facilities and airstrips.”
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier has now arrived off the coast of Latin America, in a move that the paper notes "has fueled speculation the Trump administration intends to dramatically escalate its deadly counternarcotics campaign there, possibly through direct attacks on Venezuela."
Reports from the US government and the United Nations have not identified Venezuela as a significant source of drugs that enter the United States, and the country plays virtually no role in the trafficking of fentanyl, the primary cause of drug overdoses in the US.
The administration's military aggression in Latin America has also sparked a fierce backlash in the region, where dozens of political leaders last month condemned the boat attacks, while also warning that they could just be the start of a regime change war reminiscent of Cold War-era US-backed coups like ones that occurred in Chile, Brazil, and other nations.
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Cautious Celebration as Supreme Court Allows Marriage Equality to Remain Law of the Land
"We cannot take those protections for granted," said Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who helped to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide a decade ago.
Nov 11, 2025
In one of vanishingly few US Supreme Court rulings protecting equal rights, the majority-conservative court on Monday rejected efforts to overturn the decade-old precedent of marriage equality.
Without issuing a comment, the court denied an appeal from Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who was ordered to pay $360,000 in compensation after she refused to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple in defiance of the precedent set by the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
Amid a flurry of rulings that have rolled back sexual and reproductive freedom in other realms—including for the LGBTQ+ community—the court's refusal to hear Davis' appeal was considered a small but still invigorating victory.
“The bar is in hell,” wrote Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on social media. “But this is a win for decency and compassion.”
The ruling came as a relief to advocates for equal rights, who long feared that marriage equality might soon become the next target as the conservative movement grows increasingly hostile to the LGBTQ+ community.
In 2022, as the court's right-wing majority overturned the right to an abortion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case, the archconservative Justice Clarence Thomas signaled in a concurring opinion that it should be the start of efforts to fully revise the court's recognition of "substantive due process," that is, the recognition of rights not explicitly granted by the US Constitution.
He questioned not just the right of same-sex couples to marry, but the court’s entire recognition of the right to privacy established by the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut ruling, which has been the basis for rulings against bans on homosexual relationships and the right to contraception.
Thomas was one of the four conservative justices who dissented from the majority's ruling in Obergefell. Two others—Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito—also still serve on the court. The other three conservative justices who have been appointed since, all by President Donald Trump during his first term—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—have remained relatively coy on how they’d rule if marriage equality were to come back up, though they have sided with conservatives in cases that pitted religious liberty against discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people.
In 2023, the six conservatives ruled that a Christian web designer was allowed to decline services to same-sex weddings, overturning a Colorado law that banned discrimination against gay people. Notably, the designer who brought the case had not actually been asked to design a website for any gay couple, but the court's right-wing majority accepted her case regardless.
This apparent zealousness to intervene in favor of discrimination appeared to be a red flag, but as Harvard University law professor Noah Feldman wrote for Bloomberg, Monday's ruling "is best read as a signal that the conservative majority has little interest in revisiting gay marriage," even as "the conservative constitutional revolution at the Supreme Court remains underway."
He notes that just four justices are required for a case to be heard by the court. And while it has aggressively rolled back the rights of transgender people, ended affirmative action, and recognized unprecedented executive authority for President Donald Trump, when it comes to same-sex marriage, "their silence is noteworthy."
Public support for marriage equality has grown considerably in the decade since Obergefell. In July 2015, a month after the court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, 58% of Americans said in a Gallup poll that they agreed that same- sex couples should have the same rights as opposite-sex pairs. That number ballooned to a high of 71% in 2023, and even as attacks on LGBTQ+ people have ratcheted up intensely within the conservative movement, support for marriage equality remains stubbornly steady—68% of Americans still say gay marriages should be valid.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who represented two of the plaintiffs in the 2015 case, said that while she welcomes the court's decision Monday not to erode the hard-won rights of gay people further, advocates should not become complacent.
"I am relieved for today’s decision reaffirming same-sex couples’ continued right to dignity and protection under the law, but we cannot take those protections for granted," Nessel said in a news release. “Members of this Supreme Court have already told us they are willing to overturn Obergefell. It’s only a matter of time before they do.”
Her state of Michigan is one of more than two dozen in which same-sex marriage would become illegal or face restrictions if Obergefell is overturned. She said that Monday's decision "allows us a reprieve, an opportunity to bring our state Constitution into alignment with the protections our residents are entitled to and have enjoyed for more than a decade. Now is the time to act."
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