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For Immediate Release
January, 28 2009, 09:37am EDT
Contact:
Tom Devine, GAP Legal Director
240.888.4080
tomd@whistleblower.org
Charity Wilson, American Federation of Government Employees
202.639.6440
Dave Colapinto, National Whistleblower Center
202.342.6980
Donna Lenhoff, National Employment Lawyers Association
202.898.2880
Marthena Cowart, Project on Government Oversight
202.347.3958
Angela Canterbury, Public Citizen
202.454.5188
Celia Wexler, Union of Concerned Scientists
202.390.5481
Sarah Dufendach, Common Cause
202.736.5709
Whistleblower Rights Amendment to Receive Vote During Stimulus Debate Today
A Joint Statement by GAP, the American Federation of Government Employees, National Whistleblower Center, NELA, POGO, Public Citizen, Union of Concerned Scientists
WASHINGTON
Today, our seven
organizations strongly urge all members of the House of Representatives to pass
a bipartisan amendment that would bring genuine accountability and oversight to
the stimulus spending bill, H.R. 1. We applaud Representatives Chris Van Hollen
(D-MD) and Todd R. Platts (R-PA) for offering an amendment to expand and
strengthen protections for federal workers charged with safeguarding the public
trust and taxpayer dollars.
Click here to read the amendment: https://www.whistleblower.org/doc/2008/Amend128.pdf
The Platts/Van Hollen Whistleblower Amendment is
identical to the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (H.R. 985), which
passed by a large bipartisan vote of 331-94 in the previous Congress on March
14, 2007. In a letter of support for this proposal, a broad coalition of
more than 260 organizations representing millions of individuals stressed:
"Whistleblower
protection is a foundation for any change in which the public can believe. It
does not matter whether the issue is economic recovery, prescription drug
safety, environmental protection, infrastructure spending, national health
insurance, or foreign policy. We need conscientious public servants willing and
able to call attention to bureaucratic corruption on behalf of the
taxpayers."
Click here to read the letter, sent on Monday, January
26: https://www.whistleblower.org/doc/2008/CoalitionLetter.pdf
Our groups are deeply concerned about the economic
crisis and its impact on individuals and families. Because so many Americans
are suffering the consequences of a contracting economy, it is now more
important than ever that we have transparency and accountability for every tax
dollar spent. The Van Hollen/Platts amendment sets a new, best practices
standard for transparency through accountability. Most significant, it creates
a permanent shield for federal employee and contractor whistleblowers who
challenge any misspending, and it will keep protecting taxpayers long after
stimulus funds are gone.
While the stimulus bill in its current form provides
protections for federal contractors and state and local employees, it does not
cover federal workers. Congress should not stop short of ensuring federal
employees the same protections. The Platts/Van Hollen amendment closes the gap
and provides essential protection for all federal workers. It's time for
Congress to enact whistleblower rights and accountability measures before the
taxpayers' money is spent. Our groups agree: By supporting the Platts/Van
Hollen amendment, Members of Congress are not just protecting whistleblowers;
they are protecting the taxpayers.
LATEST NEWS
Iran Says Trump Will Go Down as a 'Supreme War Criminal' If He Follows Through With Threat
"This is an express public incitement for war crimes and crimes against humanity—and, I would say, for genocide," said a spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry.
Apr 06, 2026
Iranian officials on Monday warned US President Donald Trump that his name will be "etched in history as a supreme war criminal" if he follows through with his threat to wage total war on Iran's civilian infrastructure, including bridges and power plants.
Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran's deputy foreign minister, wrote on social media following Trump's Easter-morning outburst that "threats to attack power plants and bridges (civilian infrastructure) constitute war crimes under Article 8(2)(b) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1977 (Article 52)."
"The president of the United States, in his capacity as the highest-ranking official of his country, has openly threatened to commit war crimes—an act that entails his individual criminal responsibility before the International Criminal Court and any competent national court," Gharibabadi added, vowing that Iran "will deliver a decisive, immediate, and regret-inducing response" to any attack.
Esmail Baghaei, a spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry, said Trump's threats are "an indication of a criminal mindset."
"This is an express public incitement for war crimes and crimes against humanity—and, I would say, for genocide," Baghaei said in an interview on Sunday. "Threatening to attack a country's critical infrastructure, energy sector, it would mean that you want to put at risk the whole population."
Absolute bombshell. Iran's Spokesperson Esmail Baghaei accuses the Trump administration of a criminal mindset and public incitement for genocide. Threatening a nation's critical infrastructure puts the entire population at risk. The White House has completely abandoned morality. pic.twitter.com/HcBZGZho5p
— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) April 5, 2026
The US and Israel have already done significant damage to Iran's civilian infrastructure. The country's deputy health minister said Monday that more than 360 healthcare, education, and research centers have been hit by US-Israeli strikes, and dozens of medics have been killed since the bombing began on February 28.
But Trump on Sunday threatened an indiscriminate assault, telling Fox News that if the Iranians "don't make a deal and fast," he is "considering blowing everything up and taking the oil."
"You're going to see bridges and power plants dropping all over their country," the president said, setting a new deadline of 8 pm ET for the complete reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump's remarks came after he published a deranged post on his Truth Social platform demanding that Iran "open the Fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell."
Analysts and lawmakers in the US echoed Iranian officials' warnings that Trump's threatened attacks would constitute war crimes.
"Trump's advisers are telling him to hit civilian sites because it will cause unrest and potentially topple the regime. But just think about the insanity of this plan: kill tens of thousands of civilians in order to cause a national panic," US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) wrote. "Bombing to induce political panic IS A WAR CRIME."
Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, said that "any lawmaker who votes for supplemental funding for the war on Iran or against war powers resolutions to end it will be fully complicit in the war crimes threatened here, as well as those already committed by this unhinged and unfit Commander in Chief."
The US president's renewed threats came amid reports of a diplomatic effort, mediated in part by Pakistan, to enact a 45-day ceasefire to provide space for a lasting resolution to the war.
Axios reported that the talks are seen as "the only chance to prevent a dramatic escalation in the war that will include massive strikes on Iranian civilian infrastructure and a retaliation against energy and water facilities in the Gulf states."
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3-Year-Old Abused While Waiting Months to Be Released From Detention Under Trump Restrictions, Says Family
“She was so long in there," said the child's father. "I just think that if they would have moved faster, nothing like that would have happened.”
Apr 05, 2026
President Donald Trump's Department of Health and Human Services and its office in charge of providing care for unaccompanied immigrant children have been named in a civil lawsuit alleging that a three-year-old was sexually abused after immigration officials separated her from her mother at the US border, while her father waited for months to be reunited with the child.
The girl crossed the border with her mother last September but was separated from her mother after the woman was charged with making false statements, according to The Associated Press. She was sent to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which operates under HHS and places children in foster or shelter settings.
When Trump took office for his second term in January 2025, the average time a child was under ORR's care was 37 days, but as of February children were remaining in shelter or foster settings for an average of 200 days.
The process through which ORR releases children to the care of their parents or sponsors has grown more arduous under the Trump administration, and in the case of the three-year-old, she waited for five months in foster care while the government repeatedly told her father it couldn't make an appointment for him to be fingerprinted.
Court documents state that during that time, the girl reported being sexually abused by an older child who was living in the same foster setting in Harlingen, Texas. She told a caregiver that she had been abused multiple times and had suffered bleeding as a result.
ORR only told her father that there had been an "accident" in foster care. Officials did not tell him the result of a forensic exam and interview of his child, but the older child accused of the abuse was removed from the foster setting.
“I asked them, ‘What happened? I want to know. I’m her father. I want to know what’s going on,’ and they just told me that they couldn’t give me more information, that it was under investigation,” said the father, who is a legal permanent US resident and spoke to the AP anonymously to protect his daughter's identity. “She was so long in there... I just think that if they would have moved faster, nothing like that would have happened.”
The Trump administration has claimed its new restrictions for sponsors and family members seeking custody of their children who are in ORR's care have prevented traffickers from illegally bringing children into the US and have kept unaccompanied minors safe.
Family members like the three-year-old's father are required to submit to income verification, home inspections, and DNA testing.
The new procedures were immediately followed by a drastic jump in child detention times, according to the AP.
Legal advocates have filed lawsuits challenging the new restrictions on the grounds that they can cause prolonged detention for children. Lauren Fisher Flores, the legal director of the American Bar Association’s ProBar project and the attorney representing the girl's family, told the AP that the organization has worked on eight habeas corpus petitions on behalf of children who have been detained for an average of 255 days.
In the girl's case, the government finally allowed the father to be fingerprinted after attorneys sent a letter to ORR, but still did not provide a timeline for his daughter's release. His lawyers then filed a habeas petition, prompting the government to release the child to her father.
During the legal challenge, the father learned the details of what ORR had called an "accident" that happened in the foster setting.
“To have your child abused while in the government’s care, to not understand what has happened or how to protect them, to not even be told about the abuse, it is unimaginable,” Fisher Flores told the AP. “Children deserve safety and they belong with their parents.”
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Trump White House Pushes Satellite Firm to Withhold All Images of Iran War
The decision "will make it much more difficult to monitor US-Israeli bombing there, which seems to be the point," said one human rights campaigner.
Apr 05, 2026
The satellite firm Planet Labs told customers, including major news outlets, that it was acting on the Trump administration's request as it announced it was implementing "an indefinite withhold of imagery" in Iran and across the Middle Eastern countries where the widening conflict started by the US and Israel is unfolding.
The Saturday announcement, said UK rights campaigner Sarah Wilkinson, was a sign that images of the war will be censored "to hide the truth."
Planet Labs sent an email to journalists who have regularly used the company's satellite images to report on the US-Israeli bombing of Iran and Iran's retaliatory actions on Saturday, saying that after receiving a request from the US government, it was "moving to a managed access model... and releasing imagery on a case-by-case basis and for urgent, mission-critical requirements or in the public interest."
Washington Post reporter Evan Hill suggested the announcement would limit reporters' access to information from "one of the most important US-based commercial satellite imagery providers on whom most media outlets rely."
The announcement comes as Iran's military capabilities have reportedly exceeded US expectations, with US intelligence reporting Iran has retained many of its missile and mobile launchers and casting doubt on the Pentagon's claims that the US is severely diminishing Iran's missile stockpile.
The White House's request for a suspension of satellite imagery was the latest sign that "Trump’s war is going swimmingly," said podcast host Mark Ames sardonically.
It also coincided with multiple threats over the weekend from President Donald Trump, who said this coming Tuesday would be "Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one"—with increased attacks on Iran's civilian infrastructure unless Iran agrees to a deal on Monday.
A major bridge was destroyed by the US on Saturday, while Israeli forces bombed a significant petrochemical complex, reportedly sending pollution into the surrounding city. At least 13 people were killed in the two attacks combined. A projectile that struck the vicinity of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant also killed at least one person and raised concerns about a larger attack, which "could trigger a nuclear accident, with health impacts that would devastate generations," as World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said the Trump administration's demand for satellite images to be withheld "will make it much more difficult to monitor US-Israeli bombing there, which seems to be the point."
Data and imagery collected starting on March 9 will be withheld by Planet Labs. The company previously instituted a 14-day delay on the release of satellite images to ensure they would not be "leveraged" by "adversarial actors."
Also on Saturday, Al Jazeera reported that Israeli soldiers had "destroyed all of the CCTV cameras" around the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, a mission in the southern part of the country where three peacekeepers were wounded in a blast on Friday and several others have been killed since early March, including some by Israeli fire.
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