SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
For Immediate Release
July, 20 2010, 03:11pm EDT
Contact:
Claire O’Brien, (202) 675-2312; media@dcaclu.org
ACLU Commends Obama Administration For Supporting Paycheck Fairness Act
Senate Should Swiftly Pass Bill
WASHINGTON
The American Civil Liberties Union today commended the Obama administration for announcing its support for the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 182), a bill that would take steps toward finally closing the wage gap between men and women by closing loopholes in the current law and strengthening weak remedies. Passage of the bill is one of the recommendations made by the administration's Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force. The bill would provide a much needed update to the Equal Pay Act of 1963.
The Paycheck Fairness Act would provide workers with the tools they need to ensure equal compensation, including fair remedies, additional enforcement tools and technical assistance and training for both employers and employees. Last year, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Paycheck Fairness Act; the bill currently has 42 co-sponsors in the Senate and is poised for passage.
The ACLU calls on the Senate to take swift action on the Paycheck Fairness Act so that women can bring home the pay they have rightfully earned.
The following can be attributed to Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office:
"It's unacceptable that nearly 50 years after the Equal Pay Act became law, women, on average, still make only 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man. The Paycheck Fairness Act is the way to level the playing field by finally establishing equality in the American workplace and ensuring that anyone, regardless of gender, can see his or her work rewarded with a fair paycheck. Every worker in America deserves to bring home equal pay for equal work, and the Obama administration is to be commended for placing its support behind this vital bill.
"In this economic climate, there is no better time to swiftly pass this law. Allowing women to bring home fair pay is not only fundamental to American ideals of equality, it is necessary for families' economic security and to the nation's economic recovery. Pay discrimination forces single-female households and families dependent on two wage earners to live on less than they deserve. Wage discrimination also reduces women's retirement income. The Paycheck Fairness Act is an important safety net for working families, and we urge the Senate to move this bill forward."
A letter from the ACLU to the Senate in support of the Paycheck Fairness Act is available at:
www.aclu.org/womens-rights/aclu-letter-support-paycheck-fairness-act-s1...
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
(212) 549-2666LATEST NEWS
Trump Rebuked for Bypassing Congress With $8.6 Billion Weapons Sale to Israel and Gulf Allies
"The vaults are open and the arms trade is thriving before the war and after it," said one Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
May 03, 2026
As the US voting public continues to express its discontent over the disastrous war of choice against Iran that US President Donald Trump launched just over two months ago, fresh criticism followed after weekend reporting revealed the administration skirted congressional review to approve an $8.6 billion weapons deal with the United Arab Emirates and other allies in the Middle East.
Announced Friday night quietly by the US State Department, as the New York Times reports, the "sales would entail the transfer of rockets to Israel, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates and air-defense equipment to Qatar and Kuwait."
According to the Times:
Under the terms of the deal with Qatar, the Gulf country would pay more than $4 billion for American-made Patriot missile interceptors — global stockpiles of which have dwindled during the war with Iran.
Israel, the Emirates and Qatar would receive an Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, which fires laser-guided rockets. Kuwait also purchased an advanced aerial defense system for about $2.5 billion.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio expedited the deals under an emergency provision allowing the “immediate sale” of the weapons, the State Department said, bypassing standard congressional review and prompting criticism from Democratic lawmakers. This is the third time the second Trump administration has invoked an emergency authorization during the Iran war to bypass Congress on arms sales.
"No comment," said Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in an eye-rolling response to the news on social media.
After a commenter suggested that "America opened the door to war for [the countries taking part in the sale] so they would open their treasuries and the Israeli-American arms trade would boom after a slump," ElBaradei seemed to agree.
"The vaults are open, and the arms trade is thriving before the war and after it," he said.
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch and now a visiting professor at Princeton University, said: "Trump is bypassing Congress to fast-track arms sales to the United Arab Emirates, apparently without receiving any promise that the UAE would stop arming the genocidal Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan."
The RSF has been accused of atrocities in the ongoing Sudanese civil war, and the backing it has received from the US, with the UAE as its closely allied proxy, has been the source of outrage and criticism.
Keep ReadingShow Less
After More Private Social Security Data Exposed by Team Trump, Where Will GOP 'Draw the Line'?
"Over and over again, the Trump administration is exposing private Social Security data," said one watchdog group who called the leak of personal information "a goldmine for identity thieves" and other fraudsters.
May 03, 2026
A newly reported failure of the Trump administration's ability to handle sensitive private information in the social programs it is tasked with operating triggered a fresh wave of anger over the weekend after it was revealed that healthcare providers' Social Security numbers were made public as part of a faulty Medicare portal rollout.
The Washington Post discovered the compromised database and alerted the administration last week, before publishing a story about it on Friday, after efforts had been made to protect the sensitive information from further compromise.
According to the Post:
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) last year created a directory to help seniors look up which doctors and medical providers accept which insurance plans, framing it as an overdue improvement and part of the Trump administration’s initiative to modernize health care technology.
But a publicly accessible database used to populate the directory contains some of the providers’ Social Security numbers, linked to their names and other identifying information. For at least several weeks, CMS made the database available for public use as part of its data transparency efforts.
While the reporting noted that the files were "not immediately visible to users who [visited] the provider directory," lawmakers and experts said the compromised information would be a treasure trove for fraudsters.
“The more we learn about how the Trump Administration handles the people’s most sensitive data, the clearer their incompetence becomes."
Critics pounced on the new reporting, calling it "yet another mess-up by the Team Trump" and only the latest evidence that the administration cannot and should not be trusted to protect the nation's most successful anti-poverty programs or the sensitive personal data of the American people who entrust the government with that information.
"Over and over again, the Trump administration is exposing private Social Security data," said Social Security Works, an advocacy group that serves as a public watchdog for the nation's social programs.
The compromised database, said the group, "is a goldmine for identity thieves, scammers, and foreign governments. And it is undermining the very foundation of our Social Security system."
"This is a failure by this administration," said Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) in response to the reporting. "Exposing Social Security numbers, whether patients or providers, is unacceptable."
Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), the ranking member of the House committee that oversees the Medicare program, put the onus on his Republican colleagues in Congress.
“The more we learn about how the Trump Administration handles the people’s most sensitive data, the clearer their incompetence becomes,” Neal told the Post in a statement. “Do House Republicans need to see their own data exposed before they do right by their constituents and act?”
In March, as Common Dreams reported at the time, a whistleblower filed a complaint with the Social Security Administration accusing a former staffer with Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), run for a time by right-wing billionaire Elon Musk, of trying to share information from SSA databases with his private employer.
Since the outset of Trump's second term, DOGE's meddling with Social Security and Trump's undermining of the program have been the source of deep anger and concerns among the program's defenders.
In a social media post on Saturday citing the whistleblower allegations from March, Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) said, "For more than a year, 'DOGE' has been combing through the American people's records. They want to use your data to overturn elections and profit in the private sector. Enough! This administration must be held accountable for this massive data breach!
On Friday, responding to the Post's new reporting about the compromised database of physicians' private information, Larsen condemned Republicans for their ongoing and pervasive failures in the face of Trump's malfeasance and incompetence.
DOGE, said Larsen, "has been in your data for more than a year. We just learned that physicians' Social Security numbers were publicly exposed in an online portal launched by ‘DOGE’ officials."
"If this isn't enough for Republicans to act," he asked, "where will they draw the line?"
Keep ReadingShow Less
'The World Is Proud of You, Guido': American Peace Activist Honored in Iranian Lego Video
"Your dignity stands taller than the place you stood, and it will live forever in our memory."
May 02, 2026
Explosive Media, one of the independent outfits generating the viral videos about the war in Iran, created a short piece on Saturday to honor the American father of two who climbed atop a bridge in the Washington, DC this weekend to demand an end to the conflict.
"In honor of Guido Reichstadter, the man who climbed the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge to make his voice of protest heard," the group said in a post alongside the video short. "Your dignity stands taller than the place you stood, and it will live forever in our memory."
As Common Dreams reported, Reichstadter climbed the bridge wearing a t-shirt that simply read "End War" beginning on Friday afternoon, remained in protest overnight, and told one reporter he intends to remain "for a few days at least."
In honor of Guido Reichstadter,
the man who climbed the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge to make his voice of protest heard.
Your dignity stands taller than the place you stood,
and it will live forever in our memory. 🫡🏔️ pic.twitter.com/WANYzS7kIh
— Explosive Media (@ExplosiveMediaa) May 2, 2026
Reichstadter said he climbed the 168-foot-tall bridge “because the government of the United States is engaged in acts of mass murder in my name. And I refuse to be complicit in that.”
"The world is proud of you, Guido," Explosive Media said in a separate post on social media. "Soon, side by side, we will celebrate peace and victory together."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular