December, 02 2010, 10:27am EDT
Senate Holds Hearings on Ending Discriminatory "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Policy
Hearings Follow Release of DOD Report Finding Little Resistance Within Armed Forces to Ending Policy
WASHINGTON
The Senate Armed Services Committee is holding hearings today and tomorrow to discuss the possible repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," a discriminatory policy that bars lesbian and gay service members from serving openly in the military. The hearing comes after the release of a report earlier this week that found a large majority of active-duty and reserve service members and their families do not believe repealing the policy would have an adverse effect on military operations. President Barack Obama, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen have all urged Congress to repeal the policy.
The American Civil Liberties Union called on the Senate to finally end "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" by passing the repeal provision that is included in the National Defense Authorization Act, which will soon be considered by the full Senate.
"There are no more excuses for delaying the repeal of this unfair and unconstitutional statute," said Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "This week's Defense Department report only further underscores the need for Congress to act. With the president, the secretary of defense and so many of our nation's service members urging the repeal of this law, the time to end 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' is now."
The Senate Armed Services Committee today will hear testimony from Defense Secretary Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen, Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson and Commander of the United States Army in Europe General Carter Ham. Two of today's witnesses, Johnson and Ham, co-chaired a working group that released this week's report on the implementation of a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal. Tomorrow's hearing will feature testimony from the four service chiefs, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the head of the Coast Guard.
"The continuation of this policy is unacceptable in a country where we value the equal treatment of all Americans," said Christopher Anders, ACLU Senior Legislative Counsel. "For 17 years, gay and lesbian Americans have lived with the threat of being discharged under this policy simply for being who they are. That must end. We urge the Senate to finally put this discriminatory policy to rest and allow all of our men and women in uniform to serve their country with dignity."
In September, a federal district court ruled that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is unconstitutional, but the policy has been allowed to continue while that decision is appealed. Also in September, a federal court found that U.S. Air Force Maj. Margaret Witt's dismissal under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was unconstitutional in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Washington. That case is also being appealed by the government.
For more information on the National Defense Authorization Act, please visit: www.aclu.org/ndaa
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.
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Supreme Court Agrees to Hear GOP Effort to Further Gut Campaign Finance Law
Watchdogs say the spending coordination limits that Republicans are challenging were put in place to "guard against the corrupting effect of large campaign contributions."
Jun 30, 2025
The Supreme Court is taking up another Republican legal case seeking to erode campaign finance law and give more power to the wealthy donors seeking to influence elections.
On Monday, the court agreed to hear a challenge to campaign finance restrictions w limit the ability of party committees to directly coordinate spending with individual candidates. The anti-corruption group Public Citizen argues that this provision was put in place to "guard against the corrupting effect of large campaign contributions."
The challenge was brought by the National Republican Senatorial and Congressional Committees, as well as the 2022 campaigns of two Ohio Republican congressmen: former Sen. JD Vance, who has since become vice president, and former Rep. Steve Chabot, who lost his re-election bid in 2022.
The case seeks to overturn rules implemented in the Federal Election Campaign Act in 1971, which put strict limits on the ability of party committees to spend money in coordination with specific candidates. The Democratic National Committee will defend the rule before the court after filing a motion to intervene.
The rules were put in place, in part, to stop wealthy donors from using parties to get around rules about coordinating individual spending with candidates.
Under current law, how much coordinated spending parties can undertake is limited by the population of the state or district in question. At most, parties can coordinate nearly $4 million worth of spending for a single Senate candidate and $127,200 for a single House candidate.
The Republicans bringing the challenge have argued that the limits on coordinated spending violate the First Amendment.
The Campaign Legal Center, which has argued before the court against weakening these rules, has described them as a powerful bulwark against corruption.
"Since the party coordinated spending limits were enacted in the 1970s, these limits have checked the corruptive effect of large contributions flowing through party committees to candidates and prevented the quid pro quo exchanges that such contributions would otherwise facilitate," they wrote last year in a policy page arguing against the GOP challenge.
"Because the limits allow political parties to spend only a prescribed amount of their money in direct coordination with a candidate," the Campaign Legal Center continued, "they moderate the risk that a party committee could effectively pass on every big donation—or six-figure check collected via joint fundraising—to the donor’s chosen candidate in the form of coordinated expenditures."
"This case has nothing to do with the First Amendment and everything to do with Republicans' obsession with creating a government by and for billionaires," said Brett Edkins, a spokesperson for the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America.
In 2001, the Supreme Court upheld coordination limits in another case brought by Republicans: FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee.
In that case, often described as the Colorado II decision, the majority ruled 5-4 that "a party's coordinated expenditures, unlike expenditures truly independent, may be restricted to minimize circumvention of contribution limits."
Since then, however, the Supreme Court has helped the Republican Party chip away at laws that kept powerful donors in check.
Most notably, in the 2010 Citizens United v. FEC case, they ruled that political spending is a form of protected speech and that individuals could spend unlimited amounts of money influencing the election process, so long as it was not directly coordinated with candidates and instead done through "independent expenditure only" committees, more commonly known as super PACs.
"In the 15 years since the Supreme Court's abysmal Citizens United decision opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate and billionaire campaign spending, the corruption of American politics has gone from bad to worse," said Jon Golinger, a spokesman for Public Citizen.
Despite the supposed wall of separation, most candidates now rely on super PACs for large amounts of their political communication and organizing. In 2015, a report by Public Citizen titled "Super Connected" found that 45% of super PACs spending over $100,000 directed that spending toward a single candidate.
The amount of election-related corporate spending directed to these largely unaccountable entities has exploded in recent years. According to OpenSecrets, outside spending reached an unprecedented $4.5 billion in the 2024 election, compared with just $555 million in 2008, the last presidential election year before Citizens United.
The top three individual spenders—the Mellon family, Elon Musk, and the Adelson family—spent a combined $369 million to help Donald Trump win the presidency.
"The right-wing supermajority on the Court already dismantled decades of campaign finance protections in Citizens United, and now they’re poised to gut what few remain, inviting billionaires to bankroll candidates through political parties with no limits," Edkins said.
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As Historic Heatwave Grips Europe, Coalition Says 'No to a Climate Law for Polluters'
"Will the European Commission propose a climate law that ends fossil fuel use and reflects the E.U.'s fair share of climate responsibility? Or will it choose political convenience?"
Jun 30, 2025
As yet another dangerous heatwave pushes temperatures well into the triple digits across much of Europe, climate defenders on Monday renewed calls for stronger action to combat the planetary emergency—including by ensuring that the impending European Climate Law ends fossil fuel use and eschews false solutions including international carbon offsetting.
Croatia, France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain are among the countries where near- or record-high temperatures have been recorded. Portugal and Spain both recorded their hottest-ever June days over the weekend. El Granado in southwestern Spain saw the mercury soar to nearly 115°C (46°C) on Saturday. The heatwave is expected to continue into the middle of the week, with authorities warning of elevated wildfire risk and potential severe health impacts.
"Extreme heat is no longer a rare event—it has become the new normal," United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Sunday on social media. "I'm experiencing it firsthand in Spain during the Financing for Development Conference. The planet is getting hotter and more dangerous—no country is immune. We need more ambitious #ClimateAction now."
On Monday, Real Zero Europe—"a campaign calling on the European Union to deliver real emissions reductions and real solutions to the climate crisis, instead of corporate greenwashed 'net zero' targets"—published a call for an E.U. Climate Law that does not contain provisions for international carbon offsetting, in which countries or corporations compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions by funding projects that reduce emissions in other nations.
🔴 OUT NOW📢 69 NGOs call on the EU to deliver a Climate Law that rejects international carbon offsetting & Carbon Dioxide Removals (#CDR), commits to a full fossil fuel phase-out, and reflects Europe’s fair share of climate responsibility!Read the statement👇www.realzeroeurope.org/resources/st...
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— Real Zero Europe (@realzeroeurope.bsky.social) June 30, 2025 at 2:40 AM
A draft proposal of the legislation published Monday by Politico revealed that the European Commission will allow E.U. member states to outsource climate efforts to Global South nations staring in 2036, despite opposition from the 27-nation bloc's independent scientific advisory board. The outsourcing will enable the E.U. to fund emissions-reducing projects in developing nations and apply those reductions to Europe's own 2040 target—which is a 90% net decrease in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels.
The proposal also embraces carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies like carbon capture and storage, whose scalability is unproven. Climate groups call them false solutions that prolong the fossil fuel era.
"E.U. climate policy stands at a crossroads: Will the European Commission propose a climate law that ends fossil fuel use and reflects the E.U.'s fair share of climate responsibility?" the Real Zero Europe letter says. "Or will it choose political convenience—abandoning that goal under pressure from corporate and populist interests, and turning to risky, unjust carbon offsetting and other false solutions?"
"Taking responsibility for the E.U.'s past and present role in causing the climate crisis means doubling down on a just and full fossil fuel phaseout not hiding behind false solutions as currently proposed," the letter continues. "The law as planned will send a dangerous signal far beyond E.U. borders. The climate and biodiversity crises are already harming people, especially vulnerable communities and populations largely in the Global South, who have least contributed to the climate crisis."
The 69 groups stress that international carbon offsetting "is a smokescreen for giving license to fossil fuel use beyond 2050" that diverts critical resources and public funds from real climate solutions and climate finance."
"Given the scale of climate catastrophe, for the E.U. to allow international offsets and technological CDR gives a lifeline to polluting industries such as the fossil fuel, agribusiness, plastics, and petrochemical industries," the letter states.
"We say no to an E.U. Climate Law that puts polluting industries over people and climate by embracing the use of international offsets and CDR approaches," the letter's signers said. "We call on the Commission to deliver an E.U. Climate Law and its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the U.N. climate negotiations that clearly reflects the bloc's responsibility for the climate crisis. That means a full fossil fuel phaseout and a just transition."
This heatwave is brutal. Temperatures above 40°C in June across France, Spain, Italy...We still hear from right-wing politicians that “it’s just summer.” It’s not. This is the climate crisis courtesy of the fossil fuels industry. It’s not normal.
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— European Greens (@europeangreens.eu) June 30, 2025 at 7:01 AM
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk also addressed the European heatwave on Monday, saying that "the climate crisis is a human rights crisis."
"Rising temperatures, rising seas, floods, droughts, and wildfires threaten our rights to life, to health, to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and much more," he continued. "The heatwave we are currently experiencing here shows us the importance of adaptation measures, without which human rights would be severely impacted."
"It is equally clear that our current production and consumption patterns are unsustainable, and that renewables are the energy source of the future," Türk asserted. "Production capacity for renewables increased five-fold between 2011 and 2023. What we need now is a roadmap that shows us how to rethink our societies, economies and politics in ways that are equitable and sustainable. That is, a just transition."
"This shift requires an end to the production and use of fossil fuels and other environmentally destructive activities across all sectors—from energy to farming to finance to construction and beyond," he added. "This will be one of the greatest transformations our world has ever seen."
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'Hell No,' Say Critics as Trump's Megabill Poised to Drastically Expand ICE's Dragnet
"This is the level of funding where all the possibilities for American politics that have been described as hyperbolic over the past decades—the comparisons to Nazi Germany and other nightmares of the 20th century—become logistically possible and politically likely," wrote one observer.
Jun 30, 2025
Critics are sounding the alarm as congressional Republicans edge closer to passing a sweeping tax and spending bill desired by U.S. President Donald Trump that would inject tens of billions of dollars of funding into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency at the forefront of the president's immigration crackdown.
"Republicans' Big, Bad Betrayal Bill shovels BILLIONS OF DOLLARS more into ICE's budget. Yes, the same ICE that has arrested U.S. citizens, carried out illegal deportations, and denied members of Congress access to detention facilities. HELL NO," wrote Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) on X on Sunday.
On Monday, the Senate kicked off a vote-a-rama process where senators can demand an unlimited number of votes on amendments to the reconciliation package.
While negotiations on the legislation are still ongoing, the version of the reconciliation bill that was narrowly advanced in the Senate on Saturday includes $29.85 billion for ICE to "remain available through September 30, 2029" for personnel recruitment, technology for "enforcement and removal operations," and other priorities. It also includes $45 billion "for single adult alien detention capacity and family residential center capacity," also available through the same period.
The bill text also includes $46.5 billion for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to spend on border infrastructure, to remain available through September 30, 2029.
Journalist Nicolae Viorel Butler, who reports on immigration for the outlet Migrant Insider, reported on Sunday that all told the measure proposes in excess of $175 billion in "direct immigration-related funding for fiscal year 2025."
This, Butler wrote, reflects "a historic expansion of immigration enforcement operations under a Republican-controlled Congress and the Trump administration."
This money would be a big addition on top of what these agencies already receive. For example, a National Immigration Forum explainer focused on the House version of the reconciliation package noted that $45 billion for ICE detention capacity constitutes an 800% increase in detention funding compared to fiscal year 2024.
"This is the level of funding where all the possibilities for American politics that have been described as hyperbolic over the past decades—the comparisons to Nazi Germany and other nightmares of the 20th century—become logistically possible and politically likely," wrote the philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò on Bluesky, commenting on the infusion of funding.
In every state, immigration arrests carried out by ICE have sharply increased. Also the number of those arrested and detained by ICE who have no criminal record is up more than 1,400% compared to a year ago, according to The Washington Post.
Increased funding for ICE and immigration enforcement is not the only part of the bill drawing scrutiny.
In May, nonpartisan budget scorekeepers said that the U.S. House of Representatives-passed version of the legislation would, if passed, cut household resources for the bottom 10% of Americans while delivering gains to the wealthiest in the form of tax breaks. Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, called the House version of the legislation the "the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history."
"If the Republican budget passes, a lot of Americans will indeed suffer. But so too will millions of noncitizens who came to the U.S. seeking better lives for themselves and their families," wrotePost columnist Philip Bump of the increase in funding for ICE.
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