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For Immediate Release
December, 03 2010, 11:23am EDT
Contact:
Karen Traeger 202-785-5980
Miserable Jobs Report Mocks Holiday Hopes
WASHINGTON
With fresh evidence in today's jobless report that it's tougher than ever to find work, Americans for Democratic Action-the nation's longest-established liberal advocacy group-called once again on Congress to extend unemployment benefits for the 15 million jobless Americans suffering through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Defying expectations and the holiday hopes of the jobless, unemployment rose to 9.8 percent in November. It was the 19th consecutive month the jobless rate has been above 9 percent, eclipsing a dubious record set 30 years ago in the Reagan recession. Moreover, the real unemployment rate-which counts those forced to work part-time and unemployed workers who've given up looking-remained at 17 percent.
Over 40 percent of the unemployed, or some 6.1 million workers, are classified as "long-term unemployed", having been out of work for more than six months. The unemployment rates for men and women, whites and Hispanics went up last month.
"The jobs report is miserable," commented renowned economist and ADA vice president James K. Galbraith. "The Pollyannas who have simply assumed an economic recovery just got slapped, and the rest of the country has yet another reason for anger at the politicians who wail about long-term deficits and do nothing about unemployment insurance or jobs."
"The farce that the recession is over rings hollow in most neighborhoods in this country." added Michael J. Wilson, ADA national director. "The best gift that the Congress and the Administration could give the country is a major jobs programs that lets us earn our way into a sustainable recovery. Freezing the wages of federal employees and threatening the benefits of Social Security recipients demands further sacrifice from the wrong people and does nothing to help build our economy."
ADA is America's most experienced independent liberal lobbying organization. In the spirit of the New Deal and ADA founders Eleanor Roosevelt, renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith, and former Senator and Vice President Hubert Humphrey we lobby through coalition partnerships, through direct advocacy, and through the media.
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Omar Condemns Trump Oil Blockade of Cuba as 'Cruel and Despotic' Regime Change Ploy
"Innocent civilians will pay with their lives to force regime change," warned US Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Feb 12, 2026
US Rep. Ilhan Omar on Wednesday condemned the Trump administration's oil blockade against Cuba as part of an "economic war designed to suffocate an island" and force regime change, a longtime goal of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other right-wing American officials.
"The US oil blockade on Cuba is cruel and despotic," Omar (D-Minn.), the deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote in a social media post as fuel and food shortages and public health outcomes in Cuba continued to worsen due to the Trump administration's ramping up of the decades-long strangulation of the island nation's economy.
Omar, who visited Cuba along with other progressive lawmakers in 2024, warned that "innocent civilians will pay with their lives to force regime change," and called for the immediate lifting of the US blockade, which most of the international community views as illegal.
Omar's demand came after the Wall Street Journal reported that "children are being sent home from school early, people can barely afford basic food like milk and chicken, and long lines have sprung up at gas stations" as the Cuban people reel from the Trump administration's decision to deprive the country of oil from Venezuela—previously Cuba's largest supplier—and threaten economic retaliation against any nation that sends fuel to the Caribbean island.
"The last oil delivery to the country was a January 9 shipment from Mexico, which has since halted supplies under US pressure," the Journal noted. "President Trump’s executive order on January 29 called Cuba 'an unusual and extraordinary threat' and warned of new tariffs for any country that supplies oil to the island. The new measures go on top of a comprehensive set of US sanctions on Cuba that began in the early 1960s."
One Cuban, 36-year-old Raydén Decoro, told the Cuba-based Belly of the Beast that "the future is extremely uncertain, but something has to happen, somehow, because we’re the ones suffering the most."
"Electricity is impossible to get, food is getting more and more expensive," said Decoro. "Right now, fuel is only available in dollars, and inflation keeps rising."
Earlier this week, Omar joined other progressives in the US House in introducing a resolution calling for the annulment of the Monroe Doctrine, an assertion of US dominance of the Western Hemisphere that the Trump administration has openly embraced and expanded.
The resolution, led by Reps. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) and Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), calls for "the termination of all unilateral economic sanctions imposed through executive orders, and working with Congress to terminate all unilateral sanctions, such as the Cuba embargo, mandated by law."
“This administration's aggressive stance toward Latin America makes this resolution critical," said Velázquez. "Their 'Donroe Doctrine' is simply a more grotesque version of the interventionist policies that have failed us for two centuries."
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Feb 12, 2026
“The 19th century called, and it wants its fuel source back," said the president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council on Wednesday as President Donald Trump announced his latest attempt to prop up the pollution-causing, expensive coal industry with taxpayer funds—this time by ordering the Pentagon to purchase electricity directly from coal-fired power plants.
"While Americans are demanding clean, affordable energy, the Trump administration is using our tax dollars to prop up the nation’s dirtiest, least efficient power plants," said Manish Bapna of the NRDC.
At an event at the White House, Trump directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to sign long-term, taxpayer-funded contracts with coal plants that would likely have otherwise been retired in the coming years, to purchase energy to power military installations.
"Hard to think of a dumber 21st Century energy and security policy than Trump's insistence that the Pentagon buy more coal power," said the Military Emissions Gap, a UK-based project that monitors military emissions data.
Trump also announced $175 million from the Energy Department to upgrade six coal plants in Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia, and was presented with a trophy naming him the “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal" by the Washington Coal Club.
The Trump administration's persistent efforts to cancel the planned closures of large coal plants have been challenged not only by more than a dozen state governments, but by the owners of at least one of the facilities and two utilities in Colorado.
The utilities, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association and Platte River Power Authority, accused the administration of violating the Takings Clause of the US Constitution's Fifth Amendment, which states that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
They argued in a regulatory filing last month that “the costs of compliance fall directly on their members and customers, who must now pay."
Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program, told the Washington Post that the administration's decision to compel coal plants to continue operating has raised household "energy bills while providing negligible benefits to consumers.”
“Each of the five plants were slated to retire because they are expensive to operate and there are cheaper sources of power available to meet consumers’ needs,” Peskoe told the Post. “Plant owners aren’t just flipping a switch to turn the plants back on—they are spending millions on maintenance, renewing expired coal contracts and rehiring workers.”
“It’s no wonder fossil fuel lobbyists are handing Trump an award today. Trump asked them for campaign cash and promised to return the favor—and now he is."
Bapna said Trump's latest actions on coal were the result of the president's campaign promise to fossil fuel executives, whom he asked for $1 billion in campaign donations and pledged to gut climate regulations in return.
“It’s no wonder fossil fuel lobbyists are handing Trump an award today. Trump asked them for campaign cash and promised to return the favor—and now he is," said Bapna. "The rest of us are left to pay the price: more heart disease and asthma attacks, higher utility bills, and more frequent unnatural disasters. This is a raw deal for our wallets, our health, and our future.”
Julie McNamara, associate policy director of the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, pointed out that Americans will face higher electricity bills and be forced to pay for the new Department of Defense contracts at a time when "people and businesses across the country are struggling with rapidly escalating electricity costs" while other countries around the world expand their use of far cheaper renewable energy sources.
"The country has real solutions at hand—yet instead of pushing ahead with investments in the fastest, cheapest, cleanest resources available, the Trump administration is actively doing everything it can to stop the deployment of new solar and wind projects, to stop investments in energy efficiency, and to stop the buildout of modern grid infrastructure," said McNamara.
“Reality doesn’t lie: Coal is a rapidly dwindling relic of the past, not a solution for the future," she added. "The Trump administration’s flailings come with real consequences. Forcing the use of increasingly unreliable and relentlessly uneconomic coal plants will risk outages and send high electricity costs higher. Recklessly slashing health, safety, and environmental standards will harm people’s health and the environment. And opting for hollow statements and short-term bailouts fails to meaningfully deliver for the coal-dependent communities requiring actual, durable transition solutions."
Margie Alt, director of the Climate Action Campaign, suggested that Trump's latest handouts to coal firms "ignores basic economics" while also proving that "coal can't compete without a taxpayer-funded bailout."
"Our military is one of the largest consumers of energy in the world," said Alt. "Instead of improving the efficiency of our military and the quality of life for those serving our country, this order saddles taxpayers with inflated energy costs while exposing millions of Americans to more toxic pollution from old, inefficient plants."
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Republicans Approve 'Dystopian' Voter Suppression Bill That Would Force States to Give Info to DHS
"The campaign to rig our elections is well underway," warned one expert.
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Doing President Donald Trump's bidding, the Republican-controlled US House on Wednesday approved legislation that would potentially prevent millions of Americans from participating in federal elections by instituting draconian voter ID requirements, mandating documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, and requiring states to share voter information with the Department of Homeland Security.
The White House-backed legislation, an updated version of the so-called SAVE Act that the House approved in 2024, passed with the support of every Republican who took part in the vote and one Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas—notably the recipient of a pardon from the president.
Election experts and watchdog groups said the bill represents a massive assault on the right to vote, with many of its provisions directly in line with what Trump has demanded ahead of the 2026 midterms.
“Congressional Republicans are attempting to commandeer the midterm election cycle and increase voting margins in President Trump’s favor by putting a finger on the scale of our elections and pushing nonsensical, anti-democratic laws to stop voters from casting a ballot," said Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert. "This overreaching, un-American bill tacks on unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles to vote, all of which would harm voters across the political spectrum."
The bill is likely dead on arrival in the narrowly divided Senate, with every Democrat and at least one Republican, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, expected to oppose it.
But its passage through the House with unanimous support from the Republican caucus—whose members claim to be driven by a desire to prevent noncitizens from voting, which is already unlawful, and combat voter fraud, which is virtually nonexistent—alarmed rights advocates.
"This obvious attack on our voting rights is based on completely unfounded claims," said Alison Gill, director of nominations and democracy at the National Women’s Law Center. "The lawmakers supporting this measure clearly aim to suppress the votes of women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people in order to rig elections and remain in power."
“It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, which means that the SAVE Act 2.0 creates a convoluted and dystopian solution to a problem that does not actually exist," Gill added. "Americans strongly opposed legislation when Congress considered this issue last year, and yet the congressional Republicans are trying to double down on this deceptive policy."
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In addition to strict documentary requirements for registration and voting, the bill would force states to conduct frequent purges of their voter rolls and share information with the Department of Homeland Security in a purported effort to verify voters' citizenship—changes that could disenfranchise many eligible voters. The legislation would also establish criminal penalties for election workers who register voters without the required documentary proof of citizenship.
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"This is not a coincidence," said Spiva. "The forces that are driving the Trump administration’s anti-voter agenda are also pressuring Congress to pass legislation that would silence millions of Americans by making it harder to participate in our elections."
In an op-ed for the New York Times on Thursday, the Brennan Center's Sean Morales-Doyle warned that "the campaign to rig our elections is well underway."
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