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For Immediate Release
March, 16 2011, 04:35pm EDT
Contact:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
Backing Nuclear: Administration "Disconnected from Reality"
Bloomberg reports today: "The Obama administration will press ahead with efforts to expand loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors while investigating the failure of Japan's power plants after an earthquake, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said."
WASHINGTON
Bloomberg reports today: "The Obama administration will press ahead with efforts to expand loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors while investigating the failure of Japan's power plants after an earthquake, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said."
NORMAN SOLOMON
Available for a limited number of interviews, Solomon is president of the Institute for Public Accuracy and a senior fellow at the new group RootsAction. He recently wrote the piece "Nuclear Power Madness," which states: "Like every other president since the 1940s, Barack Obama has promoted nuclear power. Now, with reactors melting down in Japan, the official stance is more disconnected from reality than ever." Solomon's books include Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience With Atomic Radiation (co-authored with Harvey Wasserman). He is also former director of the landmark National Citizens Hearings for Radiation Victims held in Washington, D.C. in 1980.
LLOYD DUMAS
Dumas is professor of political economy, economics and public policy at the University of Texas at Dallas. Formerly a professor of engineering at Columbia University, he is an expert on technological disaster. His most recent book is The Technology Trap. Dumas just wrote the piece "Shadow Elite: 'Safe' Nuclear Power? No Such Thing."
TYSON SLOCUM
Slocum is director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, which recently issued a statement: "Despite the assurances of our elected officials and the industry, there is no way to guarantee the public's safety when a natural disaster or terrorism strikes commercial reactors. The Japanese are arguably the best prepared to deal with earthquakes, yet they failed to adequately plan for the impact of a tsunami. This demonstrates the difficulty in planning for both the 'known unknowns' and 'unknown unknowns' that impact nuclear reactors from natural disaster and terrorism. There are alternatives. Had Japan invested in rooftop solar and wind turbines to the degree it spent maintaining and building nuclear reactors, the country wouldn't be grappling with the potential of a full-scale nuclear meltdown.
"U.S. policymakers should watch events in Japan closely and understand the implications to public safety of committing U.S. taxpayer resources to building new nuclear plants. We call on the federal government to do the following:
1) Immediately stop activity relating to re-licensing aging U.S. reactors;
2) Halt all activity geared toward building new reactors; and
3) End federal subsidies -- such as loan guarantees -- for commercial nuclear power, which total $500 billion to date.
"Instead, the U.S. should focus on developing wind power and assisting families in the installation of rooftop solar systems."
CHRIS WILLIAMS
Williams just wrote the piece "The Risks of Nuclear Roulette," which states: "Sentiment in this country remains solidly anti-nuclear. A recent poll in the Wall Street Journal showed that three-quarters of Americans back the elimination of tax credit for oil and gas companies to reduce the federal deficit, and 57 percent deem it 'mostly' or 'totally' acceptable to 'significantly cut' subsidies to new nuclear power plants. This is in direct contrast to President Barack Obama's offer of new loan guarantees to the nuclear industry."
Williams is author of Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis and is a professor of physics and chemistry at Pace University.
More resources: commondreams.org/japan-earthquake
A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
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US State Dept Releases 'Shameful' Human Rights Report Revamped to Shield Allies, Including Israel
"This sends a chilling message that the U.S. is willing to overlook some abuses, signaling that people experiencing human rights violations may be left to fend for themselves," said one Amnesty campaigner.
Aug 12, 2025
After leaked drafts exposed the Trump administration's plans to downplay human rights abuses in some allied countries, including Israel, the U.S. Department of State released the final edition of an annual report on Tuesday, sparking fresh condemnation.
"Breaking with precedent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not provide a written introduction to the report nor did he make remarks about it," CNN reported. Still, Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International USA's national director of government relations and advocacy, called him out by name in a Tuesday statement.
"With the release of the U.S. State Department's human rights report, it is clear that the Trump administration has engaged in a very selective documentation of human rights abuses in certain countries," Klasing said. "In addition to eliminating entire sections for certain countries—for example discrimination against LGBTQ+ people—there are also arbitrary omissions within existing sections of the report based on the country."
Klasing explained that "we have criticized past reports when warranted, but have never seen reports quite like this. Never before have the reports gone this far in prioritizing an administration's political agenda over a consistent and truthful accounting of human rights violations around the world—softening criticism in some countries while ignoring violations in others. The State Department has said in relation to the reports less is more. However, for the victims and human rights defenders who rely on these reports to shine light on abuses and violations, less is just less."
"Secretary Rubio knows full well from his time in the Senate how vital these reports are in informing policy decisions and shaping diplomatic conversations, yet he has made the dangerous and short-sighted decision to put out a truncated version that doesn't tell the whole story of human rights violations," she continued. "This sends a chilling message that the U.S. is willing to overlook some abuses, signaling that people experiencing human rights violations may be left to fend for themselves."
"Failing to adequately report on human rights violations further damages the credibility of the U.S. on human rights issues," she added. "It's shameful that the Trump administration and Secretary Rubio are putting politics above human lives."
The overarching report—which includes over 100 individual country reports—covers 2024, the last full calendar year of the Biden administration. The appendix says that in March, the report was "streamlined for better utility and accessibility in the field and by partners, and to be more responsive to the underlying legislative mandate and aligned to the administration's executive orders."
As CNN detailed:
The latest report was stripped of many of the specific sections included in past reports, including reporting on alleged abuses based on sexual orientation, violence toward women, corruption in government, systemic racial or ethnic violence, or denial of a fair public trial. Some country reports, including for Afghanistan, do address human rights abuses against women.
"We were asked to edit down the human rights reports to the bare minimum of what was statutorily required," said Michael Honigstein, the former director of African Affairs at the State Department's Bureau of Human Rights, Democracy, and Labor. He and his office helped compile the initial reports.
Over the past week, since the draft country reports leaked to the press, the Trump administration has come under fire for its portrayals of El Salvador, Israel, and Russia.
The report on Israel—and the illegally occupied Palestinian territories, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank—is just nine pages. The brevity even drew the attention of Israeli media. The Times of Israel highlighted that it "is much shorter than last year's edition compiled under the Biden administration and contained no mention of the severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza."
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Israeli forces have slaughtered over 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to local officials—though experts warn the true toll is likely far higher. As Israel has restricted humanitarian aid in recent months, over 200 people have starved to death, including 103 children.
The U.S. report on Israel does not mention the genocide case that Israel faces at the International Court of Justice over the assault on Gaza, or the International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The section on war crimes and genocide only says that "terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah continue to engage in the
indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians in violation of the law of armed conflict."
As the world mourns the killing of six more Palestinian media professionals in Gaza this week—which prompted calls for the United Nations Security Council to convene an emergency meeting—the report's section on press freedom is also short and makes no mention of the hundreds of journalists killed in Israel's annihilation of the strip:
The law generally provided for freedom of expression, including for members of the press and other media, and the government generally respected this right for most Israelis. NGOs and journalists reported authorities restricted press coverage and limited certain forms of expression, especially in the context of criticism against the war or sympathy for Palestinians in Gaza.
The Tuesday release came after a coalition of LGBTQ+ and human rights organizations on Monday filed a lawsuit against the U.S. State Department over its refusal to release the congressionally mandated report.
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Watchdog Unveils Standards for Countermeasures to 'Authoritarian' GOP Gerrymandering
"We will not sit idly by while political leaders manipulate voting maps to entrench their power and subvert our democracy," said the head of Common Cause.
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As Republicans try to rig congressional maps in several states and Democrats threaten retaliatory measures, a pro-democracy watchdog on Tuesday unveiled new fairness standards underscoring that "independent redistricting commissions remain the gold standard for ending partisan gerrymandering."
Common Cause will hold an online media briefing Wednesday at noon Eastern time "to walk reporters though the six pieces of criteria the organization will use to evaluate any proposed maps."
The Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group said that "it will closely evaluate, but not automatically condemn, countermeasures" to Republican gerrymandering efforts—especially mid-decade redistricting not based on decennial censuses.
Amid the gerrymandering wars, we just launched 6 fairness criteria to hold all actors to the same principled standard: people first—not parties. Read our criteria here: www.commoncause.org/resources/po...
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— Common Cause (@commoncause.org) August 12, 2025 at 12:01 PM
Common Cause's six fairness criteria for mid-decade redistricting are:
- Proportionality: Any mid-decade redistricting should be a targeted response proportional to the threat posed by mid-decade gerrymanders in other states.
- Public participation: Any redistricting must include meaningful public participation, whether through ballot initiatives or open public processes.
- Racial equity: Redistricting must not further racial discrimination or dilute the political voice of Black, Latino, Indigenous, Asian American, and Pacific Islander, or other communities of color.
- Federal reform: Leaders pursuing mid-decade redistricting must publicly endorse the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, including provisions banning mid-decade redistricting and partisan gerrymandering.
- Endorsement of independent redistricting: Leaders pursuing mid-decade redistricting must publicly endorse citizen-led independent redistricting commissions as the long-term solution.
- Time-limited: Any new redistricting maps must expire following the 2030 Census, which counts all people in our country, and be replaced through the regular decennial redistricting process.
"We will not sit idly by while political leaders manipulate voting maps to entrench their power and subvert our democracy," Common Cause president and CEO Virginia Kase Solomón said in a statement. "But neither will we call for unilateral political disarmament in the face of authoritarian tactics that undermine fair representation."
"We have established a fairness criteria that we will use to evaluate all countermeasures so we can respond to the most urgent threats to fair representation while holding all actors to the same principled standard: people—not parties—first," she added.
Common Cause's fairness criteria come amid the ongoing standoff between Republicans trying to gerrymander Texas' congressional map and Democratic lawmakers who fled the state in a bid to stymie a vote on the measure. Texas state senators on Tuesday approved the proposed map despite a walkout by most of their Democratic colleagues.
Leaders of several Democrat-controlled states, most notably California, have threatened retaliatory redistricting.
"This moment is about more than responding to a single threat—it's about building the movement for lasting reform," Kase Solomón asserted. "This is not an isolated political tactic; it is part of a broader march toward authoritarianism, dismantling people-powered democracy, and stripping away the people's ability to have a political voice and say in how they are governed."
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'These Officials Abused Their Power': Texas Woman Unlawfully Arrested for Murder Over Abortion Seeks Justice
"Texas law is clear: A pregnant person cannot be arrested and prosecuted for getting an abortion. No one is above the law, including officials entrusted with enforcing it," said an ACLU attorney.
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When officials in Starr County, Texas arrested Lizelle Gonzalez in 2022 and charged her with murder for having a medication abortion—despite state law clearly prohibiting the prosecution of women for abortion care—she spent three days in jail, away from her children, and the highly publicized arrest was "deeply traumatizing."
Now, said her lawyers at the ACLU in court filings on Tuesday, officials in the county sheriff's and district attorney's offices must be held accountable for knowingly subjecting Gonzalez to wrongful prosecution.
Starr County District Attorney Gocha Ramirez ultimately dismissed the charge against Gonzalez, said the ACLU, but the Texas bar's investigation into Ramirez—which found multiple instances of misconduct related to Gonzalez's homicide charge—resulted in only minor punishment. Ramirez had to pay a small fine of $1,250 and was given one year of probated suspension.
"Without real accountability, Starr County's district attorney—and any other law enforcement actor—will not be deterred from abusing their power to unlawfully target people because of their personal beliefs, rather than the law," said the ACLU.
The state bar found that Ramirez allowed Gonzalez's indictment to go forward despite the fact that her homicide charge was "known not to be supported by probable cause."
Ramirez had denied that he was briefed on the facts of the case before it was prosecuted by his office, but the state bar "determined he was consulted by a prosecutor in his office beforehand and permitted it to go forward."
"Without real accountability, Starr County's district attorney—and any other law enforcement actor—will not be deterred from abusing their power to unlawfully target people because of their personal beliefs, rather than the law."
Sarah Corning, an attorney at the ACLU of Texas, said the prosecutors and law enforcement officers "ignored Texas law when they wrongfully arrested Lizelle Gonzalez for ending her pregnancy."
"They shattered her life in South Texas, violated her rights, and abused the power they swore to uphold," said Corning. "Texas law is clear: A pregnant person cannot be arrested and prosecuted for getting an abortion. No one is above the law, including officials entrusted with enforcing it."
The district attorney's office sought to have the ACLU's case dismissed in July 2024, raising claims of legal immunity.
A court denied Ramirez's motion, and the ACLU's discovery process that followed revealed "a coordinated effort between the Starr County sheriff's office and district attorney's office to violate Ms. Gonzalez's rights."
The officials' "wanton disregard for the rule of law and erroneous belief of their own invincibility is a frightening deviation from the offices' purposes: to seek justice," said Cecilia Garza, a partner at the law firm Garza Martinez, who is joining the ACLU in representing Gonzalez. "I am proud to represent Ms. Gonzalez in her fight for justice and redemption, and our team will not allow these abuses to continue in Starr County or any other county in the state of Texas."
Gonzalez's fight for justice comes as a wrongful death case in Texas—filed by an "anti-abortion legal terrorist" on behalf of a man whose girlfriend use medication from another state to end her pregnancy—moves forward, potentially jeopardizing access to abortion pills across the country.
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