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For Immediate Release
June, 02 2011, 10:43am EDT
Contact:
Michael Earls
(202) 261-2388
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The Battle Against Immigrants Continues: Lamar Smith Leads Another Political Showcase Trial to Demonize Immigrants
WASHINGTON
There he goes again.
This time, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX)--the GOP's top political strategist for Latino outreach--is taking on asylum-seekers fleeing persecution and seeking freedom in America. Today, Smith's House Judiciary Committee is marking up the "Keep Our Communities Safe Act," H.R. 1932. This made-for-TV show trial/hearing has little to do with keeping communities safe. It has everything to do with trying to keep Republican legislative districts safe for re-election by waving the flag of fear against immigrants.
In typical Smith fashion, he will pretend that his legislation is simply about protecting the public from dangerous predators. But the truth is, his legislation goes well beyond targeting violent offenders, to also authorize prolonged and even permanent detention of asylum-seekers and long-term legal permanent residents who pose absolutely no danger to society.
Following is a statement from Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America's Voice:
"Immigrant and Latino voters are tired of immigration legislation that makes the system worse, and they're tired of being called a bunch of criminals by Smith and his crew. It's strange to me that House Republican leadership would continue to let Smith and his side-kicks Elton Gallegly (R-CA) and Steve King (R-IA) run the show, when the Party is at a crisis point with Latino voters. If they needed any more evidence, Sharron Angle's abysmal 8% showing with Latinos in 2010 should have been enough to convince the GOP that following the Smith approach to immigration politics is downright deadly for the Republican Party.
"Rep. Smith may think he's fooling the public by focusing on dangerous criminals in his remarks, but Latino and immigrant voters will see through his distortions and the GOP's demonization of immigrants. This legislation goes well beyond the stated problem, and would sweep up refugees and other lawfully-residing immigrants in the process.
"If Smith were really interested in addressing the problem with certain countries refusing to accept deportees, he would explore ideas like the new DOS and DHS collaboration to compel better international cooperation by imposing stiffer sanctions on such countries. Clearly, he's not interested in constructive solutions, he's interested in tightening the screws on all immigrants."
America's Voice -- Harnessing the power of American voices and American values to win common sense immigration reform. The mission of America's Voice is to realize the promise of workable and humane comprehensive immigration reform. Our goal is to build the public support and create the political momentum for reforms that will transform a dysfunctional immigration system that does not work into a regulatory system that does.
LATEST NEWS
'A Welcome Relief': Transportation Department Suspends Trump-Era LNG 'Bomb Trains' Rule
While celebrating the forthcoming review, campaigners also argued that "Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg should put a new rule in place that restores the ban on LNG by rail once and for all."
Sep 01, 2023
Green groups on Friday applauded as the Biden administration suspended a Trump-era rule allowing liquefied natural gas to be transported by train, delivering another blow to New Fortress Energy's proposal to ship climate-wrecking LNG by rail from Wyalusing, Pennsylvania to Gibbstown, New Jersey.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA)—in coordination with the Federal Railroad Administration, another U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) agency—announced in the Federal Register on Friday that it is amending the Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMR) to suspend authorization of LNG rail transportation.
PHMSA had previously finalized the rule in June 2020, complying with an April 2019 executive order from then-President Donald Trump, who went on a deregulatory spree during his four years in office and is now seeking a second term in 2024.
Rail transportation of LNG has not yet occurred "and there is considerable uncertainty regarding whether any would occur in the time it takes for PHMSA to consider potential modifications to existing, pertinent HMR requirements," the DOT agency noted. The suspension "guarantees no such transportation will occur before its companion rulemaking has concluded or June 30, 2025, whichever is earlier."
Food & Water Watch New Jersey state director Matt Smith said that "suspending the outrageously dangerous Trump bomb train rule is a welcome relief to the communities that would be turned into sacrifice zones for a billionaire hedge fund tycoon to bet big on dirty gas exports. The victory goes to the powerful grassroots movement fighting back against the dangerous New Fortress export scheme and the enormous climate threat associated with the expansion of fracking and LNG."
The suspension follows the DOT in April denying New Fortress' permit request for an export facility on the Delaware River in Gibbstown—a move that Smith had said at the time was "long overdue, and provides some measure of protection for the communities across South Jersey."
Smith stressed Friday that "this victory can, and must, go deeper. The Biden administration should take action to eliminate the threat of fracked gas bomb trains entirely, and it must do more to stop new fossil fuel projects across the country."
The administration of Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy "must do more to stop the dirty energy projects that are being proposed across the state," he added. "If our political leaders believe their own rhetoric about the climate crisis, then they must take appropriate action—and that begins by stopping new fossil fuel proposals immediately."
Natural Resources Defense Council senior attorney Kimberly Ong similarly celebrated the development—particularly for frontline communities of the New Fortress project—while also calling for additional action by the Biden administration.
"People of Pennsylvania and New Jersey living near key rail lines would have faced damage to their health, families, and homes in the event of a derailment," Ong said. "After pausing the rule, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg should put a new rule in place that restores the ban on LNG by rail once and for all. That would finally put an end to the threat to communities around Gibbstown and other communities targeted by similar dangerous projects."
"New Fortress Energy's proposed LNG project endangers nearly 2 million people living near truck and rail transport routes," she pointed out. "LNG is a volatile substance that can lead to fires and even explosions. The rail disaster in East Palestine, Ohio earlier this year underscores how serious a train derailment involving hazardous substances can be."
The February derailment and resulting environmental and public health concerns in Ohio have generated nationwide calls for stricter rail safety policies and inspired the introduction of multiple bills in Congress.
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Watchdog Calls On Judge With Pharma Investments to Recuse From Drug Pricing Case
"Any chance that Judge Rose evaluates this case in his own personal financial interest, rather than by the letter of the law, is a significant threat to judicial ethics."
Sep 01, 2023
A federal judge who owns stock in Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, and AstraZeneca is set to preside over corporate lobbying groups' case against allowing Medicare to negotiate medicine prices directly with drugmakers.
The stock positions of Thomas Rose—a George W. Bush-appointed senior judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio—were highlighted by Revolving Door Project (RDP) researchers earlier this week as the Biden administration named the first 10 drugs that will be subject to direct price negotiations with Medicare.
On Friday, RDP called on Rose to recuse himself from Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce v. Becerra, a case that poses a threat to the Biden administration's popular effort to curb drug costs and rein in Big Pharma's price-setting power. The Ohio Chamber of Commerce, Michigan Chamber of Commerce, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce are also plaintiffs in the case.
"The Chamber of Commerce's case against the Inflation Reduction Act, should it succeed, could immediately halt the progress on prescription drug prices that the IRA has been working towards for the past year," Ananya Kalahasti, a research assistant at RDP, said Friday. "In a case as high-stakes as this, any chance that Judge Rose evaluates this case in his own personal financial interest, rather than by the letter of the law, is a significant threat to judicial ethics."
In a letter to Rose, the Revolving Door Project argued that the judge could be in violation of the official Code of Conduct for U.S. judges if he oversees the price-negotiation case while having holdings in Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca.
Johnson & Johnson's blood clot medication Xarelto and AstraZeneca's Type 2 diabetes drug Farxiga are on the Biden administration's initial list of drugs set to face price negotiations with Medicare. The companies charge far higher prices in the U.S. for those medications than in other countries.
"Canon 2 of the Code of Conduct states, 'A Judge Should Avoid Impropriety and the Appearance of Impropriety in All Activities,' acknowledging that even the appearance of improper incentives that could influence a judge's decisionmaking can be deeply harmful for public trust in government," RDP noted in its letter. "Your most recent financial disclosure reports show that you hold $15,001 to $50,000 of stock in Johnson & Johnson, $15,001 to $50,000 of stock in Moderna, and $1 to $15,000 of stock in AstraZeneca."
"Holding stock in two companies that will be subject to the first round of price negotiations while presiding over a case which may result in the prevention or delay of those negotiations is clearly an instance in which the judge has an 'interest that could be affected substantially by the outcome of the proceeding,'" RDP added, quoting from Canon 3 of the Code of Conduct. "Given the ethics concerns that your apparent conflict of financial interests in the pharmaceutical industry raise, we call on you to recuse yourself from Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce et al. v. Becerra et al. immediately."
Filed in July, the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce's lawsuit is part of a broader legal campaign by industry groups and pharmaceutical giants to prevent Medicare from negotiating drug prices, something it was previously barred from doing under federal law.
Pharmaceutical companies and industry groups have thus far filed a total of eight lawsuits over the impending price negotiations, which are slated to begin for the first batch of drugs later this year and end in August 2024.
"Long-standing legal precedent is no obstacle for this billionaire-friendly Supreme Court, and it seems that given its choice of representation, Big Pharma is prepared for the cases to get that far."
As Bloomberg Lawsummarized, the legal challenges "make various constitutional claims, including that the negotiation process violates the Fifth Amendment's prohibition on taking private property without just compensation and the Eighth Amendment's excessive fines clause, based on the excise tax pharmaceutical companies face if they refuse to comply with the negotiations."
Nicholas Bagley, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, told Bloomberg Law that "the drug companies are throwing spaghetti at the wall, and they're going to hope that some of it sticks."
Bagley argued that the IRA's corporate opponents are "really facing an uphill challenge, because there's an act of Congress that establishes this program."
But Kalahasti and RDP research intern Will Royce stressed in The American Prospect earlier this week that some legal experts have been "quick to point out that long-standing legal precedent is no obstacle for this billionaire-friendly Supreme Court, and it seems that given its choice of representation, Big Pharma is prepared for the cases to get that far."
"Who is helping Big Pharma in the courts? In Merck and Bristol Myers' respective cases, it's the conservative law firm Jones Day, which famously represented both Trump campaigns, supplied many Trump administration officials, and had a hand in Trump's Supreme Court nominations," Kalahasti and Royce observed. "On the case for both companies is Yaakov Roth, who successfully argued for the gutting of the administrative state in West Virginia v. EPA."
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Trump's Last-Minute Attack on Old-Growth Trees Was Illegal, Judge Rules
The federal judge said that the "highly uncertain effects of this project, when considered in light of its massive scope and setting, raise substantial questions about whether this project will have a significant effect on the environment."
Sep 01, 2023
Two days before he left office, a political appointee for President Donald Trump removed protections from old-growth trees in Oregon and Washington. On Thursday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew Hallman ruled that decision was illegal.
Hallman vacated the U.S. Forest Service's finding that the change would have no impact, and ordered the agency to carry out a full environmental impact statement of the proposal, as The Associated Press reported.
"It's a shame that we needed a court to tell the Forest Service that they must follow the bedrock environmental laws that have been in place for decades," Jamie Dawson of Greater Hells Canyon Council said in response to the ruling. "Completing a full public process and taking a hard look at the environmental impacts of their actions is the least they should be doing, especially when considering such an impactful decision."
"The Forest Service rushed through a politically motivated rule change to log the most ecologically important trees left on our landscape."
The last-minute Trump administration rollback targeted something called the Eastside Screens. These were put in place in the mid-1990s to protect the Pacific Northwest's old-growth forests after decades of logging had put them at risk, Oregon Wild explained. They prohibited loggers from targeting any trees east of the cascades larger than 21 inches in diameter. The screens protected trees in six national forests in eastern Oregon and Washington, comprising more than seven million acres of public land.
While these trees only make up around 3% of trees in the region, they provide vital habitat for wildlife, and recent research indicates that they store 42% of the forests' carbon, playing an important role in combating the climate crisis.
"The Forest Service rushed through a politically motivated rule change to log the most ecologically important trees left on our landscape," Chris Krupp of WildEarth Guardians said in a statement. "Sadly, this is in line with their well-earned reputation for putting logging before the need to address the climate and biodiversity crises."
WildEarth Guardians and Greater Hells Canyon Council were two of the groups that sued to reverse the rollback on June 14, 2022, along with Oregon Wild, Central Oregon LandWatch, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, and the Sierra Club. The groups also had the support of the Nez Pierce Tribe.
In changing the rule, the Trump administration argued that it was protecting the forests from wildfires.
"We're looking to create landscapes that withstand and recover more quickly from wildfire, drought, and other disturbances," Ochoco National Forest supervisor Shane Jeffries told Oregon Public Broadcasting at the time, according to AP. "We're not looking to take every grand fir and white fir out of the forests."
However, in the years since the rule change, the Forest Service has proposed logging larger trees on thousands of acres of Oregon forest, including previously untouched forests in Hells Canyon National Recreation Area.
"Individually and collectively, these projects will damage wildlife habitat, contribute to climate change, deplete important carbon stores, and harm other environmental, social, and cultural values at a time when we simply can't afford to move in the wrong direction," Oregon Wild wrote.
In their lawsuit, the groups said that the last-minute rule change violated the National Environmental Protection Act, National Forest Management Act, and the Endangered Species Act by failing to take into account its impacts and not allowing the public enough time to comment.
The judge agreed.
"The highly uncertain effects of this project, when considered in light of its massive scope and setting, raise substantial questions about whether this project will have a significant effect on the environment," Hallman wrote, as AP reported.
The green groups behind the suit are pleased with the ruling, but also think the Biden administration could do more to protect forests, in line with an Earth Day Executive Order to take stock of the nation's remaining old-growth forests and develop a plan to protect them from wildfires and other threats.
"We call on the Biden administration to stop defending this illegal Trump rule change," Rob Klavins of Oregon Wild said in a statement.
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