January, 05 2012, 09:42am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
AIUSA: Sharon Singh, (202) 509-8194, or ssingh@aiusa.org
NRCAT: Samantha Friedman, office: (202) 265-3000, cell: (202) 215-9260 or Samantha@rabinowitz-dorf.com
CCR: Jen Nessel, (212) 614-6449 or JNessel@ccrjustice.org
WAT: Jeremy Varon, (732) 979-3119 or jvaron@aol.com
Broad Coalition Opposes NDAA and Calls on President Obama to Keep His Promise and Shutter Guantanamo Bay Now
Groups will mark 10th anniversary of first detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay with rally, human chain starting at White House; military, legal, religious and 9/11 families among speakers’ list
WASHINGTON
A broad coalition of human rights groups and other like-minded organizations will mark the 10th anniversary of the first detainees being jailed at the U.S.-controlled detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Wednesday, January 11, 2012, by holding a rally at Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., beginning at 12 p.m. Participants oppose the detention provisions in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that violate human rights and are urging President Barack Obama to keep his promise and shut down the detention facility.
Speakers at the rally include Colonel Morris Davis, executive director of the Crimes of War Education Project, who previously served as the chief prosecutor for the office of military commissions at Guantanamo Bay; Talat Hamdani, mother of Salman Hamdani, an emergency medical technician who died in the September 11, 2001 attacks while helping people at the Twin Towers in New York City and Ramzi Kassem, an attorney who represents Guantanamo and Bagram detainees and supervises the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project at CUNY School of Law.
After the rally, the demonstrators will march down Pennsylvania Avenue, led by 171 people in orange jumpsuits and black hoods, representing the men still detained at Guantanamo. The marchers will continue all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, holding brief rallies at four locations to dramatically demonstrate the chain of responsibility that connects the White House, the Department of Justice, the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court.
Prior to the rally and demonstration, there will be a press briefing from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. at the National Press Club (First Amendment room), with Rear Admiral John Hutson, an early critic of the military commission system and the treatment of detainees as one of the featured speakers.
Media is encouraged to attend and cover the rally and vigil. Details below:
What: 10th anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo Bay prison -
10 years and counting - with a rally and human chain
Date: Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Time: Rally: 12:00 p.m.
Human chain vigil: 1:00 p.m.
Location: Lafayette Park, Pennsylvania Ave. and Jackson Place, NW, Washington, D.C. 20006
For a list of comments from the January 11 coalition members, please go to www.nrcat.org/gitmo2012_quotes.
Participating groups include Amnesty International USA, Center for Constitutional Rights, National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Witness Against Torture, 8th Day Center for Justice, Appeal for Justice, Arab American Association of New York, Backbone Campaign, Baltimore-Washington Area Peace Council, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Bradley Manning Support Network, Casa Esperanza, Catholic Worker, Chicago Committee to Free the Cuban 5, Code Pink, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Courage to Resist, Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility, Fellowship of Reconciliation, High Road for Human Rights, Human Rights USA, International Justice Network, Islamic Circle of North America-Council for Social Justice, International Federation for Human Rights, Just Foreign Policy, Latin America Solidarity Coalition, Liberty Coalition, Midwest Anti War Mobilization, Muslim Peace Coalition, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms,Natural Solutions Foundation, No More Guantanamos, North Carolina Stop Torture Now Coalition, Occupy Washington DC, Pakistan Solidarity Network, Pax Christi USA, Peace & Justice Center,Physicians for Human Rights, Project Salaam, Quaker Initiative to End Torture, Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, Refuge Media Project, School of the Americas Watch, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, South Asian Americans Leading Together, Texans for Peace, The Rutherford Institute, Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition, United National Antiwar Coalition, United Nations Association-USA East Bay Chapter, U.S. Peace Council, Veterans for Peace, Veterans for Peace, NY Chapter 34, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, War Criminals Watch, War Resisters League, WarIsACrime.org and World Can't Wait.
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'MAGA Power Grab': US Supreme Court OKs 2026 Map That Texas GOP Rigged for Trump
One journalist who covers voting rights called the decision upholding the new districts "yet another example" of how the high court "has greenlit the many undemocratic schemes of Trump and his party."
Dec 04, 2025
The US Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority on Thursday gave Texas Republicans a green light to use a political map redrawn at the request of President Donald Trump to help the GOP retain control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.
Since Texas lawmakers passed and GOP Gov. Greg Abbott signed the gerrymandering bill in August, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his constituents have responded with updated congressional districts to benefit Democrats, while Republican legislators in Indiana, Missouri, and North Carolina—under pressure from the president—have pursued new maps for their states.
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"Texas is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that the district court committed at least two serious errors," the Supreme Court's majority wrote. "First, the district court failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith by construing ambiguous direct and circumstantial evidence against the Legislature."
"Second, the district court failed to draw a dispositive or near-dispositive adverse inference against respondents even though they did not produce a viable alternative map that met the state's avowedly partisan goals," the majority continued. "The district court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections."
Texas clearly did a racial gerrymander, which is illegal.A district court found that Texas did a racial gerrymander, rejecting the new map because it is illegal.But the Supreme Court reversed it.Because? Must assume the gerrymanderers were acting in good faith (despite the evidence otherwise).
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— Nicholas Grossman (@nicholasgrossman.bsky.social) December 4, 2025 at 6:18 PM
The court's three liberals—Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor—dissented. Contrasting the three-month process that led to the map initially being struck down and the majority's move to reverse "that judgment based on its perusal, over a holiday weekend, of a cold paper record," Kagan wrote for the trio that "we are a higher court than the district court, but we are not a better one when it comes to making such a fact-based decision."
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Simply amazing that the Supreme Court declared an end to legal race discrimination in the affirmative action case two years ago and now allows overt racism in both immigration arrests and redistricting.Using race to help minorities? Bad. Using it to discriminate against them? Very, very good.
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— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) December 4, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Top Democrats in the state and country swiftly condemned the court's majority. Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin called it "wrong—both morally and legally," and argued that "once again, the Supreme Court gave Trump exactly what he wanted: a rigged map to help Republicans avoid accountability in the midterms for turning their backs on the American people."
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Texas House Minority Leader Gene Wu (D-137) declared that "the Supreme Court failed Texas voters today, and they failed American democracy. This is what the end of the Voting Rights Act looks like: courts that won't protect minority communities even when the evidence is staring them in the face."
"I'm angry about this ruling. Every Texan who testified against these maps should be angry. Every community that fought for generations to build political power and watched Republicans try to gerrymander it away should be angry. But anger without action is just noise, and Democrats are taking action to fight back," he continued, pointing to California's passage of Proposition 50 and organizing in other states, including Illinois, New York, and Virginia. "A nationwide movement is being built that says if Republicans want to play this game, Democrats will play it better."
SCOTUS conservative justices upholding Texas gerrymander is yet another example of how Roberts court has greenlit the many undemocratic schemes of Trump and his partyThey’ve now ruled for Trump and his allies in 90 percent of shadow docket opinions www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
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— Ari Berman (@ariberman.bsky.social) December 4, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Christina Harvey, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, said in a statement that "the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court just handed Republicans five new seats in Congress, rubber-stamping Texas Republicans' MAGA power grab. Make no mistake: This isn't about fair representation for Texans. It is about sidelining voters of color and helping Trump and Republican politicians dodge accountability for their unpopular agenda."
"In America, voters get to choose their representatives, not the other way around," she stressed. "But this captured court undermines this basic democratic principle at every turn. We deserve a Supreme Court that protects the freedom to vote and strengthens democracy instead of enabling partisan politics. It's time for Democrats in Congress to get serious about plans for Supreme Court reform once Trump leaves office, including term limits, an enforceable code of ethics, and expanding the court."
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