SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Ask Your Senators to Request an Ethics Committee Investigation of Senator Dianne Feinstein Now
WASHINGTON
Shortly after San Francisco's then-Mayor Feinstein married private equity financier Richard C. Blum in 1980, those who knew them called theirs "a marriage of the public and private sectors."
When Blum spent a reported $3 million in a failed attempt to make his wife Governor of California in 1990, he pledged that if she were elected he would do everything necessary to avoid "even the appearance of conflict [of interest]," but the couple has consistently been dogged with concerns about malfeasance.
Although Feinstein lost her gubernatorial bid to Republican Pete Wilson, she soon took his seat in the U.S. Senate. Working across the aisle, her power rapidly grew along with her husband's diversified investments and their mutual wealth.
* As Chair and ranking member of the Military Construction and Appropriations Subcommittee, Senator Feinstein appears to have steered contracts to companies controlled by her husband.2 Blum has profited handsomely from military contracts.
* In 2009, Senator Feinstein introduced legislation to provide $25 billion in taxpayer money to the FDIC after it gave Blum's CBRE real estate company a contract to sell foreclosed properties at unusually high rates.
* As a Regent of the University of California, Blum appears to have profited from contracts with the UC-run nuclear weapons laboratory at Los Alamos.
* In the summer of 2012, the U.S. Postal Service awarded Blum's CBRE company the exclusive contract to sell its portfolio of public properties. Feinstein's office denies any influence in the awarding of the contract.
Ask your Senators to support an investigation by clicking here.
Please forward this email widely to like-minded friends.
RootsAction is dedicated to galvanizing people who are committed to economic fairness, equal rights for all, civil liberties, environmental protection -- and defunding endless wars. We mobilize on these issues no matter whether Democrats or Republicans control Washington D.C.
LATEST NEWS
'No More Endless Wars,' Maduro Says to American People, Calling for 'Peace' in Face of Trump Threats
"No more unjust wars. No more Libya. No more Afghanistan. Long live peace," said the president of Venezuela.
Nov 14, 2025
Just as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced new branding for the US military campaign in Latin America, now known as "Operation Souther Spear," the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, on Thursday offered a message of peace directly to the people of the United States as he warned against further conflict.
In an exchange with a CNN correspondent during a rally for the nation's youth in Caracas, Maduro urged President Donald Trump not to prolong the region's military engagement. Asked if he had a message for the people of the United States, Maduro said in Spanish: “To unite for the peace of the continent. No more endless wars. No more unjust wars. No more Libya. No more Afghanistan.”
Asked if he had anything to say directly to Trump, Maduro replied in English: “Yes peace, yes peace.”
CNN: What is your message to the people of the United States?
Maduro: No more endless wars, no more unjust wars, no more Libya, no more Afghanistan.
CNN: Do you have a message for President Trump?
Maduro: My message is yes, peace. Yes, peace. pic.twitter.com/GpuRU2hqSG
— Acyn (@Acyn) November 14, 2025
Hegseth's rebranding of operations in Latin America, which has included a series of extrajudicial murders against alleged drug runners both in the Caribbean and in the Pacific, also arrived on Thursday.
He said that attacks on boats, which have now claimed the lives of at least 80 people, are part of President Donald Trump's targeting of "narco-terrorists." However, the administration has produced no evidence proving the allegations against these individuals nor shared with the American people the legal basis for the extrajudicial killings that deprive victims of due process.
With a significant military buildup that includes the world's largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R.Ford, fears have grown that Trump is considering a wider military attack on targets inside Venezuelan territory, despite having no congressional authorization for such use of force against a nation with which the US is not at war.
CBS News reports that Trump has been briefed on possible military "options" for an assault on Venezuela, while anti-war voices continue to warn against any such moves.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Another Giveaway to Big Oil as Trump Wrenches Open 13 Million Acres of Arctic for Drilling
"The Trump administration is trying to take us back in time with its reckless fossil fuels agenda."
Nov 14, 2025
The Trump administration on Thursday killed Biden-era rules that protected around 13 million acres of the western Arctic from fossil fuel drilling, another giveaway to the industry that helped bankroll the president's campaign.
The decision by the US Interior Department, led by billionaire fossil fuel industry ally Doug Burgum, targets the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A). Last year, the Biden administration finalized rules that shielded more than half of the 23-million-acre NPR-A from drilling.
Conservationists were quick to condemn the repeal of the rules as a move that prioritizes the profits of oil and gas corporations over wildlife, pristine land, and the climate.
Monica Scherer, senior director of campaigns at Alaska Wilderness League, ripped the administration for ignoring the hundreds of thousands of people who engaged in the public comment process and spoke out against the gutting of NPR-A protections.
“Today’s actions make one thing painfully clear: this administration never had any intention of listening to the American people," Scherer said Thursday. "By dismantling these protections, Interior isn’t ‘restoring common sense,’ it’s sidelining science and traditional knowledge, silencing communities, and putting irreplaceable lands and wildlife at risk."
Earthjustice attorney Erik Grafe called the administration's weakening of Arctic protections "another example of how the Trump administration is trying to take us back in time with its reckless fossil fuels agenda."
"This would sweep aside common-sense regulations aimed at more responsibly managing the Western Arctic’s irreplaceable lands and wildlife for future generations," said Grafe. "It rewinds the clock to regulations last updated in 1977. This is no way to secure our future.”
"Where others see the most ecologically intact landscape in the United States, the Interior Department sees another American treasure poised for ruination."
Thursday's move came less than a month after the Trump administration announced plans to open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling. At the time, Burgum declared, "Alaska is open for business."
ConocoPhillips, the oil and gas giant behind the much-decried Willow project that the Biden administration approved in 2023, is among the possible beneficiaries of the Trump Interior Department's decision to roll back drilling protections in the western Arctic.
Inside Climate News reported earlier this week that ConocoPhillips "has applied to extend ice roads and well pads farther west into the Arctic wilderness beyond its Willow oil project."
"The company also wants to build roads to the south of Willow, where it would use heavy-duty equipment to thump the ground with seismic testing searching for crude," the outlet added.
Bobby McEnaney, director of land conservation at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Thursday that the Trump administration's latest attack on Arctic protections "is nothing more than a giveaway to the oil and gas industry."
"Weakening protections is reckless, and it threatens to erase the very landscapes Congress sought to safeguard," said McEnaney. "Where others see the most ecologically intact landscape in the United States, the Interior Department sees another American treasure poised for ruination.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Time to Clear House': Sunrise Movement Launches Major Primary Effort Against Corporate Dems
"For far too long, Democratic leadership has failed to meet the moment," the leader of the youth-led climate movement said.
Nov 13, 2025
Amid growing outrage over corporate Democrats' failure to meaningfully stand up against President Donald Trump’s authoritarianism, Sunrise Movement on Thursday launched what it called it "most ambitious" primary campaign to replace feckless incumbents with progressives.
"For far too long, Democratic leadership has failed to meet the moment; it’s time to clear house,” Sunrise Movement executive director Aru Shiney-Ajay said in a statement.
“I’m extremely excited about the crop of candidates running in 2026," Shiney-Ajay added. "This year, we have an unprecedented opportunity to elect a new generation of leaders who are challenging our broken political system and fighting for a livable and affordable country.”
Like many progressive groups, Sunrise Movement has expressed its growing frustration with most congressional Democrats' acquiescence to Trump and Republicans' growing authoritarianism. The youth-led, climate-focused organization was particularly incensed by Senate Democrats' recent capitulation in the government shutdown fight.
"Why the hell would Democrats cave with nothing for the working people? When millions are losing healthcare?" Sunrise asked last week. "If you cave now, you don’t deserve to lead, you deserve to be replaced."
To that end, Sunrise says its new campaign "will include a nationwide field, protest, and communications program targeting over a dozen congressional primaries."
"Sunrise organizers and volunteers will mobilize thousands of young people to knock on doors, make calls, and take direct action to elect progressive champions ready to challenge the Democratic Party’s complacency and reimagine what Democratic leadership can look like," the group continued.
"In the 2026 general election, Sunrise will lead one of the largest youth electoral efforts in the country, organizing students on campuses across the country to ensure young voters turn out to reject authoritarianism at the ballot box and are prepared to mobilize in defense of election results if Trump or his allies attempt to subvert democracy," Sunrise added.
The new Sunrise campaign comes as progressive groups such as Indivisible, MoveOn, and Our Revolution and some Democratic House lawmakers including progressives Ro Khanna (Calif.), Mark Pocan (Wis.), and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) are urging Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to step down in the wake of the shutdown surrender.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular