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For Immediate Release
February, 24 2016, 10:15am EDT
Contact:
Scott Swenson 202 736-5713;Dale Eisman, 202 736-5788
'Put Country Before Party'
Common Cause Urges Senate GOP to Reverse Course on Supreme Court Vacancy
WASHINGTON
Common Cause joined other advocacy organizations on Wednesday in calling on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans to reverse their decision to block any consideration of President Obama's nominee to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
"The letter from all 11 Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee to Sen. McConnell calling for maximum obstruction - not even providing the courtesy of a hearing to a Supreme Court nominee - was an outrageous pledge to desert their constitutional duty," said Stephen Spaulding, Common Cause's senior policy counsel and legal director.
"Keeping a vacancy empty on the highest court in the land for nearly two full court terms is unprecedented, extraordinarily reckless, and shows a blatant disrespect of the rule of law, the third branch of government and the American people," Spaulding added.
"We call on the Senate Republicans to reconsider their position and provide the courtesy of fair consideration to whomever is nominated, and put country before party."
Spaulding's remarks came at a Capitol Hill news conference at midday. Later on Wednesday, a coalition including Common Cause, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Color of Change, MoveOn.org Civic Action, Every Voice, Daily Kos, Demand Progress, People For the American Way, CREDO Action, UltraViolet Action, NextGen Climate, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) delivered more than 1.3 million petition signatures to senators, urging quick action when Obama submits a nominee.
Common Cause is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to upholding the core values of American democracy. We work to create open, honest, and accountable government that serves the public interest; promote equal rights, opportunity, and representation for all; and empower all people to make their voices heard in the political process.
(202) 833-1200LATEST NEWS
Israel to Blame for 56% of 22,600+ Civilians Killed by Explosive Weapons Globally Last Year
"What is particularly alarming is that this harm has become persistent across conflicts worldwide, risking the normalization of civilian suffering on a massive scale," said the report's lead author.
Jun 10, 2026
While the overall number of civilians killed by explosive weapons decreased by 21% last year, largely due to Israel scaling back attacks on the Gaza Strip and Lebanon in response to ceasefire deals, "the majority—56%—of all global civilian fatalities in 2025 could be attributed to Israeli armed forces, most of which occurred in Palestine," according to an annual report released Wednesday.
The report is the latest publication from the Explosive Weapons Monitor, a research initiative of the International Network of Explosive Weapons, whose members include nongovernmental organizations around the world such as Action on Armed Violence, Center for Civilians in Conflict, Human Rights Watch, Humanity & Inclusion (HI), PAX, and Save the Children.
Based on data from Armed Conflict Location & Event Data as well as Insecurity Insight, the monitor found that there were at least 22,616 civilian fatalities from explosive weapons across 65 countries and territories last year.
In addition to Lebanon and Palestine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen were "heavily impacted," the publication says. Countries' armed forces were responsible for the vast majority—85%—of all incidents that reportedly affected civilians or civilian infrastructure last year.
"The number of attacks in which explosive weapons affected humanitarian aid operations, aid workers, and camps increased by 52%," to 2,541, last year—and while they were documented in 17 countries and territories, "about 90% of all incidents were recorded in Palestine," the report notes.
Attacks on education increased by 64%, to 1,416; they occurred in 27 places, but were most common in Myanmar, Palestine, and Ukraine. The report also highlights continued attacks on healthcare facilities and workers (1,272 incidents in 22 places), and on food and water systems (1,082 incidents in 15 places).
"Every destroyed school, hospital, market, water system, or humanitarian convoy represents far more than damaged infrastructure—it represents opportunities lost, futures disrupted, and communities pushed further from recovery," said Alma Taslidžan, HI's disarmament advocacy manager, in a statement.
"Long after the explosions end, civilians continue to live with the consequences of disrupted healthcare, interrupted education, damaged livelihoods, and the daily challenge of rebuilding their lives," Taslidžan emphasized. "For many, the consequences of explosive weapons become part of everyday life and suffering for years to come."
Explore the report's data and view country-specific analysis in a new interactive dashboard:➡️ explosiveweaponsmonitor.org/global-figur...
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— Explosive Weapons Monitor (@weaponsmonitor.bsky.social) June 10, 2026 at 8:29 AM
The report argues that "it remains a critical humanitarian priority" to bring the 2022 Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians from the Humanitarian Consequences Arising From the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas into greater effect.
The publication also calls out eight countries—Cambodia, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Somalia, South Korea, Turkey, and the United States—that endorsed the declaration but whose armed forces reportedly used explosive weapons that caused civilian harm in 2025.
"The devastating impact of explosive weapons on civilians is both foreseeable and preventable. Yet across numerous conflicts, their continued use has entrenched a pattern of civilian harm that is increasingly treated as routine rather than exceptional," said Katherine Young, the report's lead author and the monitor's research and monitoring manager, in a statement.
"When explosive weapons are used in populated areas, civilians suffer," Young stressed. "What is particularly alarming is that this harm has become persistent across conflicts worldwide, risking the normalization of civilian suffering on a massive scale."
The release of the report comes amid renewed Israeli attacks on Lebanon—which intensified after the United States and Israel launched an illegal war on Iran in February, and have continued despite a new ceasefire agreed to in April—as well as on Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
"This weekend, eight children were reported killed and a further 17 injured in five different locations in the Gaza Strip, while in the West Bank, a 7-month-old boy died after being shot by Israeli forces in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron," said Edouard Beigbeder, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, on Wednesday.
"We cannot let this become the new normal—children losing their lives to violence should cause global outrage and must be condemned at every level," he continued. "UNICEF calls on the Israeli authorities to take decisive action to protect all Palestinian children. Authorities must ensure transparent, credible, and robust investigations, as well as accountability whenever children are killed or maimed."
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Israeli forces have slaughtered at least 72,991 Palestinians in Gaza—an assault widely condemned as genocide. That includes 981 people killed since the ceasefire reached last October, according to local health officials. Israeli attacks on Lebanon have left thousands more dead, including at least 3,666 since early March, per the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.
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Israel Escalating Ethnic Cleansing in West Bank 'Before the Eyes of the Entire World': Amnesty
"This is not the work of rogue actors," said the human rights group's secretary general. "What we are witnessing is deliberate, state-led annexation."
Jun 10, 2026
The international community is allowing the Israeli government to carry out an explicit policy of "ethnic cleansing" against Palestinians in the West Bank that is rapidly accelerating, according to a report out Wednesday from Amnesty International.
The human rights group said the world must intervene to stop what it described as a campaign of forcible displacement, rampant state-backed violence by Israeli settlers, demolitions of Palestinian homes, and tightening restrictions on Palestinian access to land and water.
Using United Nations data, Amnesty determined that at least 117 predominantly Bedouin and herding communities faced full or partial displacement between January 2023 and April 2026, with about 45 communities totally depopulated.
Nearly 6,000 people were forced from their homes during that time, roughly 17% of the Palestinian population in the Israeli-controlled Area C's Bedouin and herding communities.
Amnesty found that Israeli authorities demolished more than 3,400 Palestinian homes and structures in Area C during that time, displacing more than 3,000 Palestinians.
The group describes this systematic displacement as explicit Israeli state policy. The government advanced plans for more than 50,000 settler housing units from 2023-25 and authorized 102 new settlements by April 2026, the largest number ever approved by an Israeli government.
This has coincided with a dramatic increase in violence by armed Israeli settlers, who have set fire to homes and farmlands, vandalized schools and agricultural equipment, cut electricity lines and dumped water tanks, and beaten and killed Palestinian residents.
The UN's Office on the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs calculated that four settler attacks have occurred per day on average in the roughly two years following October 7, 2023, and have only grown more frequent this year, particularly after Israel and the US's joint attack on Iran, which was followed by an invasion of Lebanon that has also entailed mass destruction of homes and the forced displacement of over a million residents.
In several documented cases, armed settler attackers have been escorted or accompanied by Israeli soldiers, who have at times taken part in the destruction.
“Over the past three and a half years, Israeli authorities have accelerated a state-sponsored campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, uprooting, dispossessing, and forcibly transferring Palestinian communities," said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general.
"This is not the work of rogue actors or what the international community has repeatedly labeled as extremist settlers, organizations or one or two ministers," she said. "What we are witnessing is deliberate, state-led annexation, in complete violation of international law unfolding before the eyes of the entire world."
The report comes just a day after a group of Western nations—including the UK, Canada, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway—announced coordinated sanctions against Israeli individuals and organizations accused of financing and enabling settler violence in the West Bank.
However, Amnesty argued that these measures were too narrow.
"These limited measures are woefully insufficient to address the state campaign of ethnic cleansing and the systemic violations that have been rapidly increasing before the eyes of the international community,” Callamard said.
She said states, "particularly those with influence over Israel," including the US, the UK, Germany, Italy, and other European Union and Arab States, needed to "ban all trade, investment, and any form of cooperation or financial assistance that contribute to Israel’s unlawful occupation, system of apartheid, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians."
Callamard added that states "must impose targeted sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against Israeli officials directly implicated in these acts." She included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right settler politicians like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, as well as settlers who have allegedly committed acts of murder, like Yinon Levi, who was filmed last year shooting and killing human rights activist Awda al-Hathaleen and was released from custody after a day.
Callamard said, "Without accountability, Palestinian communities across the West Bank will vanish before our eyes."
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As the World Cup Begins, Voters Say Trump Is Torpedoing United States’ Global Reputation
Republican voters were the only political faction who believed Trump has improved global views of the US since beginning his second term in office.
Jun 10, 2026
As soccer fans from across the world travel to the United States this month to cheer on their countries' teams at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, a poll released Wednesday by Data for Progress suggests Americans don't believe many visitors have warm feelings toward the host country after a year-and-a-half of President Donald Trump's leadership.
Overall the poll found that 62% of American voters think the country's reputation has deteriorated under Trump, with just 32% saying it's gotten better.
Republicans were the only political faction to believe Trump has improved global views of the US, while Independents and Democrats overwhelmingly said the president has made them worse.
The poll also found 52% of US voters believed Trump's mass deportation policies have hurt the country's image in the world, with just 34% saying the deportations have helped.
Trump's immigration policies collided with the World Cup earlier this week when Somali referee Omar Artan, who was selected by the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) to work at the celebrated event, was barred from entering the US despite having a valid visa.
A Trump administration official claimed Artan had an "association with suspected members of terror organizations," but provided no evidence for the allegation. US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) called his treatment by the US "a disgrace."
Polling data published last year by Pew suggests that Democrats and Independents are more accurately measuring global public sentiment of the US under Trump's leadership than Republicans.
Specifically, Pew found that net positive perceptions of the US dropped by 10 percentage points or more among residents in a dozen countries between 2024 and 2025, including in key allies such as Canada, Mexico, Germany, and France.
What's more, Pew found only five countries where the United States' reputation has improved since Trump's election: South Africa, India, Israel, Nigeria, and Turkey.
Trump during his second term has taken a number of actions that have sparked anger from foreign governments, including making repeated threats to seize Greenland as a US territory, invading Venezuela and abducting its president, imposing an oil blockade on and threatening to take over Cuba, launching a global trade war, and waging an illegal war of choice on Iran.
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