March, 01 2016, 11:00am EDT
Statement of EWG's Scott Faber on Passage of DARK Act by Senate Agriculture Committee
WASHINGTON
The Environmental Working Group issued the following statement today after the Senate Agriculture Committee narrowly passed a version of the House-adopted what EWG calls the Deny Americans the Right to Know, or DARK Act.
The bill would block states from enacting GMO labeling laws and make it harder for companies to voluntarily label foods made with genetically engineered ingredients. Scott Faber, EWG's senior vice president of government affairs, said:
The version of the DARK Act that passed the Senate Agriculture Committee today would rob Americans of their right to know what's in their food. Nine out of ten Americans want the same rights as consumers in Russia, China and more than 60 other nations that require mandatory GMO labeling.
We remain hopeful that the Senate will craft a national, mandatory GMO labeling system that provides consumers with basic factual information about their food. We applaud Senator Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., for her leadership and urge Republicans to work with her to craft a national solution that works for consumers and works for industry.
The Environmental Working Group is a community 30 million strong, working to protect our environmental health by changing industry standards.
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Billionaire-Funded Pro-Collins PAC Drops Nearly $2 Million on Ad Attacking Platner
"They’re getting scared," Platner said. "And they should be."
Apr 27, 2026
A super political action committee supporting Sen. Susan Collins, backed by Wall Street and tech billionaires, has dropped nearly $2 million on attack ads targeting Democratic primary frontrunner Graham Platner.
Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings noting the Pine Tree Results PAC’s expenditures on April 22 were first reported on Sunday by Drop Site News co-founder Ryan Grim, who noted the firm’s support from a who’s who of elite financial benefactors, many of whom have close ties to the Trump administration.
Previous FEC filings reveal that Pine Tree Results has received $2 million from Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the private equity firm Blackstone. Infamously, those funds came right before Collins cast a decisive vote to advance President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which included major tax breaks for private equity while slashing more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and federal food assistance.
Another major Pine Tree backer is Paul Singer, CEO of the hedge fund Elliott Management and a leading Trump donor, who has been identified as one of the biggest beneficiaries of Trump's overthrow of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Aside from Wall Street, the pro-Collins super PAC has also received $100,000 from Alex Karp, the CEO of the intelligence giant Palantir, which has provided the Trump administration with intelligence and surveillance software used by the US government to target immigrants for deportation and by the US and Israeli militaries.
The company recently published what many called a “manifesto” based on a new book by Karp, which argued for mandatory national military service and the advancement of autonomous killer robot technology while railing against cultural “pluralism.”
These are just some of the donors backing the new round of ads aimed at taking down Platner before the June 9 primary, where polls show him with a commanding lead over Democratic Gov. Janet Mills on the back of a campaign laser-focused on attacking billionaire power, championing progressive policies like a tax on extreme wealth and Medicare for All, and decrying Trump's aggressive foreign wars and attacks on the rights of people across the US.
As independent journalist Nathan Bernard explained, Pine Tree Results' new ad against Platner "is essentially the same attack ad Janet Mills ran [last month], which backfired badly."
It seizes on a comment made by Platner in a 2013 Reddit thread in which he said both victims and perpetrators of sexual assaults while under the influence of alcohol need to "take some responsibility" for their actions. Platner has since disavowed these and other questionable comments he made around the time, saying, "I did not know what the fuck I was talking about.”
The ad also claims that Platner "bragged about having a Nazi tattoo on his chest." Platner said he got the tattoo, a skull and crossbones resembling an insignia worn by the SS, in Croatia in 2007 while serving as a young Marine. He said at the time he was unaware of the symbol's connotations, believing it to be merely a “terrifying-looking skull and crossbones." He has since had the tattoo covered.
While Mills and other liberal opponents of Platner have suggested these controversies may make him less electable in the critical general election—which could prove decisive as Democrats seek to retake the Senate in November—Platner has consistently polled further ahead of Collins in general election polls than Mills, with one from early April showing him ahead by 11 points over the five-term incumbent, and has rallied crowds at standing-room only events across the state.
"I thought Collins was relishing running against Platner," wrote American Prospect editor David Dayen in a sarcastic social media post. "Why wouldn't she save this until after the primary?"
Platner, who has raised three times more than Mills and Collins combined from small donors, decried the fact that the new ads against him were funded “by 12 billionaires” using “all out of state money” and “not a single dollar coming from Maine.”
However, he seemed unfazed by the attack.
"They’re getting scared," he said. "And they should be."
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Anyone Still Arguing Trump's Iran War Isn't Illegal Will Soon Be Out of Excuses: Legal Scholar
“The courts should simply hold that the War Powers Resolution requires the president to end our involvement in the war with Iran unless and until Congress authorizes it."
Apr 27, 2026
In late February, President Donald Trump launched a war of choice with Iran that many legal scholars have called illegal for numerous reasons, including that the president received no authorization from Congress or the United Nations Security Council before carrying out the attack, and that the invasion was not started in self-defense.
Defenders of the war have nevertheless claimed that Trump's decision to attack Iran is covered by the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which allows the president to deploy military forces for up to 60 days so long as he provides the US Congress with notification within 48 hours of launching strikes.
With the Iran war set to surpass the 60-day threshold by the end of this week, legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, argued in an editorial published by The New York Times on Monday that time is about to run out for defenders of the deeply unpopular war.
The US attacks will “clearly be illegal” should they continue without any congressional approval, said Chemerinsky.
Chemerinsky predicted that Trump and Republicans in Congress will shrug off this deadline, even though the War Powers Resolution "doesn't come with a check box for opting out."
This would then put the onus on courts to declare the war illegal and demand its end, Chemerinsky continued, although he acknowledged that the chances of a court enforcing the War Powers Resolution were slim, given a long history of courts dismissing claims brought under the 1973 law.
Even so, he encouraged opponents of the war to file lawsuits aimed at ending the conflict, given that the alternative is to simply grant the president unchecked powers to launch wars of choice.
"The courts should simply hold that the War Powers Resolution requires the president to end our involvement in the war with Iran unless and until Congress authorizes it," Chemerinsky concluded. "This shouldn’t be—and isn't—different than any other injunction on any administration to comply with the law. Mr. Trump might disregard such an order. But that isn’t a reason for the federal judiciary to abandon its duty to enforce the law."
Congressional Democrats have repeatedly forced votes on war powers resolutions that would end the Iran War, but each time have fallen short of the votes needed in the Republican-controlled Congress.
An April 16 war powers resolution in the US House of Representatives came one vote short of passing, with Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) joining nearly all Republicans in voting against it.
Chemerinsky pointed to the unwillingness of Congress to take responsibility for war powers as a reason for courts to intervene, and warned of dire consequences should they fail to declare the war illegal.
"In the face of congressional inaction, and without judicial enforcement, there are realistically no checks on the president’s ability to unilaterally wage war," wrote Chemerinsky. "If the federal judiciary, up to and including the Supreme Court, won’t uphold its responsibility here, it will nullify our Constitution’s design that two branches of government should be involved when our country goes to war."
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'These Are Murders': Trump Killing Spree Hits At Least 185
"The International Criminal Court is prosecuting the former Philippines president [Rodrigo] Duterte for the exact same thing."
Apr 27, 2026
The murder spree being conducted by the US government under the direction of President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth climbed to an estimated 185 people on Sunday after the Pentagon announced another bombing of a boat it claims was trafficking illegal narcotics.
"On April 26, at the direction of SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations," the US military stated in a social media post. "Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations. Three male narco-terrorists were killed during this action. No US military forces were harmed."
While no specific evidence was provided publicly to back up the claims made by SOUTHCOM about Sunday's strike, human rights experts and legal scholars have made clear for months that such lethal operations at sea—whether or not those targeted are in fact trafficking drugs—have no justification under international maritime law and that the extrajudicial killings should be seen for what they are: cold-blooded murder.
Footage released by SOUTHCOM showed the moment the vessel was attacked, and those aboard were killed:
On April 26, at the direction of #SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations. Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known… pic.twitter.com/br2znnUM1x
— U.S. Southern Command (@Southcom) April 27, 2026
In a separate attack on April 24, also carried out by SOUTHCOM, two other individuals were murdered when their boat, filmed stationary in the ocean, was bombed by US forces:
On April 24, at the direction of #SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations. Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known… pic.twitter.com/FRHwqXsHm2
— U.S. Southern Command (@Southcom) April 25, 2026
Nick Turse, an investigative journalist with The Intercept, which has been tracking the attacks, said the latest pair of attacks means five "more people have been murdered since Friday," bringing the total—since the attacks began last year—up to nearly 190 people.
"The Trump administration keeps summarily executing, rather than arresting, drug suspects," said Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch and now a visiting professor at Princeton University, on Sunday. "These are murders. The International Criminal Court is prosecuting the former Philippines president [Rodrigo] Duterte for the exact same thing."
Last week, the ICC's pre-trial chamber unanimously confirmed all the charges levied against Duterte, paving the way for his trial to begin. Duterte, who served as mayor of the city of Davao and later as the nation's president, is accused of crimes against humanity over his violent crackdown on drugs that included extrajudicial killings and other brutal tactics by police and security forces.
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